Today I had a breakfast of champions: Granoatmeal. It’s a very unique invention of mine. I don’t want to give away the secret recipe, but I will tell you that it involves granola and oatmeal:

Don’t worry, it tasted MUCH better than it looks.

On a different note, I won’t be participating in the Western States training camp this weekend. Something more important came up, involving the A’s, the Yankees, some friends, and some beer. To some of you ulrarunners who might be wondering why I’m skipping a run on an epic course to go to a ball game, I tell you this: running isn’t everything.

Although… it is still a priority to me. So I’ve been trying to fit in some longer runs this week on the mountain I have in my backyard. Here are some gorgeous photos of me, and some run stats.

Tuesday:

Yes, I know, 3 hours for 12 miles sounds super slow. But note the elevation (bottom right)!!

Thursday:

from Tuesday. but just roll with it.

Again, slow, but a lot of climbing. I’m trying to get as much in as possible, because the Tahoe Rim Trail 50 miler is going to have about 10,000 feet elevation gain and loss. And this will all take place at an elevation of 6,000 – 9,000 ft. This will be a much different experience than AR50, but who knows? It might be the newest Best Day Ever.

Good news is, I’m not sore at all from my two runs. Next week I’ll aim to get one 20+ mile run with as much climbing as I can find. My goal is to not only build up the endurance and strength, but to try to speed up a little bit. As of now, it looks like it’ll take me 13+ hours to finish this race, which is fine, but the more hours I’m out there the more mental toughness I’ll need.

So looks like for the next 6 weeks it’ll be me vs. the mountain!

Question: Does anyone have any advice for running at altitude? I know 9,000 ft. isn’t superhigh, but altitude affects people differently and I’d like to be prepared.

(source)

For some silly reason, I was unintimidated by this course and kept thinking, Oh, easy 50! I can do it in 10 hours, no problem. What the heck is wrong with me?? My training consisted of taking it easy when my knee hurt, when I had a cold, and when I could think of any other excuse. And now, I’m FREAKING out! I’ve been a procrastinator my whole life (some of my best papers in college were written the night before), but training for a 50 mile race is NOT something you can cram in at the last minute.

This being said, I can only hope/pray/beg for the best this Saturday. I can also make sure not to make this mistake again. I’ve already signed up for my next race, the Tahoe Rim Trail 50 mile endurance run, which will take place in July. The elevation chart for that race looks like this:

(source)

Notice how the start line is at an elevation of 7000 ft. So not only do I have to deal with 6,895 ft of TOTAL elevation gain (which is about twice as much as I’ll be climbing this Saturday), but I’ll have to do it at altitude!! So you can see why I’m already freaking out for this race too.

A few weeks back I bought a book on my kindle called Relentless Forward Progress: A Guide to Running Ultramarathons, by Bryon Powell. (He has a great blog, irunfar.com, that you should check out!) It gives a lot of useful advice and covers pretty much everything you’ll need to know about ultrarunning, including how to tactfully pee in the woods. He also includes several training plans, which I am ACTUALLY going to use this next time around!

The one on the left goes up to 50 miles/week and the one on the right goes up to about 70 miles/week. Ideally, I’d like to follow the plan on the right, and default to the plan on the left when I need a break. Obviously I don’t have 24 weeks to prepare (the Tahoe Rim Trail run–TRT50–is on July 21), so I will have to start somewhere in the middle of the plan. I’ll figure out the logistics after I get past the AR50.

Basically, for Goal #2 I plan on following the training plan and consistently hitting the weekly mileage and long run mileage. I also plan on resting when it says REST, because sometimes that’s what my body needs! And I also hope to incorporate some cross training and strength training to keep those joints healthy and muscles in balance. And as boring as it might be for you guys, I’ll blog about it so I can keep myself in check.

So, how am I doing on my eating healthy goal? Well, Tony and I made this amazing catfish dish last night.

Wild rice, caesar salad with light dressing, and catfish: coated in cooking spray, sprinkled with lowfat cheddar and crumbled Chex cereal. This has been our go-to healthy meal for the last few weeks. We change up the fish and type of salad, cuz we’re crazy like that.

I’ve also kept up a promise I made to myself: no froyo until after the AR50. It’s been almost 2 weeks and I’ve started having hallucinations that look like this:

Anyone have any go-to healthy meals that are easy to prepare? I hate fish but eat it because it’s healthy. I usually have to douse it in seasoning/sauce/cheesyChex to get it down the gullet.

So goal #1 is COMPLETELY BORING AND UNORIGINAL, but something that needs to be done: eat more healthfully and mindfully.

The most common fallacy of runners is that we think we can eat as much as we want. Even those of us who are somewhat aware of eating healthfully get caught up in the excitement that yes, we just ran 10 miles so we can have that ice cream/oreo/juicy burger/extra ranch on everything/etc. Or beer. Who doesn’t like beer??

I sure do. And it’s ok to drink it. Just not a 6 pack a day. If you drink enough to make a beer-amid, you’ve drank too much for the day.

I guess we were too drunk to make a taller beeramid. Best light beer ever BTW

Enough with the beer photos. You know that saying, “Don’t live to eat, eat to live”? Well, I’d like to do both, but with healthfulness in mind. It’s a hard thing to do, to find that right balance. I definitely LOVE to be able to eat yummy things and I’m proud of the fact that I have a strong and lean body, but I also know that there is room for improvement. I’m sure that at mile 48 this Saturday I’ll be saying to myself WHY??? did I eat all those Oreos?? Why?? Why didn’t I eat more yummy, healthy salads (like this one)?

So the moral of this post is not for me to start obsessing about food. I’ve been there and it’s not fun and it makes me grumpy. Rather, it’s to try to make smarter choices. Or at least ask myself this question: Is it worth it? And for sure, sometimes it is

Oh, and to try try tryyy to only eat cupcakes and cake on birthdays!