My first Ultra training long run and No Name!

Not my pic...

To say I started out my first real long run of my ultra training with a bang is kind of an understatement.  Let me back up a little though...

Training for an Ultra is different, way different than training for a marathon.  In the marathon I was trying to run it as fast as my legs would take me 26.2 miles both eating and drinking while maintaining the pace.  The Ultra is different.  For my 50 miler my entire goal is simple:  FINISH!  Walk breaks, walk run method, stopping to eat pizza or whatever is all part of the plan so therefore my training approach will be different as well.  Instead of logging miles, I'll be focusing primarily on time on my feet including walking, stopping to rest, and donuts and ice cream bre... I mean.  So its a totally different mindset and the training I'll be using relies on sandwiching in two longs runs back to back on Saturday and Sunday with PLENTY of walking.  For example, I hit my 12 mile mark today and had a little bit of a walk left back to the house.  I found myself reaching down for the watch to stop it but then thought twice and decided to let it go.  After all time on feet is time on feet.

The plan for this weekend was two easy two hour "runs" of which I'll be referring to the ridiculously slow things I'll be doing as such from now on.  Easy enough because at the end of my marathon training I was regularly doing 1-2 hours Saturday, with 3-4 Sunday with no walking and at a very specific pace.  One thing I didn't take into account this weekend though was the students vs staff basketball game at my school Thursday (I DO NOT PLAY BASKETBALL), and then the 3 hours of volleyball after so walking yesterday and today has been a little bit of a struggle.  Perfect conditions for testing my endurance even for a measly 2 hours.

But the legs held up nicely and today's run went surprisingly well except the times I'd tried to hop down or up to a curb but egh...  The thing that is going to take the most time getting used to is see 11+ minute miles especially after I've switched to the walk run method (about 25 minutes running +5 minutes of walking).  Today's run: 12.24 miles in a whopping 2 hours and 18 minutes.  The thing was that it felt great (apart from the times I felt like a slug!).  I was up early, saw the sunrise over the beach (and later googled a pic for the blog), ran the whole boardwalk, and really enjoyed myself.  This is how I want this training to be: fun, organic, running just to run, playing volleyball every couple weeks to supplement runs.  Not break neck do it or die (or bust!).  The pace is going to take some time to get used to, especially getting passed by all the other people out running (makes me want to shout at them "Its not fault I'm training for an ULTRA!") but time and patience is what I need.

Not mine either...

An interesting thing I realized today though is I have to revamp the blog.  This makes part 5 of the journey but I got no name and need a new description.  But looking ahead at the long runs to come I think I should have plenty of time to figure all that out.  Especially the killer back to back 4+ hour runs my final week.  Fingers Crossed though!  The glorious "50" bumper sticker paired with the golden "50" bling should definitely make it all worth it though.