Off season is over---time to ramp it up!

I enjoyed my four weeks "off" from serious training and am ready to get back at it! This year I am not racing until the end of March, at the Terrapin Mountain 50K on March 28. The past two years I have raced Uwharrie 40 at the beginning of February, and each year I have had slower times from my first year in 2005 when I ran 7:47 and finished second overall. In retrospect, I realized that I had not given myself a sufficient off-season after Hellgate in December, so this year I took a substantial amount of time away from running long distances over the Christmas holiday, and instead slept, ate, relaxed, swam, and hiked with my family. It was really nice to not be following a training schedule but now I am itching to get started again, so that's a good sign!

Speaking of training plans...I have been asked to help two friends prepare for MMT100 this May. In no way do I see myself as an expert on 100s, but I do see myself as someone who can offer some advice and I enjoy sharing some of the lessons I have learned while training and racing for the big one. It's been fun to put together their training schedules and I am looking forward to seeing how they respond to the programs!

I am also very excited about being coached this year for Grindstone 100---I asked a 100 miler specialist to help me prepare for the 2009 race! I wanted a new perspective on what I had been doing in training and I believe there is always room for improvement. He is going to ask me to put in some big mileage weeks starting in April (6 months out) which I hope I can handle with work. We will see!

I am logging all my training on RunningAhead, a cool online training log. This past week I ran about 43 miles with a hill session, and next week will be 60+ miles with a fartlek and hill sessions as well as a long training run on Massanutten. I like this site because it has cool graphs like the one at the top, as well as a calendar format that allows me see the entire month at once.