This weekend has turned out to be the time for constructing plans for some my more involved  New Years resolutions?  Yesterday I put a plan together to tackle War and Peace.  Today is the plan for running a 50K.

In fact, as you know if you have been a reader of this blog for the last couple of months, 50K training is officially in progress thanks to my sister in-law/running partner, Erin’s persistence in asking since November, “how far do we need to run this weekend?”  I think my sister/running partner, Anna and I were probably willing to ignore the need to get training runs in thinking the race might magically go away.  I emailed some friends who have 50K races under their belts and asked about how to train.  Based on that information I came up with a schedule which has since been modified to add training runs in December and January.  Here is our training plan for the race.

I honestly am so inspired by Anna  and Erin’s persistence and commitment to train for this 50K that I am starting to feel like we are really going to do this thing.  The other good news is that for some strange reason, defying all logic, after our two hours and twenty five minutes of running on some steep hills yesterday morning, my hip feels a lot better today.  Go figure, I was supposed to avoid hills.

Let me talk a little bit about yesterday morning’s run because I think it will fairly typical of our training runs…except they will continue to get longer.

Approximately thirty minutes later than our agreed upon meeting time of 8am, we met near the police gun range (it is very seldom that all three of us are on time for a run).  While Lyla, Erin’s dog, waited in anticipation for us to start running, we debated over which route to do.  In email on Friday, Anna had proposed  running towards what we call the “Deliverance” house and then catching a new trail that I had been wanting to try since I was pregnant since everyone kept talking about it but I was in no state to run that far.  We chose her proposed route which I had researched on the iPhone while laying in bed that morning so at least two of us thought we knew where we were going.

It turns out, when you have to run more than two hours, it doesn’t even matter if you really know where you are going, because you can just add on trails for additional time and it still fits into the running time.  For those of you runners and mountain bikers in the Boise area, we ran towards the Deliverance house, took a left on Trail 5, caught the new Fat Tire Traverse trail over to the top of Sidewinder, then doubled back to Trail 5 back to the Deliverance house (somehow we ended up on Trail 6 for awhile) and then finished the loop on the descending part of Bucks trail.  The overall mileage was not even eleven miles but it took us two hours and twenty five minutes to complete (yikes, slow pace).  We did hike the hills and there were a lot of them (1420 ft. elevation gain), so it makes sense our pace was slower.  We will need to get in some more hill runs like this was as well as some  faster, less steep runs to be covering more distance in that amount of time.

Fat Tire Traverse Trail

Honestly, the time passed quickly and we had a lot of fun.

Anna, Erin, me

We also had the opportunity to see some gorgeous views of the Boise valley as well as a couple of deer bouncing between the hills we were running on.

Boise valley

Look for the white butt of the deer

We have a new strategy where Anna plays music outloud on her iPhone and I record the route on iMapMyRide.  It is cool to be able to see the route and the stats of the run when you are finished.

Anna has come up with a good workout mix for her iPhone.  I need to come up with one as well because as we get on these longer runs the battery on one phone alone will not last long enough for the entire run.  I need your help coming up with good songs to run to!  I am desperately in need of a new workout mix.  I am pretty sure the last time I updated mine was at least two years ago!  Please comment with your favorite songs on your workout mix!  Please!  I am begging.

At the end of the run, we were definitely ready to be finished running but we all felt good, tired and hungry.  I stopped at the Co-op on the way home from running to purchase the BEST post-hard workout recovery drink, chocolate milk.

While making my way to the milk aisle, I was so hungry that I stopped at a demo stand of gluten free baking and sampled almost everything they had to offer: gluten-free zucchini bread, gluten free mini chocolate cupcakes, gluten free pumpkin cupcakes, gluten free sugar cookies and gluten free bread.  I felt bad that I had eaten so  much of their display that I agreed to purchase some gluten free pumpkin bread and wheat bread mix.  Each time Andy walked by the mixes sitting on the counter yesterday, he asked me, “now remind my why you purchased gluten free mixes again?”  The only intelligent reason I can come up with to answer his question was that I was STARVING and would have bought almost anything they let me sample.  A good reminder not to go to the grocery store when you are hungry.

Between post-run stuffing my face and muscle gain, one of my other New Years resolutions to lose weight may prove to be difficult.

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