14 weeks to go

There’s always a point you reach when training towards an event where you feel your last efforts on race day are a distant memory and the next one is too far away to focus on.

Since my last race was in October, that point is close to becoming a distant memory too. Some of my favourite running preparation quotes focus on the 12 weeks before, luckily for me I have “geared” my training so it’ll be more interesting (challenging) the closer I get to race day.

I’m unsure of who to attribute this to, but I’ve always put a lot of stock in the expression “If you can’t run it in a week, you won’t be able to run it in a day” Given that as a yardstick to measure my training against I’d be pretty happy at this point. I’ve ran equal or above the race distance (44 miles) for 17 of the 20 weeks this year.

Unfortunately this means very little if I can’t gradually increase my longest training run. I’ve tried upping this by 2 miles every 4 weeks. This Saturday I’m going to attempt 32 miles which will be the longest I’ve ever ran outside of competition (the race in October was the Round Ripon 35 mile Ultra).

The last long training run I did was a self-taught lesson in managing my water/food intake as I ended up with no food for the last 4 miles and taking an empty Camelbak around my last 2 mile loop.

I’ve erred on the side of caution and am taking extra bars with me this time. The idea of training in the snow and hail to cover half that distance over the winter months when this seemed a distant unattainable goal being for nothing should be enough to power me through the last few miles if my legs hurt a little bit.

As Murakami put it in What I Talk About When I Talk About Running “I didn’t come all this way to walk”.