Fueling Races, Running a 100 Mile Training Week & An Exciting Announcement
I'm giving away a $50 gift card each week for the next year!
Happy fall!
It’s been several years since I’ve lived in the Pacific Northwest and I’ve missed it. September has been a relatively mild month here in Vancouver so far (with a bonus 76°F day yesterday) and I spent last week’s training enjoying many miles of leaf-covered trails and warm autumn sun. Some rain, too, but moisture brings the promise of mushrooms so I’ve been embracing it.
Running a 100 Mile Training Week
Last week, Nick and I ran 100 miles, entirely together, and mostly unintentionally. We’ve had many years to figure out how to run together (and believe me, we fight on runs like any other couple might) and there are a few reasons we could make it happen:
Early mornings
Nick and I are morning runners, and I would guess that 90% of the athletes I coach are, too. For many, including myself, the chances of a run happening decrease by 10% for every hour I procrastinate a run. While I can shift my work schedule around, urgent emails, calls, or more commonly, animal needs, tend to take place once the workday begins, so if I can get out for a run early, it’s that much more likely to happen.
Doubles
As a coach, I occasionally prescribe doubles—more than one run or workout in a single day—but it depends on several factors including an athlete’s time availability, their goals and/or goal races, and most importantly, their injury risk or injury history. As someone with the time and low injury risk, I run twice a day once or twice each week, and this can be a great way to increase volume without running the risk of biomechanical breakdown on longer efforts.
Treadmill Access
It took until earlier this year to finally make the plunge and buy a decent treadmill (I clarify decent, because one’s propensity to get on the machine is directly correlated with the machine’s ability to a) work, b) be calibrated at least somewhat correctly and c) be in an area of one’s home that is not 100°F.) Making the investment in iFit, a program that allows you to virtually run in exotic locations (like Argentina, Austria or Japan, for example), has also helped make treadmill running quite fun.
Neither of us are typically at this mileage—most weeks fall 15-20 miles lower—but it’s fun to once in a while shoot for a bigger-than-normal training week…even if 100 miles is a completely arbitrary number.
Now for the question: why would you run this much?
There are a few reasons that you might pulse up mileage, like building a bigger aerobic base or improving running economy. And there are a few reasons you might not. These include the most obvious, which is simply not having the time or more importantly, the time to recover from the higher mileage, an injury history, or noticing that as an individual, higher mileage equates with diminishing returns and not fitness improvements. These are all valid reasons.
That said, Nick and I happened to take Sunday as a rest day, leaving an extra day of running in the week, and the miles were a nice way to spend time together. Sometimes hitting arbitrary goals like this can be a good way to boost motivation, too.
The downside to these (very) high mileage weeks means decreased time to strength train, and I found myself skipping both of my typical strength sessions because there wasn’t enough time to fit it all in. This week I’ll be back to more of my typical schedule and have already gotten in strength training sessions, which I think are so important for athletes to stay on top of.
Sweat Tests, Electrolyte Intake and A Case Study
Shortly after Squamish 50K, I was contacted by Precision Hydration for a case study. I’ve been using Precision products for the last few years and had heard great reviews about their Sweat Test Analysis, so a few weeks ago Nick and I had our tests done.
Most people fall around 1000mg of sodium per liter of sweat, with the lowest seen around 200mg and the highest in the several thousands. I’ve never found that electrolytes seem to make or break races for me, so I was not surprised that I fall in the just below average category at 962mg of sodium per liter of sweat.
*I will make the caveat here that Nick and I both came back with the exact same number—962mg—which feels odd and maybe a little too coincidental. So, take this with a grain of salt (pun intended) that my results may not be entirely accurate if the test was somehow not cleared and I received Nick’s reading as well.
Going forward, I may try increasing my electrolyte intake a little higher and seeing if I notice a difference. I will say that if I don’t hydrate well enough during training runs and races, I develop minor headaches, which I believe is related to slight dehydration, so there’s certainly room for improvement in terms of my water intake.
With all this in mind, check out the case study that Precision Hydration put together here if you’re interested. The case study also does a good job of demonstrating what exactly I should aim to take for future races. While your own numbers will differ, it’s helpful to get a sense of just how much nutrition and hydration intake matter in races.
Interesting Reads
Here are a list of articles, essay collections, and books I’ve found interesting this week:
A Data-Driven Environmental Scan of the Trail and Ultra Coaching Industry
If you’re a coach or have a coach, you might find this useful. The article also presents some good questions to consider when looking for a coach and the sort of coaching you might want based on your goals and ability (or coachability) to be mentored by someone.
Essays After Eighty by Donald Hall
I wasn’t familiar with Donald Hall’s work until I stumbled across this essay collection at Nooroongji Books, which calls itself a multilingual curation bookstore (as an aside, this was such an interesting bookstore with traditionally underrepresented authors featured.) The title caught my eye, largely because I spend a lot of time thinking about death (having been exposed to it more than most my age.) As my father settles into his eighties, I also find myself thinking about what that decade feels like. Not all of the essays in this collection are profound, but the writing is beautiful and Hall’s poetry shines through these essays, too (he was appointed Poet Laureate in 2006.)
The Life Impossible by Matt Haig
For better or for worse, you can count on me to have a differing opinion than the majority in almost every situation, and true to my nature, I was not overly impressed with Matt Haig’s tremendously popular Midnight Library. It was okay…but not profound the way some reviews suggested. In an attempt to be more open-minded, I picked up Haig’s latest book, The Life Impossible, as soon as it was released. The initial chapters are intriguing, but I hesitate to tell you to pick it up yourself until I’ve read more.
Janji Collaboration
I’ve been wearing Janji since 2014, when I was first introduced to the brand while interning at Trail Runner Magazine. Since then, the brand has grown to produce high quality gear, collaborate with local artists, and offer colors and patterns I don’t often see in the running world.
Additionally, Janji donates 2% of proceeds from every Janji purchase to clean water initiatives and uses fabrics with naturally odor-resistant properties to decrease the need for increased washing. This is something I’d like to lean more into this coming year, as I find myself washing almost all of my clothes after a single use.
With all that said, I’m excited to announce that I’ll be giving away a $50 gift card to Janji each week for the next year!
Here’s what you have to do:
subscribe to The Thread
enter your details in the form below
each subscriber gets 1 entry, while paid subscribers get 2!
winners will be drawn randomly every Sunday by 5pm and contacted via email.
Contest closes Sunday, October 6th at 5pm PST
Click here to win a $50 Janji Gift Card!
If you’re not familiar with the brand, you can read more about my review in this post!
Going forward, I’ll be posting more frequently with bonus posts for paid subscribers! If you haven’t yet upgraded, please consider doing so now. You’ll also double your chances of winning a Janji gift card!