Hello everyone,
I suppose that I should start off this week with a confession: I wussed out this week and hardly did any running due to the poor weather. I did do my long run on Monday, which was 60Km, so that has to count for something right? I’m back in school next week, so that should help get me back into a routine.
It is only three weeks until the race, so I have been giving a fair amount of thought to what gear I’m going to use. I’ll have my trusty old water belt with an added pocket for snacks. I’ll be proudly sporting my Team Running Free shirts as long as they arrive before the race. I’ve bought two new pairs of Brooks Adrenaline runners (one regular pair and one trail pair) and am getting them broken in. I won some CW-X compression gear in the team draw, so I have been trying that out. I have one pair of CW-X shorts and one pair of full-length tights. I’ll be writing a full review about them later, but I can say now that I wore the shorts when I did my 60Km training run and I do believe that they helped. If nothing else, I recovered from the run faster than expected. So I intend to use them during the race as well.
One piece of “equipment” that I have been giving a lot of consideration to is my MP3 player. As I have written before, I am a big fan of listening to audio books while training, but I have never tried using them during a race. Using the MP3 player at all is a bit of an iffy idea due to the extra concentration required for trail running. I also don’t want to miss out on any of the experience of the race. On the other hand, 100 miles is a long way to go, and I am likely to be alone for most of the time, so it would be nice to have something to listen to besides my angry body. If I do decide to use the MP3 player at all, I wouldn’t use it at night. Running through the woods while exhausted, dehydrated, and sleep-deprived is a freaky experience enough without making it so that I can not hear what is going on around me! I’ll probably bring the MP3 player and decide on the day if I am going to use it or not. Some race coordinators ban MP3 players, especially for trail races, so maybe I’ll discover that MP3 players are not allowed on the course which will solve that dilemma.
My tip for this week is: don’t be like me and slack off during training. You’ll just end up paying for it later.
Thanks for reading and I’ll be back next week with a post about running for a cause.
Michael
