One Week To Go!

One week from today is my first Ultra, the 50km (31.1m) Skyline to the Sea from Saratoga to the Pacific (Wadell Beach).  I’ve been nursing a hurt IT-band for about 6 weeks and have cut down my mileage to preserve my leg for the race.  I have done about 43 workouts and runs in the past 8 weeks including 30 specific weight training sessions focused on upper body.  Kim and I did do a 8 1/2 mile run on Thursday morning on relatively flat Rush Creek course and that was good.  I think we’ll do great, we’re going to try to pace each other, which would be a first.  I’ve never tried to keep pace with someone throughout a marathon let along an Ultra.

This race is all trail and includes a total of about 8700 feet of altitude change (around 3000′ up and 5700′ down) in a challenging environment.  I hope and think it will be fine though there are always massive fears leading up the event and of course throughout the race.  The first goal is simply to finish, to cross the finish line and celebrate the achievement.  Of course, I have secondary timing goals, which worked well in the Napa Valley Marathon, and have put together a couple of matrices with different pace time coinciding with the uphill/downhill and water stops.  Speaking of which, there are only refreshments every 10km or so, and we’ll be running with Camelbaks on our – well – back.  I’ve only recently been training with this on, and it’s not so bad even compared to a fanny pack.

I need some more new music to run by though, I’m pretty bored with what I have.  I’m going to download some new music in the next few days and load up the iPod and post the songs here, they will all be different and new than what I have now.

The coming week, will have a couple of light running days, continued weight sessions and just trying to take care of myself!