Training for a 200 miler
Divide 200: Week 7: Phase 1
Planned mileage: 75/Completed miles 75.05
Planned vert: 6k/Completed vert 4,386 feet
Finally getting some beef!
Mother nature provided another challenging week terrain wise, so sadly was mostly restricted to road running. I know it’ll break soon, but god damn I cannot wait until the alpine is in reliable shape to go rip in every day.
The week was fairly busy and with a planned 25 on Saturday, my main objective was just to show up each day, log 10-15 miles and make sure I was at 50 Friday night so I could take Sunday totally off. Things felt snappy and I’ve been making an effort to run my shorter base days at a slightly higher tempo. Sometimes in these builds, I get a little too comfortable running base miles uber easy. Nothing wrong with that, but if I can take my easy days from 9 min miles down to 7:30/8 over 10-15 miles, come race day, my all day pace is going to feel that much more manageable. 25 went down slow and smooth and overall, the miles were pretty uneventful but enjoyable.
This was the first week I noticed a pretty increased need to up my calorie intake day to day. I’m usually a pretty dainty eater for a big guy, but I was pretty hungry start to finish each day, which means the work is starting to get real. I’ve been sitting at 218lbs still through the build and am generally pretty impressed how easy I’m handling mileage at that weight. I’m pretty curious to see if/when the scale starts to drop and how I’ll feel on foot if I can get down to 205-210 by race day.
Another bump next week, which unfortunately kicks off with a few fresh feet of snow that got dumped today over the course of about 5 hours. Hoping for a clear end of the week, but anticipate a lot of soggy, wet road miles until at least Wednesday, but it shall get done.
That concludes a pretty vanilla week of training. Once we touch above 80 and get into the mountains more, the fireworks shall start!
Onward, Always.