The weekend that had given me the most emotions throughout this whole training cycle is finally done! I was excited, terrified, nervous, and dreading this weekend as I saw it approaching on the calendar. Our final long run of 50 miler training!
This week already had quite the build. My mileage was broken down as follows:
Monday: 4 miles
Wednesday: 10 miles
Thursday: 3.1 miles
Friday: 4.25 miles
Saturday: 10 miles
Sunday: 28 miles
Total: 59.35 miles (so close to 60 but you couldn’t get me out of my pjs to get that last few steps in at this point)
I also taught PiYo on Tuesday and Wednesday, which was great cross training and stretching mid-week.
The weather all week was perfect for running, but the weekend forecast was looming and it was filled with a whole lot of rain clouds. Thankfully, the rain was primarily concentrated to Saturday morning (for the entire duration of my run). Sunday morning started out dry, and we (Rachel and I were able to get together for our weekly long-run date) got a great chunk knocked out on mostly dry trails. We turned our cars into our aid station in between our big chunks of miles. Electrolytes, jerky, and Honey Stinger fueled us. During our first ‘aid station’ break, we chatted with a couple of guys at the car across from us who were doing the same thing. They shared that they were training for the Umstead 100 in early April. Such an impressive feat and it was great chatting with them about how our various trainings were going.
We continued onwards but alas, the heavens opened up for our last few miles. The temperature dropped and our fingers were numb by the time we got back to the car for the second time. My hands were so swollen and cold from all the miles that I could barely get my gloves on! Rachel helped me stuff my hands into them and we set off for the last few miles. We changed up the route and checked out a part of Umstead that we hadn’t run before. By the time we made it to 28 miles exactly, we were ecstatic!
After my rough weekend last week, I was really anxious about this final push. I was scared that I wouldn’t be able to hit the mileage, or that it would be a huge struggle. But it went better than expected, and I’m feeling so much more confident going into this race with just two taper weeks between us and the big day. We head to Zion in just a few days so I still need to sort out my run schedule for the week, but nothing but shorter miles from here!
