And his cousin, the mean, scary TAPER WORM! I have been eating nonstop for the past 48 hours except when I'm sleeping. And I ate plenty in the marathon yesterday, at least a half dozen bananas, 2 cans of slim fast, and an energy bar. All those miles eventually catch up with your appetite. The tapeworm is back...
I'm hoping the tapeworm will be satisfied soon and leave me alone. I'm going to feed him slim fast and try to keep him happy. I don't want him to send his cousin after me! I have 4 weeks to go where I won't be putting in the miles, and I don't want to drag anything extra across the desert.
102.5 miles this week. I included the .5 on there because I feel it. My legs hurt.
I did 7 Rock Repeats for a little over 7 hours and 35 miles on Friday. Saturday I did a few miles with the girls, rode my bike, and went to the sauna. Sunday I ran the Estes Park Marathon, in 4:45, started slow because my legs ached, but I felt good at the end. I passed over 30 people in the last 10 miles and by the last few miles I was running something like 8 minute pace. Did the last 2.2 miles in 18 minutes flat.
I froze most of the day! I've been wanting to get some sun exposure so I keep putting on my tank top, but I ended up wearing my hazmat shirt the whole run because I was so cold up there in Estes Park! I cranked the heater up on the way home so I got a good hour of heat training in on the drive back to Ft. Collins.
My original plan was to do between 40 and 50 miles of Rock Repeats Friday but when I got to the top after the 5th one, I felt like taking a nap. I told myself I had to get to the bottom and then re-evaluate. On the way down on that 5th one, I could feel my legs. I was sore from the downhill. I think it's because of my long training week the week before last, when I slammed that downhill into Panamint, 3000 feet in 9 miles on pavement. Between that and the mileage I did, I think my body was protesting when I made it do 7000 feet of vertical this week.
I started on my 6th ascent of the Rock and all was good. I did see two snakes, and one was a rattlesnake. And I ate one bug. On the 6th descent my quads were screaming, so I made a decision to do one more repeat and call it good at 35 miles.
I'm ready to taper. This week I'll do very little running, probably will get on the bike and hit the sauna. I have a ton of stuff to do to get ready, I need a big marine cooler that I'm having a hard time finding, I need to buy more shoes, reflective gear, gel flasks, and miscellaneous stuff that I need to haul out to DV. Then I need to organize everything. Steph and I are getting together in another week and going over everything to make sure we haven't left out any important details.
My ultrarunner friend Dale Nagel who lives in Greeley has generously offered to let me borrow from his cooler collection. That's going to save me a good chunk of money, not having to buy any more coolers. Dale and his wife Gay lived in Arizona at the same time we did, and moved back here around the same time as us. Dale went to Badwater in 2002, same year I crewed Josh. I'll make a trip out to Greeley sometime in the next week to pick the coolers up.
I talked to my dad yesterday, Father's Day. He was running his daily 10 miles on the treadmill in his air conditioned house. He said it's 110 there and I wish I had time to go visit him in Scottsdale and bake in the sun before Badwater, but I didn't plan my work schedule for that.
I'm going to bump my sauna sessions up to two a day on my days off from now until I leave for Death Valley. I think that will help give me the confidence that I'm ready for the heat. I can hydrate in between. Plus it will help me when I don't have the energy to go to the sauna after working 12 hour shifts. Some days the only thing I want to do when I get off work is go to bed.
More Bad business to take care of today, time in the sauna, and it's back to work tomorrow. 4 weeks to race day!
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