When I signed up for the North Coast 24-Hour Endurance Run, a friend suggested that I sign up for the Endless Summer 6 Hour Run as a sort of test-run/supported training run. So I could get my feet wet, so to speak. My first thought was "6 hours? I can't run for 6 hours!" But then I reminded myself that I'd just plunked down over $100 to run for twenty-four hours, so I'd darn well better be able to run 6 hours two months ahead of time!
After deciding to run the race, I cyber-stalked it, reading every race report I could find, and checked in on the Striders website every few days to see if registration had opened. Then I got busy with other things and just kind of forgot about it. Not the race itself, but the actual act of registering for it.
Today good friend Michelle told me that she wanted to sign up for a race, even though she's walking and not running these days, and that she had decided that ES6 was going to be it. And, oh look at that, registration opened two weeks ago. Whoops. Glad she reminded me! So now I'm signed up, as is my friend who originally told me about the race. (He didn't know registration was open, either. So, really, I'm not THAT oblivious.)
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| (Me & George after last year's ES6) |
What I'm most excited about now is that Michelle and I are going to do some of our training together. I knew that I needed to add in an extra day of training to get my mileage up, and I wanted it to be just walking because I know that I will be doing a lot of walking at NC24 - but to me walking long distances is super boring. Being able to do some longer walks with Michelle will be great!
Of course, I'm sitting here talking about ES6 and NC24 .... and yet I have a 5K and a Half Marathon coming up that I should probably be thinking about, at least a little. But training for a 6 hour run (and eventual 24 hour run) should make the 5K and HM super easy, right? Right. =)
Have you ever done a timed race? Any tips for an ultra-virgin?
I did the Across the Years 24-hour in 2007 and loved it! Biggest piece of advice I can give is have a plan and stick to it and don't let yourself get caught up with people going out fast. Most of those people aren't running the whole 6 or 24 hours anyway. They are going a set distance and then they will drop. My plan when I did it was to run 15 minutes, walk 15 minutes and then stop for 15 minutes every two hours and it seemed to work really well. Maybe find a park where you can use your car as your aid station and experiment with different bought of walking and running over maybe two hours and see what feels good. The 6 hour will allow you to experiment a bit before the 24 hour. Let me know and I can share some of the other stuff I learned.
ReplyDeleteHey, thanks! At this point, I have NO idea what my strategy will be. The 6 hour race is really going to be my test run, since I likely won't do a training run of that length by myself. I will certainly pick your brain as I get closer to the race - thanks!
DeleteYou made me laugh about saying you can't run 6 hours when you are already signed up to run 24 hours!! You can do it - definitely play around with a run/walk plan that works for you - even in your training so that your legs get used to going back and forth from running to walking!
ReplyDeleteWell, I'm nothing if not under-confident! LOL I'm actually really looking forward to the training for this one. I think it's going to be a lot of fun, and extremely educational. =)
DeleteI haven't done a timed run but they sound very intriguing to me! Good luck w/ all of your racing & training!
ReplyDeleteThanks! =)
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