If you see this on Saturday..

I'll be on the Massanutten Trails!!!

Leaving

I woke up naturally this morning. It was daylight out; our little valley socked in with fog, from the torrential thunderstorm overnight.  I figured it was 730 am or so, so I got up.

636 am.  Oh well.  So much for sleeping in.  But I did go to bed at 9 pm last night! 

It will be a casual morning here, take the dogs for their hike, and them mix up my two gallons of maltodextrin for MMT.  Put the rest of the gear in the vehicle, and make those last tick marks off the list.

Some of my favorite QOT from the Slim List:

"Man often becomes what he believes himself to be.

If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it.

On the contrary, if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning."

-Mahatma Gandhi

I do know that when I have those moments in the mountains, sometimes a breath or scent of something in the air, other times something as simple as moving over granite, a flood of chemicals hits and it feels like love.

Elusive and beyond description.

–Kelly Cordes

"You're better than you think you are and you can do more than you think you can!"
- Ken Chlouber at Leadville

4 Keys to MMT

As I sit and stew, this week, and try and be patient, some musings:

Four Keys of Ironman Execution

I listen to this podcast put out by the coaches of Endurance Nation.  They tend to interview their athletes after their Ironman events, which is always interesting to me (I Love Race Reports!).  They produced a segment called "Four Keys of Ironman Execution"  and this is their four keys to a success Ironman.

Most of this could also pertain to a 100 mile event. 

Execution, not Fitness. All you’ve done  is build a vehicle. Ironman racing is about how you DRIVE that vehicle, it is NOT about the vehicle. It’s easy to get caught up in the buzz and energy of the day, but creating and sticking to the right plan for you is the only thing that will lead to the best possible day.

What shape I am in on race day is not relevant now. I've driven the vehicle to the starting line. I now need to steer that vehicle around on the rocks, in the best time possible, while feeding it and watering it, to its (my) best ability.


The Line. Nothing on race day really matters until you reach The Line on the run. The Line is the point at which continuing becomes very, very difficult. You define success as simply not slowing down at The Line. EVERYTHING before The Line is simply about creating conditions for success for when the Line comes to you.

The Line, in the EN talk, is mile 18 of the marathon.  There are many smaller lines of MMT.

My first goal of MMT, is to finish. ALWAYS the goal. But I have many smaller side goals. Built to support my goal of a sub 30 hour MMT finish.

Get to Edinburg before 7am.
Get to Elizabeth Furnace before lunchtime.
Get to Habron Gap before 6pm.
Get OFF Bird Knob before daylight.
Get to Picnic Area before daylight.

I've also got carrots in this run.

I get to see Wayne Mongold at Edinburg and do a quick bottle exchange with him.
I get to see my crew at Elizabeth Furnace for the first time.
Habron is almost the "half way point" for MMT.
I pick up Wonderboy as a pacer at Camp Roo.
I pick up Mongold as a pacer at Visitor Center.  So I have many little things to look forward to, all day long.


The Box: All day long you are going to race inside a box defined by what you can control. Ask yourself “What do I need to do right NOW to create the conditions for success at The Line? Is what I’m doing right now counter to this goal? 

• Keep the box as big as you can for as long as you can.
• Keep in the box only the things you can control. Let go of the rest.
• Exercise this decision-making process inside your box: Observe the situation, Orient yourself to a possible course of action, Decide on a course of action, Act (OODA Loop).

The Box mentality has become pretty important as I sit and fret this week.  The weather is something I cannot control. I've also not had any opportunity to have ANY sort of heat acclimatization this last week (or really, at all.)

So I will only control the things within The Box. I can make sure the crew  has ice for me. I can make sure I utilize the crew and ice  as much as possible. 


  The One Thing. If you swallowed the Kool-Aid we’re serving you here, you will show up at the Line, in your Box, ready to git’erdun and simply not slow down. But we’re not done yet. There is still some psychological stuff you need to address. During the course of your race day, expect your body to have a conversation with your mind:
“Look, Mind, you’ve had me out here slogging away for 132 miles. This is really starting to get old and very painful. You need to give me a good reason to keep going forward. If you don’t have one, I’m gonna slow down and you can’t stop me!”


Another point I got from the podcast, not one of their 4 points, but very worthwhile:  Your racing self owes it to the training self.
Racing self needs to respect all that the training self did, to set up the racing self. Racing self needs to suck it up and embrace the hurt to honor the training self. 
Training self put itself out there always-ran in cold weather, cold downpours of rain, icy windy ass days, sloppy slow mud days, early early morning runs; cold clothes changes in parking lots; runs endured on treadmills.  You owe it to training self to get out there and endure on racing day, racing self.

So that's my 4 Keys to MMT.

This is the Last DAY

This is the last day that I plan out the training day.

I got to work at 11 am.

I got to run..squint, chart is across the room...oh just five miles..

So that will take me..50 minutes or so, so consider if 60 minutes if you are doing your "2.5 mile Yellow Water Out and Back" run.

I need to leave for work by 1015am.

So I need to be back, to eat breakfast, shower, and pack lunch and reading, by..930am.

So I need to go run at 8am.

So I need to wake up at 7am. Cuz I need an hour or so of play time, internet, coffee, to get outside.  It's much easier now, now that it is light outside, not 10 degrees, and I don't have to don layers of gear just to survive a run.  In fact, 8am is rather respectable and sunlit.

So this is rather a sleep in morning.  Such is the taper.

There should be a blog post coming soon, about the training.  Maybe I can get that out here, in my "taper" phase!

Running mantras

This one will probably get used this weekend: "the longer you run the stronger you get".

This does apply to me.

There is, of course, Speed goat Karl's famous "100 miles is not that far"...but for all the folks getting ready for MMT, they probably don't want to hear that.  Besides, I don't think of running 100 miles, or 103.7 miles, but I run from aid station to aid station.

Last year, on most of the  Hardrock course, this was my repeated saying to myself: "You can't stay here."  A slightly negative mantra, but the hard truth.  Only way I was going to get back to people and civilization was to keep going.

This is one of the favorites.  All you MMT newbies, read up. Contemplate.

This is from laz' 2010 Race Report:

"you all know about the comfort zone.
that's where most ultras take place.
running ultras is all about staying in the comfort zone.
all our strategies revolve around staying in the comfort zone.
all our advice is about staying in the comfort zone;

"start slow"

"walk every uphill"

"dont take any chances"

for all the talk about exploring human potential, and seeking our limits, ultrarunners tend to play it safe.
they line up "challenges" they know they can finish.
and run them carefully
well within their "limits".
we believe that success is never failing.

at the barkley success is about over-reaching our abilities,
and living to tell about it.
sometimes success is getting your ass out alive."

Kennedy Peak Overlook

9 Days Out

I'm supposed to be still sleeping. But you try sleeping with a Rottweiler with a cone around his head; and a German Shepherd who has just developed her own lick spot in sympathy I guess.

So anyhooo, I'm up and own my second..or third cup of coffee.  I've really been doing well on the caffeine. I am down (usually) to two cups in the morning. No more caffeine for the day after that.  This is done in the hopes that the caffeine ingested during the race will be a positive influence.

Browsing the interwebs, it appears that maybe the 17 year cicadas could make a guest appearance:

Cicadas won't harm you. I've lived through several Broods here in Ohio.  Their sound can fill up  the woods with their noise-it sounds like bacon frying in a pan.


Along with our old favorite at night, the millipedes!

 

 

These little things come out at night.  Try not to put your hand on the trees or logs, they tend to swarm over them.

Other than the rattlesnake sighting last year, I don't recall alot of wild life on the trail.

Just rocks. Lots of rocks.

 

More Trail Ramblings

and pics!

Yes, another Buff. This one makes me laugh. Cuz it's called Trout.

This was...Friday's trail run. YES I have been finally rewarded for my good training behaviour, with three glorious days of training and trail running.

So on this day, I ran the white bridle trail backwards.  I found this really cool wall.

I was anticipating a cool foundation, some daffodils.

But sometimes a fence is just a fence.

Pretty blue flowers.

 The Saturday schedule called for 16 miles.  And although I do love my Salt Fork Trails, I was just sick of them!!! Sick! I didn't see how I could cobble together another 16 miles on the trails (that could actually be runnable.)

So I went to Mohican.  I thought about putting a shout out on FB, and seeing who would want to run with me..but I didn't.  I just wanted to get my miles in, get up when I wanted, get there, start running.

I did get up at 430 am and got to Mohican about 7 am.  I had already changed where I was going to run. I had told the husband I was going to run the old Mohican Red and Green Trails,but these were mostly bridle trails, and I knew they were pretty muddy from last week's race.   Since the mountain bike parking lot was deserted, I decided to run the mountain bike trail,since I knew that would be dry and runnable.

It was a good run.  Energy was good-this was another dress rehearsal for MMT; I wore the clothes and gear that I will wear for MMT.  I even drank maltodextrin and an EFS shot that I will use.  It wasn't the hyper joy run that I was expecting; but for my last "long run" of 16 miles, before MMT, it went well.