9 weeks, 52 miles and a drastic change in total elevation for training

I hated waiting until Wednesday to go running but managed to hold off and allow my legs some recovery from last weekend’s efforts. Part of what I use running for is reflection on how adequate my training is for that stage in my plan, based on if I can justify that workload however close it is to a race.

Unfortunately there is a confidence you can only really get back about running when you are actually doing it. I had beaten myself up a bit about not pushing on and trying to get some pace back for the last 25km section last weekend. Because the total elevation was a lot more than I had covered in training, this may have been unrealistic.

After 4 laps of Post Hill Woods which was around 8 miles and over 1000ft of climb, I had a good feeling about being able to cover the required elevation for Great Glen Ultra over the course of the week. I’m now trying a slight variation of “if you can run it in a week, you can run it in a day” about the 2000m of hills this race involves.

I continued with that mindset for Thursday and Friday evenings and repeated the same distance both nights. This was followed by an unexpectedly comfortable 9 laps yesterday and another 4 laps today.

Combining all of the elevation covered this week barely scraped above the required minimum (2044m) but I’m happy to have managed it the week after such a tough race.

I think I have been a bit complacent about being able to finish the Great Glen Ultra based on the generous cutoff of 22 hours, although if I can maintain this sort of elevation and mileage until my taper, this should be more justified.

I’m certain part of why I take DNFing so badly is because I am usually confident and reality shears from my perception of my running abilities. I’ve enjoyed using this Barack Obama quote this week as motivation.