Stacey 2.0

I've been spending a lot of time obsessing over the numbers these past few days:  the numbers associated with my 50k training, or lack thereof.  I'm trying to decide if I should just push through and DO IT, despite my lack of training, or if I should drop to the 25k distance on race day and do a race that's a little bit more "my speed".  (If anyone reading this has advice either way, I would love to hear it!!!) A little bit about my plan If you've trained for a marathon before, or looked into it, you probably came across one or more Hal Higdon training plans, among others.  For the 4 marathons I've done, I used his "Novice Supreme" training plan, available here .  It's free and available on the internet, pretty much my requirements for a training plan. When it came to 50k training, I had some trouble finding a plan that was - what I considered to be - my level.  Lots of them include strength training, or hill repeats, or timed runs, or w...

I have been meaning to write this up for a long time.  A looooong time, like several months have passed since I went on this adventure.  I briefly mentioned it in my last post, about my hopes to do a separate write-up, but life got in the way and I haven't been able to just sit and write this out from start to finish.  I am having to piece this together over several days and hopefully it doesn't come out too disjointed - but since it was such an amazing trip, and since it's possible I may never do it again, I wanted to make sure I got it down forever on the internet. I don't remember exactly when we decided that we - Kelli and I - would do this, but I believe it was the summer of 2017, and we were both in a running rut.  It's hot as heck here during the summer and it's hard not to be in a rut if you do anything outdoors; plus, that summer I was still trying to figure out what was wrong with my thyroid, so I was just kind of depressed about my weight and genera...

I've been slacking on my writing, among other things.  For the past couple of months, I have been in training mode for my first trail, first 6-hour endurance race.  At the time I registered, I had in my mind that I was going to do 50k in this race.  After all, 6 hours is only one hour longer than my marathon time, so what's 4-ish more miles in another hour?  So the training plan I was following was for a 50k, having me run 5 days a week, doing cross-training on my "off" days, and putting in some crazy miles on the weekends.  This is all taking place during the months of April, May, and June. Come race day, I had so much fun.  But my God, I hated training for it. The race was Solemates' CYA (standing for "Cool Your Ass") 6/12/24 and 100 Mile endurance race in Prescott, AZ.  The general idea was, it would be cooler to run in Prescott in July than running in Phoenix in July, and I wanted an opportunity to do a long run sometime during the summer. ...