Friday 050611

AM – easy jog with Lucy – 5 miles.

I am leaning towards the 50 right now.  Earlier in the week I was thinking the 25, because of things on the horizon and the possible impact this run could have towards preparing for that.  But I am feeling now that I need to enjoy this for the moment.  We’ll see how much enjoyment I am feeling after the first lap ending in BV.  I have a lot of respect for the distance, in part because of scary ass (but brilliant) posts like this (I did say that was brilliant, right?).  It would be nice to finish like this:

Rather than like this:

It is a stretch to say I have no idea what I should set for a target tomorrow, but at the same time – I don’t have clear “this is success and this is failure goals.”  I did the 25 there in 2007 in 3:07, so on paper a sub 8 seems feasible.  That said – that was four years ago, and 50 miles is in its own way is more than twice as far as a 25 miles (take that Yogi Berra).  I’d like to think I could run near 10 minute pace all day, or average that with walks, stops, etc.  Biggest concern for me going in, as has been the case with all my long runs is how I hold up structurally with the grizzle, the feet, toes (even though I have less than nearly all folks).  I have kicked around that 9 minute miles all day could also be possible (7:30), but given that guys I respect a lot are calling that out as the ball park, I am cautious.

In some regards, this will be my first competitive ultra if I go the full distance.  Sure – I have done the Grand Canyon (and I wore a race number for chuckles), and the Burro Race last year was a competitive ultra.  This however is a bit more true in the scheme of competitive runs (I think they call those races).  There is certainly a bit of a desire to do this to feel that out. 

I have been a fan of ultra running, but not really an ultra runner yet.  Part of the draw of ultra running, or maybe more appropriately, the ultra community (so I put IM in there)  is the community of people.  Bunch of whackos.  Nut jobs.  Folks you see at a party and you hear people say “well, he is one of them.”  Frankly, I want to be one of them because they are good people.  More often than not they are the people I’d want in the trench with me if I had to do that.  They cheer for you, they jeer you, they will compete with you and fight so that you don’t beat them but they want to see you succeed too.  And afterwards, they want to soak up the glow of all of it, realizing our humanity, how small we are, but how grand the thing we did was.

Anyways … not sure what shoes I will wear.  Probably will go with my road flats (Racer STs) but realize that will leave the PF a bit pissed post the run.  I would go with something else like the but they all cause other issues (Technica’s – still a bit stiff and may cause blisters, variety of PI shoes aggravate the Achilles / Haglund deformity).  Least of all evils.