Race day; in 4 weeks.

At the beginning of the year I made three primary running goals. 1) Finish my first 100 miler in march, did that. 2) kick ass at a shorter race in Kelowna in late june; fail. Race was cancelled and I decided to race hard too soon after my 100 miler and didn't achieve anything resembling that goal. 3) Finish a 100 miler in september.

I'm 25 days away from goal number three. My summer has been less than stellar in terms of training. At sun mountain on May 19 I hurt my knee racing too hard, or for some other reason. I took it easy a couple weeks and then a week after I started getting back in I managed to hurt a pectoral muscle or something, or bad enough that I stayed home from work for three days. I built back up again, even got a 100 mile week in that included a sandbagged 50 mile race. Then a week later I had some family stuff come up, and I didn't run much for a few weeks, and even when I did start running it was with the weight of stress weighing me down. As the stress slowly started to fizzle away I decided to sign up for some races to get a bare minimum of mileage in leading to the 100 miler.

Ran a local road marathon: completely disapointing effort. I ran splits of 1:32 and 2:00, not at all what I should be capable of doing. I mentally collapsed when I hit the wall. To run at your best in any race there will come a moment when you have to decide to dig deep and access something (zen, heart, willpower?) to give the effort required. On this day, I had no heart, I had no zen, all I had was stress weighing me down and I gave up.

The next week I ran a nice 45 km long run near Salmon arm inthe reinecker creek trail system. It was nice, but I could still feel the stress dragging me down, like a ball and chain attached to my legs, with extra weights tugging all the way down from my heart through my insides all the way down to my feet.

This weekend I ran the squamish 50 mile trail race. I went in tired, pulling a reverse taper. I'd already run 56 km monday to thursday. I made mistakes, I didn't even check what the elctrolyte would be at the aid stations, it was heed, I ended up with terrible stomach pains. During the really hard climb in the middle of the course I was feeling just beat up, but all the while knowing that y intentions for the day were to run with a mentality I might take into a 100 mile race, and I was going slow. It took me a few km's after the end of the massive climb to get out of the mental funk. But I started running again and got mentally jazzed up. With 8 km to go a friend from home who was running the 50 km race was running with me, and was really motivating and we starting pushing harder, and we even kicked to the finish. A very tough race, definitely not my fastest or my best, but I made it that way for a purpose, for mental practise. And I think I got what I needed out of it. There was more elevation gain in the 50 mile race than I am expecting in the 100 mile race. So I think I can reasonably plan to run the same pace, as it will be less climbing, and considerably less technical.

Next week I will be running the 50 km race at Fat Dog, which is the end of the 120 course. Part of it is to go in for a tough challenge, last tough run before the 100 mile that will be 3 weeks after. And also as a scouting mission to see the end of the course, as I'm very much leaning towards doing the 120 miler there next year, get that monkey off my back.

Then I will probably run 25-35 km for long run the next week at home. Followed by an easy weekend, while helping my sister move the next weekend. And then showtime.

edit:

I was reading my year end post from 2012 that was looking forward to 2013 in regards to goal making.

Here's the last bit with the 10 bullet points

Goals in list form:

1. Finish a 100 mile trail race;
1b. Finish in a time under 24 hours.
2. Kick ass at the 50 mile scorched sole race.
2b. Knowing the approximate route, kick ass is hoping for under 8.5 hours.
3. Volunteer at other ultras.
4. Crew for a friend at an ultra at least once.
5. Volunteer at other local races.
6. Stay at my job, be a diligent Monday to Friday automoton worker. Play the game of being a 'productive member of society"
7. Don't do drugs ever.
8. Drinking: if I drink, I shall never drink while angry. And if I drink, I shall never do anything illegal or say anything reprehensible. And I shall never get drunk more than 10 times in the year (very realistic), and I shall never put myself in an environment where I am not fully comfortable with the alcohol level.
9. Figure out something or somewhere to fit some sort of volunteering that doesn't revolve around running into my time.
10. Pray, be thankful, and always remember that if I am to hope for others to treat me well, I must always treat others well, and that if I have any hope that people will do right by me I must always unquestioningly do well of others no matter the situation. Being positive is the only way to try and live, and I shall try do so, for no other reason that I don't know why I've managed to make it to this point without self destructing, so I might as well try and be better. There must be a reason I'm still here.

Lets look at the goals so far.
1. Yes! Yes! Yes! Second one coming in four weeks.
2. Race was cancelled, messed up race schedule and bombed out hard at a race I wasn't rested for. Whoops.
3. Yes, several.
4. No
5. Yes
6. Yes, and I'm even enjoying it.
7. Yes.
8. Yes
9. Sigh, not yet.
10. Mostly, well kind of. In some ways, but I'm still too sarcastic and still am far too often easily letting myself get down a mental road I shouldn't be going down.

Also, I read my thoughts on how I wanted to train in regards to my 100 miler based plans. And I feel like mostly I'm on point.

I kind of feel like a winner right now.