Thursday, May 03, 2012

A month of WS 100 training ahead.

Past month was one of the key months in training, at the sametime it was one of the crucial months in Ahana's transition to daycare. That made things at home and training very challenging to say the least, more so for Rashmi.

I had taken 2 weeks paternity timeoff to help Ahana transition to daycare and that worked out very well. She being a tough cookie did very well by end of 2 weeks, she got to know teachers and settled into a predictable routine. That was one less thing to worry about, naturally those weeks were low mileage week, to make things interesting I started painting our garage and that took on forever. Finally by end of month I was done with garage painting, 3 weeks effort spending daily abt 1-2hrs, it was a interesting cross training but I suppose it was bad timing to take up that project.

Getting back to training it was meant to be following 2 long runs
i) Lake Sonoma 50M:
Since rajeev had to travel out of country and darshan decided to dropout of  this race, meant I was driving alone from Santa Clara to Race start at headlberg. It was one long day starting at 2:30am and ending at 11pm.

Race itself was gorgeous, beautiful day, ideal run conditions, trails were pretty muddy in parts due to previous week's rain. I enjoyed every moment of it. I crossed the finish in 10:46, I was happy with the effort. After some catching up with Greg, Julian, Nattu and Karen, I drove back home. I couldn't believe winner Dakota Jones ran a CR of 6:21!

On the home front my wife endured another kind of Ultra, Lil A was down with cold and was not taking any food, which made for a very stressful day for her. I was guilty of doing this race, next time I will stay local.

ii) Ruth Anderson 100k:
Due to previous week's events I decided to shorten the run to Ruh Anderson 50k and got few bonus miles before the race making it a good long run of 40miles and added 10miles the next day. It was fun running around circles, met tons of ultrarunning friends. I love this race.

As usual Rajeev Patel and team organized a fantastic race, I wish I could go longer but had to get back home to spend time with lil A, who had another rough day at home. I was glad to be with R.

With 2 runs under the belt, I felt much better w.r.t my prep for WS, incidentally Rajeev planned a  14hr+ night training run for his GUCR 145, and I squeezed in another bonus run(8hrs) to give him some company and get some night running in. It was fun night chatting about so many races and plans ahead. He did great getting about 55miles done.

Going forward I am counting on 2 more runs for May and a big training month, I am hoping to cross 275 miles for this month. Also time to start my heat training. my plans for this month
- Ohlone 50k(+ bonus 19miles)
- WS training run day 1 (Robinson flat to Ruck Chucky, 50mi run)

I hope May is less hectic than April.

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