Training for a 200 miler

Divide 200: Week 14: Phase 2

Prescribed mileage: None/Competed mileage 36.48

Prescribed vert: 10-15k/Completed vert 15,118ft

Going up!

Finally found the legs, the motivation and clear enough trails to crank up the vert train.

The objective this week was essentially: Collect as much vert as you can, within reason, in as few miles as possible. 36 miles and 15k of gain later, I’ll call it a solid little week.

The climbing legs felt good and I was able to bag a summit of Lady Mac thanks to just enough cornice melt to allow me to dance along the ridge line. The rest of the week was spent on some shorter, steeper terrain to try and jump start the uphill capacity and I finished with a nice 5,000ft day that felt very strong. The biggest win was feeling fitter at the end of the week compared to the start, and with a week ahead of very spring like temperatures, my eyes are starting to settle on my first big training day out, which will most likely be a round of the Canmore Quad, but doing it from home, which will be sweet.

I’ve found myself battling the down days and keep reminding myself that you can’t give up on a hard objective just because a day feels hard. This is such a long build toward a very unknown-for-me distance, that I know just showing up when it’s good, bad and in between, is what will get me to the finish line.

I’m enjoying the approach of not being a slave to numbers right now mileage wise, and plan to take the next few weeks as pretty free play on that front, while pushing the vert more and more until 20k weeks are feeling pretty manageable. The alpine should be really melting out in the next 14-21 days, so the real fun will begin then, and I can’t fucking wait to be back peak bagging with my wife and sharing the big days out together.

Listening to an audio book today, I was drawn to the line “Do the work so you can do the job” and I really appreciated it in the frame of prepping for a big race like this. It isn’t always fun, sexy or exciting (it is most the time though!) and on those days, it’s helpful to remind myself of the bigger picture and bigger objective.

But stoke is high, the body is feeling good and winter is finally about to piss off, so the fun can and will begin.

Big work coming up, now we do the things to do the thing.

Onward, Always.