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.