Or, In Which the Racing Calendar has the Gall Not to Conform with My Plans.
Yep, despite careful wishful thinking on my part, there's no 24 hour or 50K trail race within a reasonable distance from home when I was planning to do one. This, I discovered whilst pouring over the interwebs while semi watching UFC 122 (summary: the fights I expected to be good, were; the fights I expected to be boring, were; and the fights I didn't expect to see - time fill-ins - were the best, in terms of raw action). In fact it seems they tend to be in spring or fall. The lone exception was an early January race - it was either a 12 or 24 hour deal - that consisted of doing endless loops around a trail that was less than a mile long, and looked like it was set up in an industrial park. Um, seriously??? Why not do an endurance race on a treadmill while showing repeating loops of outdoor scenery? Maybe set up a few fans to simulate wind, and set off the fire sprinklers once or twice to simulate rain? No thanks.
But in backcalculating realistic training schedules for an ultra (minimum distance, 50K), I realized that to do even the latest reasonably local run, which is in mid-October, starting training in April from a pretty much non-existent mileage base (where I'd be if I followed MS pretty much to the letter) would be theoretically but probably not comfortably doable. Whereas, if I just run through winter to the extent practicable, assuming this winter isn't like last winter, I'll start the season with a decent mileage base and will be able to pretty much do what I want. And, I have not one, not two, not three, but FOUR races in mind, two 15K's and two 50K's. Which would be a helluva a nice place to leave a running career that will probably have to go on hold for a few years after that. And, I'd still have time to play with Cressey's program after that and before grad school, once again, assuming all goes according to Hoyle.
Believe it or not, I find it very difficult to change plans and spent sleepless time last night and some of my road time this morning justifying this change in my mind. I guess I forget that I set the schedule, it's my schedule, and there's no reason I can't change my own damn plans if I feel like it! No one else decides my training schedule or goals. It WILL be easier, as pointed out, to just keep rolling with the running rather than to take a hiatus and restart in spring, and honestly? It's not as if I decided last week that I wanted to do trail runs/ultras. I've been wanting to go there since I was a kid, and this just looks like a good time.
Most importantly, though, I am really enjoying what I'm doing and want to keep doing it. So I'll be spending some time with the Dos Remedios book and figuring out what amounts to an off-season training schedule. I sort of see myself maintaining my current schedule for a while but I sure would like to reincorporate a rest day somehow.
And speaking of enjoying what I'm doing - holy smokes, did I have another beautiful run this morning. I went further than planned because I just didn't want to come off the trails. The leaves are a bit past peak but there is still plenty of color out there, and I had color coming off lakes and streams and from a clear blue sky... It was a true joy to be out there.
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