Looking to the horizon

Looking to the horizon

While we’re signed up for our first 50K, the Dead Horse Ultra and our first 50Mile, Rocky 50 we, you know, haven’t actually done those but still I’m looking forward at the future.

The next run for us would be a 100K.  There aren’t as many 100K’s out there as I might like due to our particular qualifications such as monster vertical is a problem since we can’t train for it easily or well.

Although to be fair I’ve found reclined indoor bikes to at least seem to be pretty good at strength training the old quads for vertical.  That’s based on the soreness after doing an hour of bike at the 50% to 75% maximum resistance settings followed by an hour of elliptical in the same resistance.

a lot of my height is waist up, not waist down.

SO… maybe that’s our vertical option?  We did 2000′ of Carls over the weekend which works out to right around 10k but it’s such technical terrain that it took almost 3 hours to do.   Interestingly one side of the hill is easier going up but some scary stuff coming back down.  We were out and backing it instead of looping it to get the the most elevation in the shortest time frame.

My feet are still a concern unfortunately.  After Saturday’s power hiking we did the Snake route on Turkey Mountain, the 5k loop version, not the 3.5mile version (basically cut out that short narrow loop out near the end).   Including a loop down to the restroom at the main site we did 22KM with an average of 13 minute miles.  We were on pace to break into 12’s as we were consistently getting more negative with our splits.   It was an attempt at our current thoughts on our Ultra pacing which is a half K walk to start with to get things warmed up, then run 1K and walk .25k and every 6k extend the walk to half K.  Lather rinse repeat.

Bottom line is the hike went okay but the run every step was painful, not in the walking on ground glass pain but in the deep bruise that someone is thudding with a medium weight hammer way.

#injuriessuckballs

What it works out to for us once we get warmed up is a 6 minute run and a 90 to 120 second walk.  My walk pace is slow, a lot of my height is waist up, not waist down and I am not built like a Kenyan but more like a line backer.

*ramble alert*

So back on topic, for the future I’m looking at 100K’s.   Of interest is the Zion 100K as the terrain looks gorgeous and the vertical isn’t too bad at under 4k although a big chunk of it is front loaded in a short section that if we don’t do it smart will burn us for the rest of the run.

I also found Antelope Canyon which doesn’t have a 100K but it’s an even more spectacular terrain and scenery.   So it’s either a 50 mile or a 100 mile at that one, anything less isn’t worth the expense of getting there to me.

Things like that make it very hard to try and determine where I can go.  It’s a time issue, a training issue, a money issue.

TREX