Last big training week

Life has been very busy the past few weeks. Several times I mentally started writing a blog entry, but by the time I got anywhere near a computer, there were more important things to do. I had intended to write about my complete failure to get up in the mornings to run recently; thankfully I have the second chance of a post work run. And, I wanted to write about my adventure on a for real like trail the other weekend where I survived 12 miles without falling. Granted it wasn’t actually that traily of a trail, but pretty trail like for me. Clearly, however, these were not important enough to make me actually find the time to write them.

So anyway, here I sit at the end of another very busy weekend and at the end of my last bit training week before Gettysburg. This past week was another 43 mile week, and yesterday was my second 20 mile run. I feel that I survived this second 20 miler pretty well, although it could be the massage yesterday afternoon that has my legs feeling so good…

We ran our 20 miles on the W&OD trail again, but did some of the beginning miles on a hillier trail that connects and parallels the W&OD trail to try and simulate the Gettysburg course. Even with the extra hills we finished in basically the same time as the first 20 miler (10 seconds slower). I was pretty shocked at our time because I had mentally felt like we were going slower…maybe it was the early hills or the fact that by the end of the run I was wishing I had less clothes on... It definitely warmed up a lot.

I can tell that I have made a lot of progress in my hill running, but I still have no idea if I am prepared for Gettysburg. The elevation course map is not detailed enough to give me a sense of the kind of hills, and they changed the second half of the course from last year so the comments can only tell me so much. At this point though there’s not much I can do besides hope I’m ready for it. I plan to do one more hill run this week, but I’m moving into taper territory so basically the hard running is all done.