Taper, finally

First of all, I would like to congratulate Alyn and Matthew who got married this weekend! It was a great ceremony and I wish you both the best in the future.

I would also like to congratulate Sandi and Andre, who got married earlier this summer, but held a reception for their North American friends and family over the weekend. I'm sure it was a great time and I wish I could have been there.

Okay, now to the running. I did, in fact, follow through with my commitment to get a final 50 mile run in last week. After chickening out of an all-night run on Tuesday night, I headed out the door at 4:00 PM on Wednesday with a goal of testing my race equipment and completing a confidence building 50 mile training run. Just short of 2:00 AM, I walked through the door of my house with the full training run under my belt.

I decided to simulate the race by doing approximately 10 out and back runs near my house. Since the race has aid stations about every 5 miles, I thought that made sense. I decided to keep my liquid/nutrition regime pretty simple with constant Gatorade and alternating between a package of Sharkies and protein energy bars consumed every hour or so. I polished off the regime with a few Starbucks doubleshots. I also took electrolyte caps every 30 minutes to 1 hour. I had some minor bouts of nausea, but nothing severe and I think I may have been eating a little too much as it went away after I stopped eating so much.

Here are some highlights:
-My 3 led headlamp was comfortable and provided ample illumination, even in unlit areas. With my hand held flashlight I should be okay on the trails.
-I set the timer on my watch to go off every 10 minutes so that I could walk one minute (I got this idea off of Dirt Dawg at the North Country Trail Run). After mile 30 or so this turned into two minute walks. I liked this strategy as it meant I didn't have to keep track of how long I had been running and it reminded me to eat and drink regularly. I might start with a 10 run/2 walk pace at the start to keep things slow for the race.
-Running at night is tough, but largely mental. Miles 20-30 seemed to fly by even though it was getting dark. Miles 30-40 were pretty discouraging and the idea of covering 100 miles (or even 50) felt a little far fetched. However, somewhere around mile 43 I reminded myself that my body felt pretty good (albeit with some definite aches and pains) and I was just mentally exhausted. Apparently, I was pretty convincing to myself and cruised through the final miles in a relatively good mood.

Well, planning for the school year is kicking off and I still have projects from the summer to close out. Sounds like a good time to taper off the running and ramp up the work life.

One more thing. I was up until 2:00 AM running last week. If I can do that, you can bring in some more donations! So get going all of you!