Sunday, December 7, 2014

2014 Year in Review and a Big 2015 on the Horizon

2014:
Wow.  Looking back at this year I feel fulfilled.  I started the year on the disabled list.  Hurting my back in late December and required one month off from any training at all.  After some Chiropractic work for a few weeks, I was able to start back into training; very slowly at first.  Then eventually, the muscle memory took over and I was back to my old self in a about a month.  My training was different this year.  3-4 days a week I would run 3 miles to a gym near work, do 20-30 more minutes there.  I would also run home and call it a day or extend that run home.  The running to work was at a hard effort.  On weekends, I didn't really go very long.  I can't remember the amount of marathon or more training runs I did because there weren't that many.  I used practice races once a month as my very long runs.  In between races, I would make sure I was recovered or wouldn't run.  But I would do a fair amount of walking to help speed recovery.  My results this year:

April: SpringleTrack Fatass Marathon - Fun run Finished
May: Bear Mountain 50-Miler: 9:40:35 - PR
June: TGNY 100 - 20:52:33 - 8th place and 100-mile PR
July: Running with the Devil 12-hour - 49 miles - 3rd place
August: UTMB 100 - 35:23:48 (bucket list dream race)
October: Tesla Hertz 100 - 19:22:08 - 1st place and 100-mile PR
November: NYC Marathon - 3:21:57

So while the number of races overall may have been on the low side, especially compared to many friends I know, given the amount of PRs I set, I feel great about how my training went and I was able to balance that with work and life.  I'd love to be able to carry this good momentum into next year as 2015 will be epic.

2015:
The first piece of awesome news is that I have set up a Team in Training event specifically for Bear Mountain races.  I will coach a team of runners doing from 5K to 50-miles.  It's a brand new type of event for Team in Training and I'm excited to lead these runners to their first technical trail race and/or ultra.  If you're interested in signing up, let me know or go  https://www.teamintraining.org/nyc/firsttimehere/signup/ create a new account or sign if if you're an alumni and choose "other" for the type of event and then TNT Your Way.  Fundraising minimum is only $900.  You can't beat that.   

The next piece of news happens next.
December 6th, 2014 - "Holy crap my name was pulled in the Western States lottery!"  I only had something like a 4% chance.  Then, thanks to Snipes for letting me know (really Justin Peake who told Snipes) I found out on December 7th that I'm on the waitlist (#54 on the waitlist) for the Hardrock 100 race.  This is a tough thing to handle mentally.  If I got into Western States and Hardrock, I would train for Hardrock specifically, run Western States "easy", then recover for Hardrock a few weeks later.  However, being on a wait list means I may not get into the race because
I only get in if 54 people in the race that have NEVER run the race before drop out.  I don't know if the chances of that happening are high or not.

What makes this a more difficult decision is that Western States allows me to take part in the "Grand Slam of Ultra Running"  This is running 4 of some of the original 100-milers in a period of 11 weeks.  Western States, Vermont, Leadville, and Wasatch.  I was most likely going to go for it but know that there is a chance life will get in the way and I wouldn't be able to do those races.  I am confident I can finish them all and would love to do it as it's something I may never get a chance to do ever again.  But it's not the most important thing in the world and if I can't make the events, so be it.  But the conundrum with Hardrock is I am pretty certain I can't finish the Grand Slam and have Hardrock right in the middle of it.  Hardrock is an beast of a race.  Anyway, here are the links to those five races for those that are curious

Western States - http://www.wser.org/
Vermont - http://vermont100endurancerun.blogspot.com/
Hardrock - http://hardrock100.com/
Leadville - http://www.leadvilleraceseries.com/run/leadvilletrail100run/
Wasatch - http://www.wasatch100.com/

So what will most likely be on my schedule?  For now, it looks like:
February - Febapple Frozen Fifties - 50K
April - Springletrack Fatass Marathon
May - Bear Mountain 50-miler
June 6/27/15 - Western States 100
July 7/10/15 - Hardrock 100
July 7/18/15 - Vermont (if not doing Hardrock)
August 8/22/15 - Leadville 100 (if not doing Hardrock)
September 9/11/15 - Wasatch 100 (if not doing Hardrock)
October - Tesla Hertz 50-miler?  Probably just sleep.
November - Sleep
December - Sleep

The good news about this dilemma is that if I drop off of the Hardrock wait list and decide not to do it, I still get twice as many tickets for next year.  But my odds would still be about 4% of getting picked.