8 Tuff

8 Tuff

Monday, November 7, 2011

Winter Training and Races

Well about a month and few weeks after VT50 I am back to 70 mile weeks and running every day. Legs def took some time to get back to somewhat normal. And still to this day I still feel my legs getting tired more quickly than normal. So I'm taking my time on easy runs and making sure I'm running EASY. But I can't wait to be doing some quality workouts for some races in the winter. So far my schedule is the Thanksgiving Day race. I will also be doing the Frostbite 5 miler on New Years Day. One day after my g'day. Hopefully I can keep it under control on the 31st. Then on to 8 Tuff Miles in the end of Feb on St. John in the Virgin Islands. I am also looking to do a 50k sometime as well.

Even though I have a few races that I'm going to do but I'm concentrating mostly on 8 Tuff. We actually have about 30 people going down from the tri-state area. We basically go down on Thursday and race on Saturday and then we party balls the rest of the time. Last year I did a have a pretty good race considering I have never done it before. I finished 4th overall with a time of 51:38. Now for most of you reading this and doing the math it comes out to a 6:10 pace. Which isn't all that fast normally, But this course is far from ordinary. It's a 8.6 mile race with about 1500 feet of climbing. And thats in the first 5 miles! Yes it's pretty much straight up hill and then the last 3.6 is straight downhill that kills your quads. It actually took longer to recover from this race than it did from my marathon. But most of all it's just a hell of a good time.

As far as the other races go they will be just tune ups. The Thanksgiving Day race will be interesting cause I haven't done hardly any good speed work. This race usually goes bad for me. But as usual I will give it a go and try to break 35 min which I never have done.... I know SAD but ohwell. And as for the Frostbite 5 miler I should have some quality runs behind me and hopefully beat my last year time. Which right now I can't really remember what I ran maybe high 26 min I think. But I'm pretty sure I can get that.

Training has been going well too. A bunch of us that are going to 8 Tuff have been meeting 2 days a week. Usually on Wed. In the PM and we run up through MT Adams trying to get some good hills in. Then we also meet on Sunday mornings and do a longer run. These runs have been a staple to my runs. I have been looking forward to these runs for sometime now. Don't get me wrong I would still do these runs on my own but it's sooooo much nicer having some guys with you. Typically on Sundays we have double digits running and most of them are legit runners that can really move. I'm pretty much on the slower end of the group but it's very helpful to run with faster guys. Couldn't ask for a better group of guys to run with!

Well I'm pretty excited for the next few months and ready for the cooler weather. I will try to get a post in after the races with results..... Hopefully GOOD results! Till then......