Grindstone Training, week #4: July 7-13

A great week of training. Since school is out, I am able to sleep late and nap in the afternoons, which makes these big mileage training weeks manageable. Grindstone's date (October 3-4) is perfect in terms of training in the summer---much more doable for my schedule than training in the busy spring for a summer 100!

This week called for around 70 miles with two long runs back-to-back, a tempo run and the rest at my 100-miler pace (very easy, HR in the 120s and below).

Monday, July 7: am: 8 miles on dirt road with 30 seconds hard, 30 seconds easy x 15.
pm: 5 miles easy on rocky trail, kept HR in 120s and below.

Tuesday, July 8: 5 miles on rolling road, easy. Followed this with 30 minutes lifting, focusing on upper body and core.

Wednesday, July 9: AM: 9 miles with Bill Potts, with 4 miles at 7:10-7:20 pace (this is my tempo pace)with about 3300 feet of climb! We ran this on very hilly dirt roads and the last one was done on a gradual climb up O-Hill, a knarly "hill" we like to train on near UVA. This workout was very tough and I took a good long nap in the pm...ah! I also drank 20 ounces of First Endurance Cappuccino recovery drink. It always makes a HUGE difference in how I recover from these hard workouts.

PM: 4 miles easy on a new section of the Rivanna Trail near Fairview Swim Club and Dunlora.

Thursday, July 10:After my daughter's very late swim meet last night, I slept in and lifted in the pm, focusing on legs (lunges and squats on a balance board) and core.

Friday, July 11: 16.5 miles on hilly dirt roads out in White Hall, a gorgeous area known for its rolling hills and lovely horse farms. This is our fave long run because we run mostly on dirt, cross Fox Mountain in the middle of the run, and see hardly any cars the entire way. Bill's GPS reported that we had close to 4,000 feet of climb. It took us 2:18, averaging 8:22 pace for the run and my HR stayed in the 140 bpm range.

Saturday, July 12: Our first training run on the Grindstone course!!! Quatro and I joined Marc Griffin for 15 miles (miles 5-21 of the race), climbing Elliott's Knob during the first 1.5 hours of the run. After checking out the gorgeous (though hazy) views from the Knob, we proceeded north on the North Mountain Trail. This was rocky, overgrown, and a bit technical for my taste, but soon it became awesome, runnable single track down to the intersection at Dry Branch Gap. From there we climbed up Crawford Mountain and this was BRUTAL. Very steep, progressively harder climbs for 2.6 miles, which took us an hour to complete. Quatro, who is not running Grindstone, just shook his head and mumbled something about this course being MUCH harder than Massanutten and "what are you people thinking???!" We then dropped down onto the Chimney Hollow Trail for the next 3.5 miles, which was more runnable singletrack with lovely views of the Deerfield Valley below. We crossed Rte 250 and climbed another mile or so on the Dowell's Draft trail to the fire road intersection where we left Q's car. Total time on trail: 4.5 hours for 15 miles, in the heat of the day (12:30-5:00pm). I think we climbed at least 5,000 feet, probably more.

Q had a full finish line aid station in his car, complete with chairs, fresh fruit, sandwiches, alco-pop, beer, and soda. Very nice...thanks, Q-Bob. It was also fun to run with Marc and commiserate together about what we will encounter during the first 20 miles and last 20 miles of the Gstone race! This was a big wake-up call for my training plan...gotta climb, climb, climb and descend. Repeat many times.

It was good to see this section in the daylight (we will run in the dark twice) and, though daunting, it was very motivating for me as I enter into a really tough portion of my summer training: 70-80 mpw in hot and humid conditions. I felt great today which gave me a lot of confidence that I am training properly and handling the big mileage well.

Sunday, July 13: Easy, easy 8 miles on the flat section of the Rivanna Trail with Jack (my awesome Aussie).

A BIG shout out to our VHTRC Hardrock 100 finishers Mike Dobies, John Dewalt (age 72), Keith Knipling, Greg Loomis, Steve Pero, Howard Cohen and Sean Andrish. Wooo-hooo! I am looking forward to reading reports on Steve's, Greg's and Keith's blogs. Congratulations!!!

And finally, best of luck to Kerry Owens, Susie Spangler and the other VHTRC folks running the Vermont 100 next weekend. From looking at the entrants list, it appears that many of the fast folks who had entered WS are now racing VT. In addition, Jeff Washburn, who suffered a stroke last fall, is entered. Go Jeff!