It's close!

This is just funny….Ultra pretending to be sick!

Only four days left before I run 62.2 miles round and round some park in Southern California. Training time has flown as it feels like yesterday was November and I signing up for this event. With Hagg Lake preparations being the center of my email and my house I haven’t even created a fuel plan or thought about race day strategy. Besides Hagg Lake taking over most of my brain my lack of planning might have something to do with me lowering my expectations so much. Since I am still not feeling race ready it’s hard for me to grasp what I might feel like if by the off chance I end up having a good day. Wednesday night will be a bag stuffing party for Hagg and then on Thursday night I will sit and think about OC100K.

Yesterday I met Susan and Trisha in the park for their 3 hour run. I only ran 1.5 hours with them and took it really easy. After the run it was my first trip back to the gym in over a week. After a rough start my workout seemed to get better near the end. I was not strong at all and my arms were shaking like crazy even when I cut the weights by a third. I could have just quit but I wanted to keep at it and gain my strength more for my mental outlook than my physical I suppose. I am really sore today and in fact I haven’t been this sore in awhile! It’s feels good to be working the body again but I have a feeling it’s going to take longer than I want to feel 100%.

Today was the first pace run where I was able to actually do the workout as written. It wasn’t super easy but it was doable. The run was 75 minutes with 15 min. warm-up, 15 min in Z3A, 5 minutes at M-Pace (7:32) and 2 miles at 100K race pace (8:40), then cool down. My muscles are incredibly tight! I was thinking I might be a bit dehydrated from being so sick. My weight is still down slightly so I am going to pump the liquids. I know I haven’t been very good about drinking enough fluids the last few days and was a shriveled up raisin after the flu. Today I am making myself drink over 100 oz of water and hope that helps my muscle heath.

When I re-read what I wrote above it sounds like one scared puppy and I think that would be an appropriate description of how I am feeling. If this was a mountain race I wouldn't be this nervous but because this is an unknown for me it adds fear! On a mountain run I know I could walk the ups and cruise all the downs no matter how I felt. Time would be less important to me and I could focus on scenery. The mountains are easier on my body because I get to use varied muscle motion throughout the run vs. one action......very fast. When I say very fast, I mean 9-10 minute miles, that will be fast for me. Fear is a good thing. I am in no way afraid of fear (sounds funny...afraid of fear) but it does add anxiety and can occupy my mind in a funky way. There are a bunch of tag lines that come to mind when I think of fear. You know all of them or have at least heard them......stare fear in the face, it can't stare back....what doesn't kill you will make you stronger....blah, blah, blah. Unfortunately my mind is to smart for tag lines or quotes, my mind knows they are JUST tag lines and quotes so they generally are not that powerful, I wish they were! So.....I am probably going to be scared until Feb. 17th when I am on the plane coming home knowing I have finished this in one piece. Then and only then will my mind rest. :)