2 Weeks 2 Go ... So Much To Do!

The belt buckle for NJ has been posted - ever since I first heard the painful shuffle of 100 mile finishers staggering in during the middle of the night to the sound of a handful of people ringing cowbells, I have wanted a belt buckle.  I laid in our RV in the middle of the night, unable to move after my first 50 miler as the 100 finishers came "running" in and wondered, "How the hell did they run 100 miles?".

No - that's not mine - but I'm hoping it will be!
 

I remember my first Ultra race like it was yesterday.  I say "race" because I had run Ultra distances previously, but my first Ultra race was in March of 2013.  It was an awesome day.  I love to run, but I'm not a "good" runner.  I have never been fast - I'm just pretty average.  But... that day I had, what I have come to hear coined a lot in the Ultra community, "a good day".  I never really knew what that meant before.  I remember my goal for that race was to never feel really good and never feel really bad and that was just what happened - I just ran the race, I had fun, I passed people - I never once even remotely thought that stopping was an option - the weather was perfect, everything was insync.

At mile 39 I had my first taste of IT band syndrome - it came out of nowhere, I twisted my knee in some mud and boom -  pain down my leg with every step for the rest of the race.... but it was never a question of whether I would finish or not (though it took about 3 weeks before I could run two miles without knee pain afterwards).  Quitting that day was simply not an option.

So with only two weeks (OMG!) to go until my first attempt at 100 miles I am putting my goals together for this race. I have been told you should always have three goals - so here are mine:

1. To finish in under 26 hours (my "lofty" goal)
2. To finish and have a "good day" (my "reasonable" goal)
3. To finish (really, the only goal)

As for first 100 finishing time (which I could really care less about - the main objective here is to finish the race) - I have been told take your 50 mile time on the same course, double it and add half which would give me an aprox. finishing time of:
11:06 + 11:06 + 5:36 = 27:48

One more long run to go this weekend.  Debating on an overnight tonight or an early morning - hope to run 5/6 hours either way.  In true Murphy's Law fashion, I bit it hard on a patch of ice last night on my fast 6 miler and both knees, but mainly the right one, are jacked.  I had to laugh though - it's been a rough couple of weeks - so when at the last 500 feet of on of my last runs throughout this training to take a nasty fall - what can you do but laugh.

The real focus for this week is logistics.  Get the crew their info (more about that in my next post), get packed, make sure I have everything organized so that the final week I can just Zen....man.