Squamish 50k Recap

Training leading up to Squamish had actually been ok. Well it had been lousy for so long, and things had started to improve, and my body was responding, which felt good. I ran the Powderface 44k “marathon” on June 30th. After this my left foot was a bit sore, which meant more recovery than I had wanted, but if nothing else, I’ve learned over the last year and a half to give my body whatever recovery it asks for. We went on vacation to my in-laws in July, which coincided well with recovering from Powderface. I took it easy, took a week off running, and got fat (j/k).

Run the Rock Race Report

Last Saturday I ran the Run the Rock 50k in Smith Rock State Park, just outside Bend, Oregon. My hubby and I arrived in Bend on Thursday. We went to check into our VRBO, and realized quickly that I’d messed up the dates on my reservation, we were supposed to be checking in on Friday! Whoops. It turned out to not be a big deal. I quickly booked a hotel room online, and we got checked into our hotel. We had a fantastic dinner out, and a pretty relaxing evening.

Boston Marathon Week Part 1

I’ve been back for a week, and still have not written my recap… life has been crazy busy, but I need to get this done before my memory fades!  Luckily I took about 1,000,537 photos, so that should help.  I’m planning to break this into two posts, one as a summary/recap of all the not-the-marathon stuff that we did, and a marathon recap.  First up, the not-the-marathon!

Surfers Point Marathon; the marathon I didn’t train for.

I ran a marathon this past weekend that I didn’t train for.  Ok, YES, I know, I’ve been running  a crap-ton all summer.  So you’re probably wondering, how could this be defined as NOT training.  Yes, I’ve been training, I trained all summer for the Grizzly 50k, but I did not train for this marathon.  Same thing/close enough/ etc?  Right?  Perhaps, and I wondered going in if the two might be close enough.  After all, I’ve been working my tail off to get in pretty good shape this summer, and I think I AM in pretty good shape, in many ways, the best shape of my life.  So I thought an experiment was in order, I ran my PB (Personal-Best) marathon last fall, after training really hard for that marathon, and doing all the typical runs and volume building that a typical marathon training plan has in it.  I ended up having the flu on race day, I woke up with a fever, popped some drugs and ran the race anyway.  I felt pretty horrible during the race, but I survived, and ended with a pretty damn good time, one that I would have been happy with on a healthy day.  So this fall after the Grizzly 50k, I wondered to myself, could I run a marathon as fast, could I run faster?  I feel stronger, I know I’m stronger, but how will that translate in a race?  So what better to do than to put myself to the test, right? Right… (Note: it was a very painful test, next time I’m finding someone else to actually RUN the test 😉 )