Tuesday August 12, 2025
Last checked in when I had 9 weeks to go. Now I'm about a month out and have 3 weeks of training left before race week. I hate to say anything right now, but I'm feeling really good. Right foot tendinitis is gone and has been for weeks. Still some minor irregular soreness in my left butt and sometimes in my left pelvis, but nothing that gets worse.
Ended up doing a 30+20 for my "50 mile" training run. Had planned on running Thursday-Friday August 1-2, but the AQI was in the 150-160's (red zone) and decided that wasn't wise, so delayed a couple of days and did it Aug 3-4 instead. It went quite well! No notes! Oh, wait! Nevermind, I do have one note. On day one around 17 miles, I took a huge fall at the top of the meat grinder. Even with poles, I managed 6 points of impact - both knees, both hands, my right elbow and right shoulders. Knees bruised up quite badly. After another hour or two, they were really starting to hurt so I stopped and took some Advil. Wow, I don't take pain meds often, but they worked! Not only took the knee pain away, but also the butt pain I experience pretty constantly. Good to know! After these 30+20 runs, I took a couple of days off, got a short road run in and then that Saturday we took a trip to Afton with my pacers (Marcus, Jonah, Griffin and Juniper). The plan was to hike 15 miles at a 20-ish minute/mile pace. Earlier in the week, I was tracking some rain that day, but by Friday the rain had pretty much disappeared from the radar and what little there was was going to be done by 9am. We got to Afton around 9 and within 30 minutes, it started lightning, thundering and raining. And it didn't let up for more than 3 hours! So much for that plan! Everyone was soaked, but in good spirits and it was a really good lesson for them to realize what they needed to wear/bring for the race (wool socks, change of clothes, food, etc). We cut the run slightly short, ending with 13-14 miles and a pace around 17:00 which was WAY faster than it needed to be! Jonah is the only one (other than Marcus) who is going to need to hike more than what we did and the other two felt good (albeit a bit sore later that night) and confident they can pace me.
I'm trying to take it a bit more easy these last few weeks (if you can count moving Kylah and Griffin into a new apartment and moving Finnley out of one apartment, twice, and then into a new apartment a week later). Of course, all of that only resulted in my cleaning my entire lower level and moving furniture around! My workshop really, really needs an overhaul as I haven't touched it since we filled it with Charlie stuff last fall! I may or may not tackle this in the next few weeks...
I'm also working on my crew/pacing spreadsheet. Alex called me while I was at Afton doing day two of my 30+20 to regretfully inform me that he was going to be in California the weekend of the race and wouldn't be able to crew/pace (aka be my cheerleader). As devastating as this news is, I'm working on getting through it and making a new plan! Essentially Jonah will take over for the section Alex was going to do (plus a little more). Then Griffin will take over, ending with Juniper (along with, hopefully, either Kylah or Finnley or maybe Marcus or Jonah).
During our training run at Afton, towards the end, we ran into a runner on the river road (the place was pretty empty for a Saturday, likely due to the storm), but he started up a convo with us and we discovered pretty quickly he was a fairly experienced ultrarunner so I ran with him for a bit until the top of the meat grinder and asked advice! His name is Jeff Berg and he's the director of a film called the Pickle Juice Project which follows some women who have run the Superior 100 (as of writing this I haven't watched it yet, but will soon). He finished Superior last year and was signed up again this year. His top two recommendations were literally topics I was just discussing with the kids while we were hiking:
* SET A TIMER - I told my pacers I wanted them to set timers on their phone (once they knew when they were starting to pace) to remind me to eat/drink plus just a general check-in. I wasn't sure if this should be 30m, 45 or 60m and Jeff, without me even asking, said 30 minutes!
* EAT, EAT AND EAT MORE AND CONSIDER LIQUID CALORIES - The other topic I brought up with my pacers is to ask me about what food I'm looking forward to at the next aid station as that can often keep me motivated. While they thought that was crazy, I typically do a pretty good job of eating while I'm running. I like real food and haven't relied much on gels, protein bars, etc. I've also never tried liquid calories before. But Jeff highly recommended trying something in my pack as it's an easy way to get calories without having to think about it. He recommended Tailwind and Skratch, the latter is slightly less sweet. So Marcus picked me up some when he was at REI later that day and I tried the Skratch at Hyland the next day. It was fine so I ended up buying the high-carb version which packs 400 calories into a serving. Typically, it's intended to be diluted with 20oz of water, but I'm going to put it in my 70oz hydration pack tomorrow for my Afton run and see how I like it. I'm a bit nervous about not having straight up water to drink, but I think it'll be diluted enough that it will be less noticeable. The high-carb version doesn't have nearly as much electrolytes, really only adds sodium along with carbs, so I'm also going to add one of their zero-carb scoops which will add in more sodium plus calcium, potassium and magnesium. If I don't reject this combo, it could be useful in knowing that I don't have to force food down if I'm not feeling it, yet I'm still getting calories/sodium. Overall, Jeff recommended at least 250 calories per hour (including all forms of calories) which is the exact range I was looking at shooting for! My current list of foods include: grilled cheese, string cheese, bacon, potato chips, fritos, salted nuts, salted hard-boiled eggs, leftover pizza, peanut and peanut butter m&m's, dried ginger, snickeers/reese's cups, lunabars, TJ gummies, salted caramel waffles, chocolate covered espresso beans (to use only when I'm using a headlamp so I don't OD on caffeine), coke, gingerale and skratch.
This is my last high-mile week, shooting for 66 miles, but might skip one day depending on how my 2 B2B days at Afton go this week. Hills at Hyland this weekend and then will start tapering going into next week. Only goal now is TO NOT GET HURT!
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