Things are Gettin’ Real!

 

 

 

 

As I am writing this post it is 14 days, 22 hours, and about 20 minutes from the start of my first off road race.  If you haven’t caught it in any of my previous posts this race consists of a 2 mile run, 17 mile mountain bike, 4 mile canoe, and 4 mile run, all on trails (with the exception of the canoe of course).  I am fairly optimistic about this race and I hope that does not come back to bite me.  I have been training pretty regularly for this as well as my first Half-Marathon in October.  My miles have picked up quite a bit.  I got in 17 miles of running in June, July I hit 38, and at this point in August I am  at 40!  My teammate has also been training hard but unfortunately we have not been able to train much together.  In this race both of us do everything at the same time and we cannot be more than 50 feet apart during the race.  I am thinking we can get top 10 but hopefully that is not too overly optimistic.

For the rest of the upcoming schedule things are going to start getting a little more difficult.  I have started my final semester of grad school which begins to tighten my schedule up quite a bit.  I find it difficulty to run in the mornings when I actually have time but I don’t have much time after work either.  I am also working one full time job and one part time job.  Hopefully I will be able to keep my miles up.

On a somewhat unrelated note I ran across a skunk on a recent long run.  I didn’t have my contacts in that morning and couldn’t quite make that out what was sitting in the middle of the trail.  We had a storm the night before so I was assuming it was debris from the trees along the trail.  When I got closer and saw the black and white tail lift into the air I knew exactly what I was dealing with.  Too bad I didn’t have a heart rate monitor because I am sure it spiked quite a bit right there.  Luckily he scooted to the side of the trail and didn’t spray me but I made sure I was past him as fast as possible.  Talk about speed work!