Trained

I’m as trained as I’m going be for my first 50 miler in 3 weeks. Yesterday, I met Nick up at Mohican for 30+ miles of hardcore hills (my longest training run ever). We met at 7am with no cars in the parking lot but ours, and off we went. Be sure to read Nick’s story about his experiences with the Mohican hippie’s. :)

We started on the Red / Green loop very slow and kept a nice steady pace up the hills. I’ve done part of the Red loop before and part of the Green loop before, but have never ran either loop the full distance. The Red loop is 8 miles and the Green loop is 13 miles. I’d heard rumors that the Green loop is the meanest of all the trails at Mohican. I was destined to find out just what that meant today.

What started off to be a very chilly morning, turned out to be an absolutely gorgeous day; perfect for running in the woods. I’d told Jennifer that I was going to be running most all day today, so there was no hurry to get back home like I usually do. The Red loop was pretty easy for the most part. My legs were still pretty fresh and my water and fuel intake was going well. By around 9:30 we had hit Rock Point and we started on the Green loop. Immediately I was loving it because this was all going to be “new trails” for me, and I love that!

I really enjoyed these loops. There were a total of (I think) 3 river crossings and the river was cooold each time we crossed. At one point, I had water up past the knee caps and it felt good to give the calves a nice ice soaking as I made my way across. I also got to see how big that darn hill is on the Green loop and… man! It was a big one. Apparently the 100 mile runners will have to make that climb twice; ouch.

Around 12:30, we got back to the covered bridge. 21 miles were in the bag and we just had another 10 or so to go before calling it a day. Both Nick and I had empty stomachs and were drained of energy. Therefore, we hoped in the Jeep and headed up to McDonalds for some gorging. On our way back, Nick drove me through the road sections of the 50 mile course and I couldn’t believe how much road we’ll be running on; ~20 miles. It helped to see the road sections, because I decided to bring my old Cascadia 3’s for the road sections since they are on some pretty rocky roads. I’m going to set a drop bag at the first aid station inside the forest and switch to my ASICS trail shoes. I’m going to set another drop bag at the aid station outside of the forest for my 10 mile road trek back to the finish line with fresh socks.

After we got back from McDonalds, we headed up the Orange loop (one of my favorites). Instead of doing the full 15, we did a 10 mile version of it to get in 31 miles. I finished the day around 4:30 and headed home for some yummy burgers on the grill that Jennifer had cooked. My legs were pretty sore the rest of the evening, which means that the run was a great training run. I gorged at the dinner table, chugged two huge glasses of rich chocolaty milk and then chilled on the recliner the rest of the night with Daizi while Jen ran to town for the evening.