I can tell I’ve lost some fitness because of my heart rate. My Garmin 410 has downloaded horribly high heart rates during these runs indicating that my heart has lost some of strength that I gained during the marathon training.
I guess my illness and business travel a couple of weeks ago
took its toll and now I’m struggling to get back into form. Still, it’s good to be back out on the
road.
To me, that’s what happens sometimes in our daily struggles
with family and jobs. You have
good days and you have not so good days.
You go to bed at night, hoping that tomorrow will be better. You even try to plan on it as you leave
the bad days behind and move forward.
One of my running buddies said about training for a long
distance event, “You can’t cheat the marathon.” You have to put in the time and effort just to try to do
well.
With those thoughts, I’ll have to say that I’ve been
challenged by another running buddy, John, who introduced me to the mountain
bike dirt trail where I run. He
challenged me to enter his race called the Big Butts 50 & 100k… in July.
Butts Park is out near Clinton, MS and is a grassy cross-country
trail often used by Miss. College and high school cross-country teams. I have not run this trail yet, but John
tells me it’s a lot easier than the 9.5 mile trail that I usually run.
Anyway, I’ve accepted.
It means a slower pace for the 31 miles, somewhere around 12:00/mile pace. Slow, but an intelligent way to run a
small ultra-marathon.
So, my training this spring and summer will not be a speed style
training, only long runs to prepare will be in order. The event will be in the dog days of late July. This will take some getting used to.
On the other side of the event is a little bit of pride that I’ve done something that not many people have done.
Cool.
Gotta run,
Chuck
The Vagabond Runner
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