Thursday, September 03, 2009

The Ring - version 2.0

This coming weekend will mark my second attempt at The Ring, a 71 mile circuit run of the Massanutten Trail. Completed last year in 28 hours and change I'm hoping for something a little faster this year. My training, if you want to call it that, has been dramatically different than last year. Since MMT, the farthest I have run at one given time is 6-7 miles - a couple times on trails and once on the road. I've been running intervals 1-2x a week and doing Crossfit 3-5x a week. Good enough to finish? Good enough to break 28 hours? We'll see.

Nutrition has been fine. I've been treating myself to a beer here and there and have gone overboard on cashews a few times. Beyond ravenous! I need to figure something out and will wait until after the race to make any huge changes, but have been tweaking a few things this week and feeling a little better.

Crossfit training has been going well. I had a good 3 days 'on' (Sun-Tues) and will tackle another workout tonight before ending the week with a relatively light Tabata workout of push ups, pull ups, sit ups, and squats tomorrow night.

I don't really know what to make of The Ring this year. I know I can drag myself over the rocks for 71 miles having done it before, but do I really want to? I'm going from 6.2 miles (long run) to 71 miles goes against the 'normal' 10% weekly increase in mileage. I've made it through Murph, through 100 clean and jerks, burpees and thrusters and rows that nearly had me puking, box jumps and kettlebell swings that left me exhausted, and pull ups and double unders that fried my forearms, respectively. I have the calluses on my hands from gripping the bar and snatching kettlebells, but none on my feet from miles of traversing rocks.

It will be a good test of mental and physical endurance. Short Mountain kills me mentally and I need to get over that psychological hump if I ever want to do well at MMT next year. Getting to Moreland before nightfall is a goal of mine since crossing Kerns at night (opposite direction than I'm used to for MMT) is no fun.

With two days before the run, I have absolutely nothing packed; no music on the iPod, no clothes laid out, no idea where the headlamps are, no nutritional plan.

I'd say I'm pretty relaxed and ready to go!

2 Comments:

At 4:29 PM, Blogger ultrarunnergirl said...

sometimes the relaxed part goes a really long way! just have fun out there. if you can call the rocks of Massanutten fun. :)

 
At 10:11 PM, Blogger zhurnaly said...

best of luck Jen!

 

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