Thursday, June 9, 2011

Countdown to Mohican 100

You know a race is coming when you can see it on the 10 day forecast. This week is going well, mostly running medium distance in hot, humid conditions. Hopefully, those forecasts (max 24C) will hold because the heat is just killing me. We basically didn't have any warm weather, so a long race like this in hot weather would be a challenge.

I'm experiencing the usual last minute doubts. I second guess my training. Did I do enough?  I really think I did. The problem is the enormity of the task. It's easy to forget the specifics of 50 milers. I remember being tired, I remember pain but I could always visualize the finish. But with 100 milers, I remember darkness, despair and exhaustion, with 30 miles to go. I remember at the turn around at Haliburton (25 miles to go), thinking I was 95% fried, having that feeling that the end was still so far into the future that you can't allow yourself to think about it yet.

It's weird that just as I question the wisdom of running 100 milers, I've signed up for two and I will probably run a third one in the Fall. And then there's R2R2R. Am I stupid? I don't have anything to prove: I've done it twice already. So what's up? I just don't know.

Obviously, there's no good reason to run ultras but that's ok. There's no good reason for people to do yoga either. So what if they get all bendy? So they can tie there shoes without bending their knees? Really, who cares? In the words of Evan Hones, at least with ultra running "When Armageddon comes,[...] running really fast and jumping over stuff will come in handy". So there.

3 comments:

Derrick said...

No good reason to run ultras, but no good reason not to either! :)

Good luck at Mohican!

David said...

Best reason to run them is because you can. I hope to some day.

Enjoy Mohican, can't wait for the results and report.

Carlos said...

Good luck on the race this w/e. Should be a warm one with some rain, just the way you like them!