It’s the month before my next race, the Mississippi Trail 50, 100 mile. The last training cycle which includes race prep and travel. This month was, as expected, lower in volume by a good margin. The focus was on speed work to get the snap back in my legs in order to be peaking on race day. Here are the numbers.
| Stats | October | November | December | January | February |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hours | 40 | 24 | 47 | 50 | 32 |
| Miles | 251 | 127 | 241 | 270 | 183 |
| Runs | 22 | 11 | 19 | 22 | 17 |
| Workouts | 3 | 1 | 4 | 1 | 0 |
Not a lot of long runs, although there were a couple of long-easy runs. The longest run of the month was 30.5 miles, with a couple others in the low 20s. A lot of the runs were hill repeats, tempo brackets, and shorter, fast-ish efforts.
One especially bright spot. I jumped into a hilly 10k trail race on a whim. I did the race in lieu of a hill repeat workout and to see how the leg turnover was coming after the large volume of January training. The Trail Demon 10k was the inaugural race at a local brewery, which happens to be situated at the top of a large hill in the mountains of Virginia near my home. There was 1,150ft of elevation gain in the 10k but my legs felt strong. I placed 6th overall and first in my age group. It was a great test of my current fitness level and gave me a huge boost in confidence that the training is preparing me well for my 100!
The last couple weeks of February were fairly light, with one long run the week before the race and a few shake-out runs in Mississippi, one being an easy 10k the day before the 100. It felt good to be there a few days early to mentally prepare and run over the plan with my crew.
You’ll get a race recap next time! Then we’ll start training for the next thing.