Planning My Self Supported Ultra

This is fun! More fun than actually signing up for a race because when you plan your own you get to do all the course planning and timing. The route planning can be a lot of fun.

FACTS:

1) I travel at least once a month for work and the night times are long. So these times are the most probable time to hold a self supported ultra.

2) I can run as fast as 8 minute miles on roads. It goes slower from there depending on the steepness and technical difficulty of the trail. 

3) The amount of available sun increases until June 21st, the summer solstice, then the days get shorter. The highest the sun gets is 9:20 pm for Vancouver.

So taking these factors into account, I can run about 4 hours maybe 5 hours in complete sunlight. Even at dusk there is still a significant amount of sunlight. A 50K takes about 6 hours. A 50 mile takes almost double that.  I'm leaning towards 50K first

My Route:

The start is the backdoor of my hotel which is typically the Holiday Inn Express in Kelowna (elevation 1150’ or 350m). After a quick right and right again down some back streets into Mission Creek, ‘The Greenway’. The Greenway is flat and follows the creek for about 5 miles but I’m turning after about 2 ½ miles at Casorso Road taking a left. At the roundabout stay left and keep left. Casorso Road turns goes up steeply to Bedford Road. The elevation tapers off a bit but Bedford then turns into Stewart Road East. At the end of Stewart Road East is the parking lot for Myra-Bellevue Regional Park. The elevation at the parking lot is 1750’ or 533m.

Believe it or not the trail has recovered from this devastation

Inside the park my route follows the Scorched Sole 25K course from 2010. I say that very specifically because the Scorched Sole course changes almost annually either due in part to snow, fires or some other unforeseen circumstance. (True enough at this posting the Scorched Sole 2011 course has changed again) The 2010 course follows the Lost Lake Trail to the end where it picks up the Kettle Valley Railway trail. The Kettle Valley Railway or KVR was this old defunct railway built after the turn of the 20th century. It’s famous for these gigantic trestle bridges which spanned these beautiful canyons. Even today these trestles are considered quite a feat of engineering. In 2003, the Okanagan Mountain fire (hence the name Scorched Sole) many of these trestles mostly wood burned to the ground. It was only through the efforts of interest groups that these marvels were restored to their original splendor. (wow that sounds like it should be in a brochure).

The bottom line is I’m truly excited about this. It doesn’t impede on family business. Although there is no pomp and circumstance, I’m thinking there won’t be as much of the low that follows a grand event either. I’m already ruminating about a second and third ultra closer to home. The mojo is back!

Just Run

I always get a thrill out of Monday. New week! New training plan! Where will I run this week? What days should I take off? I remember listening to a few different podcasts and coached athletes often don’t get their training plans until the week before they are supposed to. In effect being kept in the dark also harbored fewer anxieties or so such was the thinking. I not so sure about coaching and training plans. The rigidity just doesn’t appeal to me. Don’t get me wrong I’m sure there is a fair amount of flexibility built in or at least allowed for but for someone to tell me how far to run and when just means breaking the rules. Being self-coached I don’t have that novelty but my approach is fairly straight forward . . . Just run!

More times than not life gets in the way or what we call ‘the job’. The word job is a
dreaded three letter word that will throw more wrenches into the training machine then I care to admit. Okay I’ll admit it my career job has quite a bit of flexibility I start when I need to, finish when the job gets done. As long as everybody is happy I can go home. On rare occasions people aren’t happy. The other job firefighting is on-call so when the pager goes so do you. There has been times when people aren’t happy and the pager goes off and it is during those times when the training machine comes to a complete stop.

It all centers around the long run. So after I decide on my long run I plan on the rest of the week. I don’t want to call it filler but I don’t do speed work although I did one session and I don’t do Tempo runs so really it’s just to keep my legs going until the weekend Today is Monday and I unfortunately I had to get up early to go to the airport. I won’t get back until late so no run for Monday. I’ll run tomorrow, then Wednesday and probably Thursday. Friday I might schedule rest or if I feel like it I’ll run.

My plan for this week is to have a long run of about 22 miles or so. There is no rigidity if I feel like 25 I’ll do it or if I feel like 21 I’ll do that. One thing is for certain and I’ll build my miles from last week. I’d like to try a back to back long run if time permits. As my long runs get longer I have to wake up earlier and earlier so as not to impede on the family life. Last week I hit the road by 5 am. And was back by 8:30. This week I think I’ll shoot for between 4:00 and 4:30. I always plan my long runs for Saturday but sometimes life gets in the way and I’ve got to push it to Sunday.

The excitement and fun comes from planning on where I will go and to what points of interest I will see along the way. Lately I’ve been getting a huge kick from tracking it on my Garmin and seeing it on the map with Garmin Connect. I saw in Runner’s World where someone actually spelled out words with their running route. I think they were looking for sponsorship but cool idea all the same! The sense of accomplishment is so much more visual when you can see it on a map.

I would like to do a point to point but that would take a fair amount of logistics and a whole lot of planning. Maybe run out to Harrison or the other way out to Haney either way its about 50 K. I think I’ve centered this whole post just literary babble.

Like I said my plan is very simple and fairly straight forward. . . Just Run!

Keeping the Right Company

Tip One: Keep the right company.

As an ongoing series I reference “Leadville for Scratch” by Dougald MacDonald with my own insight into the world of ultramarathoning.

In his article the author advises to keep the right company or to run with people of your own ability. Author’s motivation for the tip is motivation. It can be demoralizing to run with people who are leaving you in the dust constantly as stated in the article.

I haven’t had a running partner in 8 years or so. There are definitely days when I could have used some butt kickin’ motivation.

I remember one running partner I had. Steve lived next door; right next door how convenient is that. We both lived at home and he was training for Ironman Canada. His motivation was always a little more than mine so that was great. His pace was similar to mine albeit maybe he was a little bit faster. After Ironman he kind of stopped training for a little while and I eventually moved out. Good times while it lasted. I wonder what ever happened to Steve? Maybe I'll Facebook him? That was the one of the last training partners I had.

The last training partner I had was Mike. We were both training for our first marathons and we did our long runs together. I truly struggled with Mike because he was incredibly fast for a newbie. I think he place third in his age group or something like that in his first marathon. It was truly impressive. His time was 2:45 or something and mine was like 3:57. So you can imagine our training runs his easy pace was my marathon race pace. That was my lesson in demoralizing.

Since then my training partners have always been dogs. When you get up to run at 5 am its not easy to rally and takers on a 7 miler. Koda however is always willing to go. His tail starts wagging as soon as the Timex Ironman alarm goes off. It drives my wife nuts if I take more than a minute to roll out of bed because tails are whacking the walls and little Miniature Schnauzer is pawing the bed. I’m amused, my wife . . . not so much!

I think if I had the opportunity to run with a group or even a partner I don’t think I would. Taking my dog for runs is motivation enough and besides he always lets my set the pace.

Keep the Right Company. Yep! I got this one down.