Announcing my, Whatever Comes First Run, 100K or 12-Hours (Day 2,250)

 

Announcing my, Whatever Comes First Run, 100K or 12 Hours

 

         I have been training for a 50-mile trail run (the Mohican) that was going to take place this Saturday, June 19, 2020, but the run got postponed until October 31, so I wasn’t sure what to do. This was going to be my first ever official ultra-marathon, and it became one of the things I had been looking forward to the most, particular because of all the special problems that 2020 has presented. I don’t know what country has it the worst, but from what I can tell everybody is dealing with the problems of this year in their own ways, for me I became completely focused on training for this run, and I had some lengthy training runs preparing for it. I ran my longest ever run --40-miles-- on a trail and just loved being out in nature and was so looking forward to experiencing 50-miles of trails that I had never seen before, but then the race got postponed, not really surprising. It was probably the right thing for them to do.

         However, I don’t just want all my training and energy to go to waste because that would be like giving up, and I don’t like to give up. At first I was thinking I could do 50-miles on the same trail that I ran 40-miles on, but that just seemed like not enough of a challenge and kind of boring, particularly because I have run that trail so many times in preparation for the race, so I ruled that out.

         Next, I thought about doing just 50-miles on the road, but somehow I wasn’t excited about that as a challenge. Now that I have done the trails I know that a 50-mile road-ultra and a 50-mile trail-ultra are just different, and the trails are easier mentally for me, but harder in other ways and inevitably take me more time to complete. I normally plan on doing 12-minute miles on the trails compared to a much faster time on my road runs of similar distance, so a road 50-mile ultra although still very challenging, not exactly what I wanted to do either, so I thought about it and the solution came to me, “why not 100K or 12 Hours?” It might seem random, but I have been training to be on my feet  for 12-hours, so I know I should be able to do that, but the 100K thing is just the next step up without being too crazy, so that’s my plan, and I am genuinely excited about it because I don’t know what’s going to happen, and I love that feeling.