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Friday, November 4, 2011

Rocky Raccoon "Strategy"

In training for my first ultra theres a lot of things Ive needed to think about that I havent ever had to think about before. Nutrition, hydration, walk breaks, physical exhaustion, mental exhaustion, smart pacing and lots of other important topics have been bouncing around in my head for awhile now while I try to figure out each one. Im still unsure of nutrition, but the rest Ive got at least a vauge idea if what to do.

The pacing and issue of walk breaks is my main focus right now in my stage of training. My "strategy", if you could call it that, is to run the first 35~40 miles with a HR cap of 150. With this in place I think Ill be able to run a smooth 11~12 minute per mile pace and still have plenty left in the tank for the last few miles. The remaining 10~15 miles will be where I start to pick the pace up little by little every mile. My goal is to have the last 10 miles be my fastest, with the last 5 being the fastest of all. I figure at that point the mental exhaustion will have turned to elation at almost being done with my first Ultra Marathon, so Ill have the energy needed to push myself to the finish line.

Like I said, this is my "strategy" (notice the quotes here...), so its not a set in stone plan. Im hoping that if all else fails this will at least low me to complete the last 10 miles at close to the same pace as the rest of the race since I would have been saving up energy for them.

3 comments:

  1. It's tricky since even if you do the first part of the race very slowly to save energy for the last section, you have to guess if you will simply be too tired to even think about running the last few miles the fastest. At my 100 it didn't happen, at the 50 miler I just did loop 3 of 3 was faster than the 2nd loop.

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  2. Yeah, I thought about that possibility as well. Since its my first ultra Im really just focused on crossing the finish line. So I think that if I run a conservative first 2/3rds then Ill have enough to at least finish the last 3rd of the race at close to the same pace. The part about increasing the pace is more or less just an idea of what I would prefer to do, not that it necessarily will ever happen... lol.

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  3. From what Ive been told road miles translate over pretty well at RR. The trails are pretty smooth and non technical. Ive been doing very few trail runs on what I think are more technical trails in order to get a feel for them.

    How did you feel after your long run the other day?

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