An Inspirational Journey
My goal for week 2 was to keep including the elevation training, but mix it up a little. It’s around 2,500 feet up the mountain and we have to do that 3 times, so every week I’ll be including treadmill elevation runs that will simulate running/hiking up the mountain.
The first week of running/hiking up the mountain (on the treadmill), I was going up 2,500+ feet in 5 miles. However, the 50k I’m training for doesn’t start the steep climb until about a mile into the race, so I knew I needed to change the elevation training to where I can reach the 2,500+ feet in 4 miles. After using the treadmill elevation tool I made, I knew I needed to change the incline setting from 9.5 up to at least level 12 to make it over 2,500 ft in 4 miles.
As I’ve been training for elevation, I’ve been alternating the runs in effort to get my body used to the incline. I don’t want to overdue it and risk getting injured so I’m slowly increasing things while keeping my heart rate between 160-180 depending on walking/hiking or running up the huge mountain inside the YMCA downtown.
With 4 days of incline training this week and not running a long distance since the 100k last month (and also because I’ll have my kids next weekend), I wanted to run a long distance to get my distance back on track. The weather was perfect for running so I decided to run 30 miles and log another ultra distance run to my resume. My legs feel a little more sore than usual, but I suspect that’s mainly due to all the elevation I’ve been running and working out difference muscles. Overall I feel good and completed it with a faster pace than normal (thankful to the cooler weather)! Next week I plan on toning it down a little so I don’t overdue it and plan on working on some decline training.
