Aesthete Runner

This is it, the final week! It is hard to believe after 16 weeks I will be running my first 50 mile race in 6 days. I alternate between feelings of excitement and terror, which is completely normal, but I have been an emotional wreck. As much as I love the taper, I have felt horrible the past two weeks.

6 days to go!! While I wouldn't say the last 17 weeks have flown by, I also can't believe that race day is finally almost here. For a long time all I could think about was just getting to the taper, and now it finally feels "real". This is happening!

I made it to the taper!!!! Week 16 was my last 50k-specific week of training, and now I have entered into the Peak Phase, or the taper. It feels really good to be here. While the taper brings all sorts of challenges of it's own, I am really ready to focus on mental and physical rest to get ready for race day.

Week 15 was a recovery week, and it couldn't have come at a better time. The 5 hour long run at the end of Week 14 really took a lot out of me and my body needed lower mileage. However, recovery week doesn't mean an easy week, and I still had two quality runs including a long hill workout to complete.

We are now at less than 24 hours until the marathon! How quickly this week passed. My training this week was very light, with a focus on mobility, rest, and nutrition. Overall this taper was much needed after some hard weeks of training, and it is one of the first where I can say that I truly enjoyed all the extra rest.

ONE WEEK!! In some ways I feel like this point in training would never come, but in other ways it has flown by. Right now I am feeling good in my first week of taper, and mentally I am excited and ready for race day.

Two weeks!! I am both excited and relieved to be over with the heaviest portion of training. It feels really great to be in the "taper" phase. There is no doubt that the warmer weather has brought about a lot of struggles in training, but I have my fingers crossed that it will be nice and cool on race day. While my overall mileage hasn't dropped significantly, I did make several adjustments to the plan to accommodate the Ragnar Trail Relay I was participating in.

I can't believe the marathon is a month away! A few weeks ago it felt like there was still a lot of time to train, but suddenly I look at my training schedule and see that it is almost time to taper. Fall is my favorite time of year, and now that the weather has started to cool off and all things pumpkin have popped up, I am ready to run in my favorite season.

That's right...ONE day until my first 50k. I woke up this morning after sleeping in on a day off, and it seemed unreal that at this time tomorrow, I will be running my first ultramarathon.

It's here...the final week leading up to my first 50k. There are times when I feel like I've been training forever and I just want race day to get here, and other days where I wonder if it was enough. Fortunately I had another great week of training that has bolstered my confidence going into the last week of the taper.

Hooray, I made it to the taper! This past weekend I finished my last long run and the next 13 days will be spent focusing on recovery. Looking back over the past few months, it feels like this day would never come.

Quote from a recent Runners World article that sums up my week: We runners need to be light on our feet. We need to be able to adapt to changes in weather and terrain. We need to be able to handle detour signs and find alternate routes. We have to be able to push through a bonk or a wall, and hold it together until we can transcend. We need to be able to run in a pack, or go it alone. We need to be able to adjust our pace and tweak our training. We need to be both self-reliant and coachable. We need to know our bodies well enough to know exactly what we need—and do something about it. We need to know what pain we can play through and when it’s serious and time to stop. Anything can happen between a start and a finish line, and we have no idea how the miles in between will unfold. I feel light on my feet, happy to find a way to make it work instead of making an excuse . This past week marked one month until the Earth Day 50k race. I think that it never really hit me that this is ha...

With the conclusion of the Hansons base building plan I have been writing about for 8 weeks, I picked up with the Hansons Beginner Half plan to continue training for the F^3 Lake Half Marathon that I wrote about back in November . While I am no beginner to the half marathon, the Hansons beginner plan is what I previously used to achieve my 6 min half marathon PR last spring, and there is nothing "beginner" about it. I couldn't have picked a better time to pick up the plan as it aligned with the start of Hansons strength workouts. After doing speedwork for the past 8 weeks, it was perfect timing to stop the speed runs and focus more on strength. I discuss the strength workouts in more detail in my Marathon training post here .

The final week! I will write about the actual race another time, but I will say that overall it was a great experience. I did not achieve the time that I wanted or trained for, but I am proud of the 6 minute PR I accomplished.

ONE WEEK! I don't know if it has quite hit me yet that this time next week, assuming all goes well, I will have finished the Chicago Marathon. All of the weeks of training have finally come down to this final week.