Today I feel like total Joy!
What's not to love about a run on snowy streets, too early for cars, briskly cold January in the Midwest, yak trax on the shoes. OMG, so wonderful to spend 80 minutes just jogging, being outside, too early for disturbances. Wonderful! A morning like this is part of what I love about running. I had no ambitions, just happy to be out there sucking cold air.
I, Ultra Monk, have signed up for yet another race: Howard Aslinger Endurance Run, in Cape Girardeau Missouri in mid-March: 12 hours of bliss.
Well, when I ran that 3:51 marathon in December, I sort of met my speed goal for the year. So my attention has gone back to ultra distances. My aim is to workout in such a way that 50 miles of running doesn't totally devastate my body. That is, I want to bring about 10 hours of running inside my training envelope.
This means that I will start to have extended workouts on Friday nights (since the Aslinger run starts at 7 pm). And I will continue to use ex-machines to increase endurance time. Slowly, the running time should increase too. Eventually, 8 to 10 hours of jogging should be "no big deal."
The 100 mile ultra runners who are at the top of the sport run far more miles than I do. Somehow, having to go to work interferes with my running these massive miles. Many 100 mile finisher-types just load up on weekends; but they have a skill of ignoring pain. I don't have that skill. In fact, I'm not interested in destroying my body because I ignored the pain for long enough to finish a race.
My interest is in building my body more. That's the difference. I found out that I can run about 7.5 hours without the destructive feeling I got at 9.5 hours. So I plan to train in order to push that destructive point out further. I have ideas for doing this which may be stupid in the minds of some more experienced ultra runners. But I think they will work for me.
Selah!
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