Training for a 200 miler

Divide 200: Week 4, Phase 0

Planned mileage: 55/Completed mileage 56.06

Planned Vert: 7,000ft/Completed vert 8,743ft

Week 4 down and things finally felt like more of a build. I wanted to get a few days out in the mountains to start prepping the legs for bigger vert weeks ahead, but with winter still hanging around, those were limited to shorter outings. I collected most my uphill over 3 workouts, one shorter run from town into the high country and two days doing some light scrambling (one with my wife which was capped the week on a high note!). I touched one longer 17 miler on the roads which felt surprisingly snappy and overall the body just handled things really well.

On the strength side of things, I’m starting to condense down a lot of my gym work, In previous weeks, I was still in the gym 5-6 days a week, but recently have been cutting that down to 4-5, with a focus on shorter, quality sessions hitting some primary movers and light accessory work. I don’t want to lose all my strength and size over this build, but I’m going to stay proficient in the gym and can do so without expending a ton of energy toward it.

Next week is the final “phase 0” week, which essentially has just been a month long period for me to get back in the habit to running 5-6 days a week, recovering well, balancing the strength work, climbing and running and generally gently stoking the fire before the harder weeks come. 65ish miles next week will probably make the build feel a little more real and from there, we never touch under 70 miles again until race day, so the work is on.

I’m incredibly appreciative of my wife Sara as the training builds. She holds the fort down day in and day out, almost always has food waiting when I finish my sessions for the day and is just genuinely the greatest partner I could have asked for in life, and one that will make this project so much easier to undertake. A priority of mine is to make even my biggest training weeks really fit our life, not just mine, so the slowly increasing demands of training have helped adjust my daily schedule and make sure I find a balance of doing what needs to be done, while also getting to the gym with her, spending time together and making sure this never feels like a job.

I am forever thankful to live in such a beautiful space full of equally wonderful humans. I truly don’t think anywhere else on earth will ever feel like home as much as this place does.

Onward, Always.