Training for a 200 miler
Divide 200: Week 6:, Phase 1
Planned mileage: 70/Completed miles 70.09
Planned vert: 6,000ft/Completed vert 3,504ft
Mother nature decided to make this week a bitch.
With another round of cold temps and snow in the forecast, I assumed it would be a very non-sexy week of mileage (I was right). Unfortunately the weather man was correct and early in the week we got close to 2 feet of fresh snow dumped on us which pretty quickly ruled out the prospects of getting much vert in for the week. Not a huge deal, spring and summer portions of this build will be done heavily in the alpine and vert will be a plenty, so right this week I defaulted to just getting the miles in, and they went down pretty damn smooth. Most days I was restricted to running repeats on whatever 3-4 roads had been plowed, but it was both a nice mental test and also a nice mental check out as it required very little thinking to get it in. The 20 miler felt really snappy and so the long run legs are for sure coming around.
Strength work hummed along in the back ground and the energy in the gym was a little higher this week with Sara taking on 26.1 for the CrossFit Open (she crushed it earlier today). Have been working on cementing recovery habits that I know I’ll need in deeper mileage weeks, hydration, sleep, compression boots etc and it feels nice to have some structure and “work to be done” each day.
Consistency and patience is the name of the game when building to the REAL big stuff. It’s frankly not always exciting adding 5 miles a week here and 1k of gain there for months on end. I’m fit and would love nothing more than to rip off a 110 mile week with 25k of vert next week, but the plan is the plan and we must stick to it. Which I know is the way, because when those monster week comes, I’ll be hungry for them and not burned out.
Next week is another small mileage and vert bump with better weather coming so the aim is to get into the mountains more aggressively, rage on some uphill and continue forward. Once I break the 80mph mark in two weeks, it’ll be a few months of living between 80-120 miles a week, which will be the longest sustained high volume block I’ve ever done, so I’m genuinely curious to see how the body holds up and what that looks/feels like.
The playlist was pretty random this week, but if you want your mind blown on Direct Energy Weapons, give this a listen lol The things you learn about on long runs.
Onward, Always.