David's Blog

Winter and Spring 2014

Hopefully this is the last catch-up post I have to write\!

Track?\! Nah.

I left off the last post talking about how I was recovering from injury. While this is true, I wasn’t able to quite make it back into full shape in time for indoor or outdoor track season.

I was able to start doing some track workouts and long runs again after the beginning of 2014 with minor soreness in my foot resulting from them. I got more diligent than ever in stretching and rehab exercises and continued to make slow but distinct progress in the healing of my plantar fasciitis. I was extremely out of shape when I started doing workouts but they soon got at least a little better. I began thinking that maybe I could run a decent mile on the track before refocusing my efforts on training for the Bayshore full marathon that I happened to sign up for early in the year.

While I never quite ran what I would call a decent mile, I was able to run a 5:11 at an indoor meet at MSU. This isn’t close to my PR at all but at least I was able to start racing again\! I also raced a 3k that went very poorly at Illinois - 10:49 for that. I later ran 18:10 for 5k at the NIRCA outdoor track nationals meet without pushing all out during the race. That’s one recent race that I can be happy with. Still not near my PR but it’s beginning to show some fitness - especially given the limited mileage I’ve been able to run.

Ultramarathon?\! I guess so.

Somewhere between signing up for Bayshore and the end of the track season, I got the crazy idea to sign up for a [50k trail race](http://trailmarathon.com/). Over distance training for the marathon, right?\!

A little over a week ago I completed this race. I ran 5:15 for the 50k, it was a trail race so the distance wasn’t exact. I enjoyed this race a lot - the trails were great\! It was very painful after 20 miles - for context, I crossed 20 miles at just under 3 hours. I’d love to do this race again - but better trained. I knew going in that it would be  rough given my little winter training. My longest run was something like 14 miles and I hadn’t done many trail runs because of the harsh Michigan winter. Despite that I still gave it a go\! I ended up 30th overall which wasn’t quite what I was looking for but was still good enough to win a cool clear-glass mug\!![Photo: 26 miles down, 5 to go](https://scontent-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc3/v/t1.0-9/p526x296/10268494101520488769273746179096581971912398_n.jpg?oh=44c37529663c74b1ed7310415b369144&oe=53D1FF4E)Me,

  1. miles down.

And another photo of the medal and the mug:![Photo: So this morning I ran 31+ miles through the woods and when I got done some random people handed me this cup. Strange.](https://scontent-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/t1.0-9/p403x403/603640102036079631806926952410282844026144_n.jpg)

Onward to a Full Marathon\!

My racing for the spring season doesn’t end at that 50k. Just 4 weeks after my first ultra, I’m still scheduled to run the Bayshore full\! I’ve been focusing on trying to recover quickly enough from the 50k to get one more long run in before it’s time to taper for the marathon. That’s a tight schedule and I’m hoping it gives enough time.

My goal is to run a sub-3 hour time and qualify for Boston. We’ll see how that works but I’m telling myself that 20 miles in 3 hours on the Poto trails last weekend were pretty darn close to 26.2 in 3 hours on a flat road course. Only time will.

And Beyond:

After Bayshore I think I’ll take a little time away from long distance running and focus on building mileage again with some 5-10k races. And GLR, can’t forget that\!

Then I’ll be moving to SF soon after that for a new job\! Exciting\! Maybe I’ll return to the trails when I get back to California.