Now am I trained for this race? Not really. My schedule just seemed to get busier and busier in the past months. I work out 6 + times a week still but the long mileage has slipped away. Mostly I lift 6 or 7 days a week. Then run 20-30 miles a week plus the equivalent of 10 miles a week on the stair stepper or doing step ups. My math: 10 minutes on stair stepper or step ups equal 1 mile. The stair stepper is much more generous than that.
So I'm going to test my theory that you can replace part of your running with strength training and still fair well at longer distance trail events. Where I have probably gone wrong is that the one run that was most important each week the "long run" is the one I didn't do.
Now I have a huge running base of years of mileage, many longer distance races and a lot of time spent on the trails. This defiantly wouldn't work for someone just starting out with long distance, trail or both.
When I trained for my first marathon in 2007 all I did was run for the training, nothing else and I needed to do all those training miles. Running mostly road and treadmill was all I did for several years then in 2012 I introduced myself to trails and started taking group strength classes at the YMCA( Thanks Heather!) About a year later I was doing a mix of treadmill, road and trails keeping my mileage training high for race training and I started lifting weights on my own. 2014 lifting was on my own at the gym, a full body workout 1-2 days a week. In 2015 I had to back off the running thanks to planter fascias so I started lifting 4-6 days a week but it would be upper body, lower body, upper body, lower body and so on. Still just 1 maybe 2 exercises per body part. By the time 2016 rolled around I was back to running but not wanting to quit the weights. I met someone who convinced me I needed to break my weight days down more. They are now broken down to legs, back, chest, shoulders and arms. This has worked out the best for muscle gains but I'm in the gym almost everyday and with no full days off work it makes it hard to get gym time and long run time accomplished. Getting both in would be my goal.
*Huge running base.
*Overall fitness is on point.
*I work a lot on the strength/ balance combo on leg day, great combo for running trails.
*Lots of stair stepping at decent speeds and step ups holding weight should be good for all the hill climbs on the course.
*I'm good at using the mind over matter principle to get races done.
Now I should still be taking a taper this week so by body is all rested up and ready to go Saturday however it hasn't really been a great week for me so I'm not really in the mood to take things easy. I'm holding off on a leg day till after the race and that's as close to a taper it's going to get. It will either go well or it won't. There will be beer at the end so either way I'm drinking beer. I do plan to use how this race goes into account as I start training for Bryce Canyon 100 miler in June.
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