Mental toughness in four parts

It's basically impossible to do a long-enough training run for a 100k race, so one strategy is to really pile on the workouts in order to fatigue your body and simulate additional milage. So that's what we did this week. On Thursday and Friday, we made sure to go hard to pre-fatigue for our long run on Saturday. Here's our "mental toughness" training in four parts.

Trillium-spoting-- the first of the year

Part 1 - Group Power

Thursday morning: an hour-long weightlifting class

Part 2 - Animal Athletics night run

Thursday night: from Lower Macleay to the Pittock Mansion. 5 miles and 1,000 ft of climbing. In the dark.

Part 3 - 50 Shades of Willie Training

Friday afternoon: 4 hill repeats on Dogwood Trail, with insane tasks in between-- like holding planks while facing each other and alternating touching each other's hands, then turning around holding planks and alternative tapping each other's feet.

Part 4 - 30 mile run

Saturday:

• birch - ww : .22
• ww - wc : .39
• wc - leif : .56
• leif - cannon : 11
• cannon - ww : .32
• ww (24.7 - 7.45) birch : 17.25
• birch - 53rd : .22

total 29.86

It worked. I could tell my body was already tired when we began our long run, but I tried to take it at an even, steady pace and focus on the shorter distance til the next break (we stopped twice to eat, so the run was broken into 12, 10 and 8 miles). We were fortunate to have gorgeous, warm, clear spring weather, which made the whole ordeal downright enjoyable.

I, for one, was worn out the rest of the day on Saturday and very glad to have Sunday as a rest day. I even specifically sat on the couch and put my feet up for a few minutes-- there's nothing quite like the feeling of well-deserved rest.