My scheduled mileage for the long run this week was 20 miles, but for the 50k race, I need to hit just about 21 miles in under 6 hours and 30 minutes in order to make the cut-off. So earlier this week, I figured: let’s just go an extra mile to see if you can do that.

But, ah-ha, I turned 30 on Friday. I had friends over Friday night and had two (2) glasses of wine along with a full dinner and cake, but, being THIRTY now, I woke up hungover. That kind of low blood sugar, drained, mildly nauseated misery. I spend longer than intended in the bathroom, pack my bag, and convince myself to get going.

It turns out it was going to be a morning of buzzkills. In the haste of packing my bag, I forgot to bring my earbud. I forgot the bandana that I use to wipe when I pee. (I am reminded why I really need to pack my running pack the night before.) As I approached the trailhead with my stomach churning, I realized I’d eaten spicy food for lunch the day before. Hungover and spicy food? Which God do I pray to for GI distress?

I was 0 for 4 and I hadn’t even started the 21 mile trail run. And my right foot was giving me problems—the outside of it, right where the outer arch turns into the heel, gave me a mild zing with every step.

I’d eaten the usual: a bagel and a latte. This morning the bagel felt weird in my mouth, like the wrong level of salty. It was a sunny day and the high was supposed to reach 73 degrees. The latte felt like it was swishing around in my gut. Is this the run I puke on? I wondered.

This week’s run was the same trail as last week’s, for simplicity’s sake. (It’s not that easy to find 20+ mile trails that have the right elevation gain and no snow right now.) The Palouse to Cascades Trail is uphill from the trailhead but super super gradual. I try to jog parts of it, but the more I try, the more my stomach sloshes. Forget it. I’ll just walk. And walk I do, at a decent clip, turning off onto the Ollalie Trail and starting to go up in earnest. The good weather means the mountain bikers are more plentiful today, and I mostly leave my headphones out so I can hear the whoosh of them coming down the trail.

I try to jog some of the very short flat or downhill sections that come on the way up, but my stomach backs up into my throat. People talk about sweating out hangovers all the time, right? So this can’t possibly last all day?

It doesn’t. By mile 8 or so, I feel OK again. I pass some bikers trying to help a fellow biker with a flat tire. I decide not to try to summit Mount Washington (I don’t need the extra elevation gain) and continue along the Olallie Trail. I call out “Hey there!” over and over again, nervous about the idea of seeing an animal. The mountain bikers—two men and a woman, who I’ll call The Trio—pass me again, which lessens my fear. I catch up to them again as they navigate over a brief uphill snow patch.

“How are you doing?” one of the men asks.

“I’m doing!” I say. “How about you?”

“Well my heart rate is like 300 beats per minute and my cholesterol is through the roof,” he says.

“You, too!?” I laugh and make my way past them. Up ahead, the woman is still riding, and then she stops to wait for them.

When I reach my half-way point and turn around, The Trio is splayed out where the woman has stopped, with one of the men with his feet on the trail’s bank and his back on the ground, relaxing.

“Is there snow up ahead?” the other man asks. They’re planning to go until the snow stops them.

“No snow. I don’t think you’re going to run into any,”

“Oh man,” the man says. “I should have paid you to say the trail was covered in snow!”

I tell them I’m sure they’ll catch me soon and I start on my way back. The trail is mostly downhill, but it’s rocky and my feet are pounding. My shoes have been great—no blisters—but I’m questioning whether they’re too minimalist for long runs. If I really go for it, I’m afraid I’ll bruise my feet should I land on a rock. So I do what I can, shuffling down, down, down. I step to the side as more mountain bikers come up, I jump to the side as they come down.

One young duo passes me on the way up, and an hour or so later they pass me on the way down. “You’re making killer time! We were wondering when we’d see you again!” the woman says. My knees are starting to hurt, and I feel like I’m moving at a snail’s pace, so I appreciate it.

I jog by a mountain biker stopped at a viewpoint. “You’re running this thing?” he says.

“It was mostly a hike up,” I say. “And praying for my knees on the way down.”

Later, he’s coming down the mountain and stops. “How are the knees?” he asks.

“Sore!” I say. He asks if I’m OK, if I’ll make it. “Oh yeah,” I tell him, and then he heads on his way.

About four miles from the car, I head mountain bikers so I step to the side again. It’s The Trio, and they skid to a halt seeing it’s me. “How’s the downhill going?” I ask.

“FUN!” the woman says.

“That’s quite a hike you just did,” one of the men says.

Here’s a mental game I play on these runs: how many people say “have a nice hike!” versus “have a nice run!” To be clear, it’s a nice sentiment either way—I like the pleasantries of the trail—but when someone says “have a nice run!” it definitely gives me more of a boost. Only one person, the mountain biker at the overlook, called what I did running this time. But hey, at least I got one!

I’d escaped most of the day’s heat being up high but as I got back to the Palouse to Cascades Trail, the temperature had risen and it was humid. Since it was relatively flat/downhill, I tried to pick up my pace and somewhat succeeded.

But I didn’t make the 6:30 cutoff I was hoping for. Starting the day with a hangover didn’t help, and my legs being so sore on the downhill made it hard to go fast. Strava also suggested I spent at least an hour not moving, which must have been from saying hi, the few times I looked at a map, stopping to pee, and filtering water.

But hey: I didn’t puke. No catholes were dug (mostly a bonus because the opportunity for cathole digging was limited on the ridgeline.) And I kept moving for 21 miles. Sore, yes, but uninjured.

Long run distance: 21 miles
Long run elevation gain: 3,986 feet
Effort: Easy+
Time: 7:05 (average pace: 20:16/mile)
Emergency poops: 0

It’s also worth saying that the story of the long run is also a story of the rest of the week’s training, too, and this week I was already showing signs of not being at optimal running effort. Tuesday’s run was scheduled at 6 easy miles but I cut it short. I felt beat, and I was moving slow, and the idea of climbing another hill at Carkeek sapped all the joy out of my body. I couldn’t get out of my head or how miserable this run was feeling. I have work to do, I kept thinking. This run is going to take forever. If I was just faster this wouldn’t be a problem. But I’m not fast. I’m slow slow slow.

I knew I had the 21 mile run this weekend, and I figured it was better to cut back a bit on weekday mileage than zap all of my energy (both physical and mental) early in the week. So I told myself: OK, today we’re going to run for time—one hour—instead of distance. One hour ended up being 3.7 miles. I bombed the last downhill which was fun, and then let myself go back to my car.

I think that was the right call, but also, it felt like I was letting myself down. I ran my scheduled run Wednesday, and Thursday, since I’d gotten my work done, I decided to try to make up for Tuesday’s miles by extending the run. BUT I was allowed to go as slow as I wanted. No racing the downhills, no pushing myself to go faster. A genuine, easy pace. So I did, and I made up the miles, and it put me at a 19:06 mile.

I’m not sure if I would have been better off just letting Tuesday’s miles to go or not. Running training feels like a constant negotiation my body, my mood, and a very chatty, a-holeish part of my brain. The loudest, meanest part essentially has one message all the time, every time, which is: YOU’RE SLOW! Whatever other accomplishment I may have made during the training week—bigger miles, managing to run up that one hill, finding a truly easy pace, having a good time—that voice is on the other side of it saying, “Yeah? You feel good about that? Well, you’re still SLOW.”

And the thing is—I am slow. Very slow! Especially when I’m building mileage and doing long runs and trying to keep an easy pace. I am not self-deprecatingly slow, I am factually slow. I know that mentally bullying myself won’t make me less slow, and yet the voice is still there, trying to remind me that for whatever I accomplish out of this running season, it will not be speed.

I am tempted to tie this up in a bow about overcoming that voice, but that’s not really what I’m doing. This week I’ll have run for some 12 hours. Like the rocky trails and rumbling tummies and sweat and heat and uphills, I am not trying to defeat the realities of this training plan. I’m trying to build the resilience to run alongside them.

Total miles this week: 40+ (or will be when I run this afternoon)
Total elevation gain this week: ~6700
Total hours training: ~12 hours and 20 minutes

The best part about these write ups is that I can sit on the couch while working on them.

The latest stats:

Long run: 18 miles
Long run elevation gain: 3,494 feet
Effort: Easy+
Time: 5:31 (average pace: 18:24/mile)
Emergency poops: 0

Total miles this week: 38 (or will be when I run this afternoon)
Total elevation gain this week: ~6500
Total hours training: ~10 hours 45 minutes

The good news for me is there was nothing particularly dramatic about this long run. The bad news for you is it’s a more boring story.

I ran up the Olallie Trail with the goal of going to Mount Washington. The first section is a flat-ish uphill on the Palouse to Cascades Trail (formerly known as the Iron Horse, formerly known as the John Wayne Trail). The trail is primarily used by mountain bikers, which made me a bit nervous, imagining I’d be dodging folks flying down the trail.

But the course is open to hikers, too, and the bikers I went by were nice and courteous. The mountain biking angle made the trail pretty fun—a pretty gentle, steady uphill, with little ups and downs and wide, rounded corners which were fun on the way down. And I think the course is pretty similar as far as elevation gain to the one on the 50k, which makes it excellent training ground. And the fact that it’s essentially one trail the whole way helps, too — I think that’s a big reason why I was able to do this one a full hour and a half faster than the 16 miler last week.

On the way up, I kept a steady and slightly relaxed hiking pace and didn’t need to stop at any point. I listened to the final episode of Rabbit Hole by the New York Times, and then switched over to Dr. Death, which I’d started months ago on a road trip but never finished. I grimaced several times hearing about just how terrible this doctor was, and it may have made me step more carefully on the way down (do not fall and need surgery, Colleen, you never know who that doctor might be!!).

I kept meeting a couple of mountain bikers who were stopped for breaks. “You must have got up early!” they said when they rode past me on the uphill. Then I caught them again just before the trail descended briefly. “It’s you again! Bet you can’t catch us on the downhill.” And then finally I met them where their ride ended. “There she is!”

Maybe it’s dumb but I’ve always loved these interactions outdoors, and I missed them during the pandemic, when people were much more cautious about interacting with strangers. Most of it is that I really like people, and I like the small comraderies of doing a hard thing together, even if you’re doing it separately. But part of it, too, is a bit of magical thinking: when I know there are people ahead of me, my brain relaxes and thinks that I won’t have any animal encounters, or more specifically, won’t be mauled by a cougar or bear. (Or charged by a deer, which has now been added to my mental fear bank.)

Of course, this doesn’t make any sense. Having a mountain biker a mile ahead of me doesn’t mean a bear can’t decide to wander down to the trail, or that a cougar isn’t watching. (I mean, I do like to think they steer clear of active trails much of the time, but on the other hand there was a cougar so aggressive at the Mount Baker Trail I used to frequent a couple of years ago that they shut the trail briefly, so…)

But I’ll take the respite from worrying about animals, and when I passed those mountain bikers, I didn’t know if anyone else was on the trail ahead of me. So my brain started creating spooky stories. I thought I heard a rustle and spun around, spotted what I thought was a bear, and jolted—only to realize it was a tree stump, like the dozens of tree stumps I’d passed all day. As I turned off onto the trail for Mount Washington, a narrow little strip of footpath through tall, thin trees, I started stressing that I would hike face-first into a cougar den or bear foraging den. “Hey there!” I called out every five seconds. Just in case the imaginary bear hadn’t heard the last one.

When I got to a steep uphill, just shy of my nine-mile halfway mark and just shy of the summit, I thought: nahhhh and turned around. “Hey there!” I called out every five seconds, again, just in case. I stopped to pee, and then “hey there!”‘d again.

And then ahead of me was another woman runner. “Sorry about all the hey-there’s. I freaked myself out about seeing a bear.”

“I get it,” she said. “Have a safe run!”

The way back down was anxiety-free because I’d already run those trails, so the magical thinking told me there couldn’t be any animals. I also passed several people coming up on bikes or hiking, which helped.

That said, according to my watch, my downhill pace was worryingly slow. Like 15, 16 minute-mile slow. I don’t know if that was a fluke of the watch — I certainly didn’t feel like I was going that slow — or if the trail was steep enough that I was putting the “brakes” on. In which case, I really need to practice getting my feet to move quicker and getting comfortable moving fast downhill, since that’s what’s going to help me make up time from the uphills. It’s a balance, though, because downhill… hurts. Or “hurt” might be extreme, but it’s quite taxing. One of my knees started to ache a little, and my feet were really taking a pounding.

I’d felt really good and strong until mile 10 or 11, but then my muscles seemed to start sending signals to my brain: “hey! we’re freaking tired!” I tried eating a little more, thinking that could be part of it, and eating didn’t seem to hurt. (I’d eaten a bagel for breakfast and drunk a latte, and 3/4 of the way up the trail I’d eaten a ham and cheese croissant. I’d also been sipping Tailwind. After that I switched to the Huma gels I’d brought.)

But I kept going. My hip twinged a little but nothing too wild. My butt got sore. And as the trail flattened out, I picked up my pace a little. I got to the bottom and then ran further up the Palouse to Cascades Trail, doing a 1:30/30 run/walk to finish off my miles. When I turned to go back to the car, I managed some sub-13-minute miles going down the trail, even though I was very tired and walk/running.

One thing I noticed toward the end of the run is that I was having a trouble getting a deep breath. It felt like I was holding a lot of tension in my torso/chest, and couldn’t quite get my lungs to expand. I’m not sure what to do about that, but something to think about, considering I’d still have another 13 miles to go at the 50k.

As far as the rest of training (and the title of this post) — it was quite humid this week which made my weekday runs kind of miserable. I mean, they were fine, they were just slow and sweaty as hell.

However, on Tuesday, after 6 miles, I decided to add in some “3-minute mountain legs,” which coach David Roche recommends for trail runners. It’s essentially reverse lunges and single leg step-ups onto an elevated surface. He recommends 25-50 of each. I did 15 reverse lunges on each leg, 15 step ups onto a low bench at the park, and then added in 10 side lunges for each leg.

I… was so insanely sore. Walking up the couple of feet of my driveway to get the mail, I groaned and grunted. Steps were brutal. I was hobbling for days. It made the rest of my training week significantly harder (I was recovered by the long run, luckily.) Run 16 miles? Sure, my legs say. Squat 15 times? Forget about it.

Which tells me two things: I could probably really use these to improve my uphill hiking and possibly my downhill running, and also I need to start smaller. (And maybe stretch those muscles right afterward.) I’m going to try doing them today after my run, and depending on how sore I am, again on Tuesday, so that I don’t ever end up sore on my long run from lunges.

Miles: 16
Elevation gain: 4,131 feet
Effort: Moderate (I tried to keep it easy but what is easy about 4,000 feet of elevation gain?)
Time: 6:50 (average pace: 25:27/mile)
Emergency poops: 1 but not quite an emergency

I woke up this morning to a dream I was starting a backpacking trip and was trying to stuff a bunch of things into my pack last-minute, which wouldn’t fit, so I was stuffing them to a garbage bag strapped to my backpack before realizing I didn’t actually need a double sleeping bag in addition to the sleeping bag that was already in my backpack. And I could probably leave behind the takeout container full of Chinese sautéed pork, too.

I don’t know what the metaphor there is other than perhaps I was feeling out of my depth about this mileage. Still, I got on the road at a reasonable hour, grabbed a bagel and latte to try to repeat the no-gut-problems success of the last run, and headed to the Highpoint Trailhead for a day spent running around Tiger Mountain State Forest. At the trailhead , the coffee meant a trip to the porta-potty that I hoped would tide me over for the whole run.

I started the run on the very flat Tradition Lake trail to warm up and then headed up the Tiger Mountain Trail. Honestly not a ton to say about it: green, mossy, pretty typical PNW. Climbs to nowhere in particular. There was a very cool, long bridge over a creek that was so covered in greenery that I couldn’t see it but could hear it.

My nipples start hurting for reasons I don’t understand (is it because it’s cold? are my water bottles cold and making my nipples colder? are they chafing?) but rather than try to understand the exact mechanism, I pulled Aquaphor out of my pack and slathered them and called it good.

Very quickly I realize, uh, wow, this is a lot of elevation gain I’m racking up here. According to my watch I’d climbed ~2,000 feet in the first 5 miles (and the first mile was flat.) As mentioned, the ups and downs are… pretty pointless. I couldn’t see through the trees or anything, so as I get to mile 4.5 I text Mark to let him know my plans have changed. I’m not going to do an out and back on the Tiger Mountain Trail—the idea of turning around at mile 8 just to tackle these ups and downs again sounds not very fun. Instead, I’m going to make a loop out of the multiple trails that go around the park.

The first adventure was to tack on a summit of Tiger Mountain 2, which essentially consisted of a big radio tower. There was an itty bitty view through the trees.

A hiker had told me it was only 20 minutes further to Tiger 1, so I figured: OK, there next. This meant running down a steep dirt road, and then huffing and puffing up a steep dirt road.

Just as I was laughing about how ridiculously steep the road got (which I did not capture well in photos but I would have been nervous to drive a car up it), I turned to my right and, WHAM!, Mount Rainier was out in all its glory.

That was a great mood booster, since I didn’t know if views were going to happen on this run. I got a cheesy photo of me and the mountain and then kept going. There’s a fun Hiker Hut at the top made out of metal with benches inside. I can’t say I’d be eager to stay there but maybe if I was caught in a storm.

So far, despite the elevation gain being more than I expected, I’m feeling good. It’s great temperature for running, the weather is nice, I just got to view Mount Rainier, and the rest of the trail won’t be a repeat of things I’ve already seen. Delightful! I head down Poo Top Trail—it’s narrow and rooty along a tree-covered ridgeline and relatively steep, so I’m not moving super fast, but I’m having a good time. I descend about 500 feet and am a stone’s throw from a road crossing when the title of this blog post becomes relevant: I come across a doe and her fawn.

I don’t often see big wildlife on trail. I’ve never seen a bear in the wild. I’ve never seen a mountain lion. Despite hiking in Arizona regularly and 700 miles in the California desert on the PCT, I’ve only ever come across three rattlesnakes. I consider this lucky because I have no interest in screwing with wildlife, especially when I’m on my own.

I have, however, come across deer on hikes before. It usually goes something like this:

*sees deer* “Oh!”

*deer jumps away immediately to safe distance*

So color me confused when this mama dear and her fawn do not head for the hills (or the downhill, in this case) when they see me. I backed up and tried to give them space, but they kind of just kept lingering in the same spot. At one point, the doe went into the brush just off to the side, and the baby tried to follow but quickly jumped back on trail. (That baby almost looked too tiny to deal with the underbrush, but I am not a deer scientist, so what do I know.) We are at an impasse. I don’t want to hike 500 feet back uphill in the wrong direction (I don’t want to do it so much that if the thought even crossed my mind, my brain immediately dismissed it as a plausible course of action. Hike uphill to avoid a male deer? A moose? A bear? Sure. But not a doe.)

“Go on!” I keep telling the deer. But she’s not moving, and I’m sure as hell not going to walk up to 120+ pound wild animal with its baby.

So, I decide, I will be the one to trudge down the mountainside into the fern and poky green-leafed things and what I really hope is not poison oak (I am not a botanist either, clearly.)

This was a dumb idea. Because even though I knew I was not trying to harass these deer, this doe did not know that, I would come to realize. I shuffled down the side of the mountain some 15 feet to where there were some trees I could use to balance as I tried to make my way parallel to the trail. As I got just past where the doe was (I couldn’t see the fawn anymore) I said again, “Go on!” Nothing. I don’t know why I thought telling her to go, like a neighborhood dog, would do anything to encourage her to move. I tried again, “Go on!”

At some point, I either say “Go on!” one too many times or tried to move in a way she didn’t like, and in a flash, the doe charged down the hillside at me.

While I could tell you what to do in the face of black bear and mountain lion with some confidence (make yourself big, yell), and even grizzly bear (back away slowly saying “woah bear,” have bear spray ready, uh, pray), and heck, maybe even sharks (punch ’em in the nose!) I have no idea what you’re supposed to do with a deer. I have never seen a trail sign detailing how to handle deer. I had no idea a deer with no horns would even charge. (Let’s blame the patriarchy for that one.)

So what I did do is yell, “Get out of here!” The doe froze, and meandered back up to the trail. So I tried to move again, and she charged down the mountain again.

“Get out of here!”

We did this probably eight or nine times. Once she charged when I just turned my head to figure out what my next move could be.

Meanwhile, I’m thinking:

I really should have just googled what to do with a deer who won’t move before I trampled down this mountainside.

What is her plan, exactly? To ram me down the mountain? To head butt me to death?

If I have to use the SOS button on my InReach because I get head butted down a mountain by a deer, maybe it would be better to just disappear out here.

I’m considering whether to throw something at her, but having recognized my complete lack of deer-knowledge, I’m not sure if this will scare her off or piss her off more. I’m holding onto a thin little tree for balance and wishing I was behind one of the more substantial trees to my right or left, but whenever I try to move, she charges me.

And she seems to get closer with each charge, and each time I yell at her, it’s like she’s learning: “That’s it. That’s all this dumb lady has. I literally have eyeballs on the side of my head I’m so far down the food chain but even I could be an apex predator next to this dumb ape.” At one point she starts nibbling on some trail-side leaves she’s so unthreatened by me.

So the next time she charges, I yell, and I also break a branch off the tree I’m holding onto and throw it at her. This, finally, seems to spook her enough that she bounds back up to the trail.

To be honest, I don’t remember the sequence of events after that — whether she kept bounding or moved slowly up the trail or whatever, but I am pretty sure that was her last charge. I struggled to grab a few more big sticks in case she decided to charge again and bushwhacked my way parallel to the trail a few more feet before getting back on the trail itself. I carried those sticks for a good half mile before accepting that she wasn’t coming after me.

Compared to getting charged by a deer, the rest of the run was uneventful. I had to dig a cat hole around mile 10. I summited Tiger 3. On the way down back toward the trailhead, I started down a trail that said “unmaintained.” Another trail runner was headed up. I asked how the trail was.

“Rough,” she said.

“Like, terrible?”

“It’s not too bad, but it’s about 2,800 feet in 1.2 miles.”

“Oh, nope,” I said, marching back up the short distance I’d come. “I’ve had enough of that today.”

The way down Tiger 3 wasn’t exactly gentle on the knees/quads/spirit, but better than that, at least. I got back to the trailhead and had only gone about 13.5 miles, but managed to rally to run the Tradition Lake trail again (this time to the end) as well as the flat Bus Trail. This time around I realized why it was named that.

That is, by far, the most beat up I have felt after a run so far. It feels like someone has bludgeoned my legs. On the way home, I picked up a gyro and fries and a root beer hoping to undo some of the damage with pure calories—I should have probably had a full sandwich or something on me instead of just the Tailwind, gels, and banana that I did. (I also had a granola bar but it would probably take several more hours of starvation before that sounded appetizing.)

After I got home, I looked up what you’re supposed to do with deer. It sounds like it’s pretty rare for a doe to be aggressive with a human, even when her fawn is around, so lucky me. (It’s more common when there’s a human and a dog.) But does can be aggressive in the spring with their new babies and bucks get aggressive during rutting season. And in case you see one, the internet has informed me the best practices are, in this order:

1. Hike your stupid ass back up the mountain, even if it means an extra 500 feet of elevation gain and the trail turnoff is RIGHT. THERE.
2. Climb a tree, if you’re lucky enough to be near a climbable tree and have the speed to climb a tree as a deer charges you.
3. Act big and shout
4. If it does ram you, curl into a ball and cover your neck to protect the important stuff and hope they go away.

(Summarized from here.)

But throwing a stick (at a DOE!!! I wouldn’t even try it with antlers) didn’t seem to hurt.

Whoops. I know it’s been a bit. I went out of town to visit my aunt and didn’t bring my laptop, and then figured I might as well wait until my next long run. So here we are.

The basic update is that, instead of running almost exclusively on roads (there’s a .5-1 mile section of trail I like to run on my neighborhood loop but it’s mainly pavement), I’m doing 2-3 runs per week on trails, including my long run. And that… has upped the difficulty. Trails slow everybody down (maybe especially me), and there are lots of little muscles waking up for the first time in this training round.

I got through all my scheduled runs while visiting my aunt (3/5/3/11/3 for a 25 mile week), including a long run near and around Tully Lake. That 11 miles took me up to the top of Tully Mountain (a 600′ elevation gain, which is small by PNW standards) then back toward the lake and around it. It went fine! No emergency pit stops, I brought enough food and managed to fuel well, and I found a groove that had me cruising the flats and downhills.

Miles: 11.5 (on trail)
Elevation gain: 1,306
Effort: Easy (though I struggle to start easy, I fell into an easy pace by the last miles)
Time: 3:33 (average pace: 18:33)
Emergency poops: 0

I was stoked, because I wasn’t sure if I’d have to cut back my mileage to accommodate running on trails. But so far, my body seems game. It helps that I’m not even hazarding an attempt at running uphills at this point and instead am trying to hike them strong. I’ll be doing some hill-specific training drills, but everyone’s advice for your first ultra is to hike uphill and run the flats/downhills, so that’s what I’m practicing in training. (The idea is that the physical cost of running uphill is more likely to wear you out than save you time unless you’re an extremely fit runner—and there are uphills that even elite runners would choose to hike to be more efficient.)

That said, this elevation gain was a little less than what I’d be facing on race day (which is 2,000 feet of gain in 7 to 8 miles), and a lot of it was small ups and downs around the lake rather than a steady uphill like I’ll be facing at the race. But there aren’t 1,000+ feet mountains to go straight up in western Massachusetts where I was at, so I did the best I could. A good chunk of this run was dirt roads, too, which is way less technical than most single track.

Some stuff that worked on this run is I tried out Tailwind, which is a supplement that is supposed to provide all of the electrolytes and carbohydrates that you need while running—and it’s supposed to be a type of sugar that’s easier on the stomach. I’m not sure if it’s the Tailwind that meant my stomach didn’t turn into knots, or just the more varied terrain/pace of trail running, but it tasted good. I ate breakfast (bagel with cream cheese) about 20 minutes before I started and packed a banana. I had other snacks with me but didn’t need them.

The other real winner of this trail run was the podcast Out Alive by Backpacker, which my friend Wayne recommended to me. They’re true stories about people who find themselves in near-death situations in the wilderness and how they got out. They’re 20-30 minutes long and I’ve been enjoying the heck out of them. (I am very open to podcast recommendations for these long runs! I like stuff about the outdoors, and I don’t like True Crime.)

I wasn’t too sore/wiped out after this run (which was on a Friday–three days of running in a row), but for logistical reasons took the next day off, and then ran again on that Sunday. My ankles/calves were very not into it on that run. I’m struggling a bit because I feel like taking a day off makes it very hard for my ankles/calves to get back into the swing of things, but I do need rest days. I fell off of the strength exercises I was doing to make sure my hips are strong while I was traveling.

OK, this week’s long run:

Miles: 14
Elevation gain: 2,352
Effort: Easy-moderate
Time: 4:23 (average pace: 18:50)
Emergency poops: 0!!

First, the good stuff: I ran 14 miles, which is the farthest I’ve ever run, and I did it on a trail. Cool! My stomach was fine the whole time, though I’m now carrying a ziplock, wet wipes, and a trowel in my running backpack. I followed the same procedure as last time: bagel for breakfast, Tailwind in one of my waters, and banana, but I also had a Huma gel and a Hammer gel because I had less Tailwind than I needed. I also had a oat milk latte with my bagel, which, talk about a gamble. But again: fine! No tummy troubles whatsoever. And the Out Alive podcast was a great companion again, although I have now binge-listened to every episode and will need to find something else.

Training for the week overall had gone OK—I did a five mile trail run with 1,083 feet of elevation gain on Tuesday and tried to do some downhill sprints to get more comfortable running downhill fast. I did a speed workout (3 x 3 minutes fast, equal recovery) on my neighborhood loop, which went OK, and then an easy run that did not feel easy. I couldn’t find a chill pace and kept speeding up and then walking and trying again. My hip was bothering me—I’m assuming IT pain. I’d fallen off of doing the hip exercises a PT recommended to me but have since started again, and am trying to think “hips forward” while running to try to engage my glutes better.

As far as the long run, my ankles were not pleased. I planned to do a “long” warm up by hiking for 10 minutes but they were so mad that I think it took 40-50 minutes before running became even a remote possibility. At one point, I thought: am I going to have to hike this whole 14 miles? No way, that will take me forever. So I told myself if I’d hiked for two and a half hours and my legs/ankles were still not OK with running, I could turn around and hike back to the car, regardless of how many miles I’d done. (The thought being I could aim for a similar amount of “time on my feet.”) But after 50 minute, I started being able to run for extended periods of time and, voila, 14 miles became possible.

I have some funny magical thinking around hiking—I’ve never hurt myself hiking. I’ve been sore, tired, grumpy, blistered, but never injured. So there’s a part of me that feels like hiking is a low-risk activity. Therefore, the fact that so much of this is going to be about improving my hiking means my risk of injury is less. (Having known many people who have hurt themselves hiking, I logically know that’s not true. But the magical thinking is still there.) But either way, my hiking experience is helping with the trail running. If I hadn’t woken up for several days in a row with sore ankles and still been able to crank out 15+ mile days, I would have been afraid to push on this long run.

The trail was uphill that most of the time going in, which I didn’t realize. The elevation gain mimicked the race’s pretty spot-on, which is great. Sometimes the uphills are obvious, other times they look like flat but feel like hell. I only realized some sections were uphill when I ran the way back and realize I was going flying down. Uh, also my butt seemed to be doing a lot of work on this trip. My glutes felt very… engaged.

I wasn’t familiar with the area I was hiking/running, and so I was having to figure out navigation while I ran, too, which slowed me down, though I’m not sure how much. My Garmin gives me the overall time, but Strava often deletes anything where I’m not moving—and for this run Strava cut a full half hour off my overall time (which would have made my overall pace more like a 16:50). So that gives you some indication of how much time it eats up to be like, “wait, where am I going?” I tried to choose a route that was simple to follow (Tiger Mountain Trail) and went far enough, but then there were trail closures not long in and I had to re-route. That meant several miles on dirt roads rather than trails.

Speaking of which, after I turned back from my half-way point, I ran into another runner who was confused where the trail went. “I just spent a half-mile bushwhacking and I’d like to avoid doing that again. Do you know where the trail goes?” So I showed him the map on my phone. He told me he was glad he ran into me, which was nice—I don’t feel like part of the “running” crowd because I’m so slow, but at least I can still be useful for navigational purposes. I’m glad to be vaccinated and able to talk to random strangers without being nervous about being unmasked.

At the end, I was a half-mile short of my 14 mile goal so doubled back to get that last .5. I was wiped by the time I got to my car. Not the most wiped I’ve ever been (last summer after a hike I had to stop mid-way home to eat because I wasn’t sure I’d make it home otherwise), but not as energetic as after the 11-mile run. My bra started digging into my back with the backpack, so I might need to experiment with other bras.

Oh, and my feet. I’ve been getting recurring blisters at the big toe joint of my foot. I have wide feet, but I bought quite wide shoes and so was confused why I kept getting blisters. Turns out, I think it was the calluses I’d developed there. I’m trying to scrub those away so they don’t keep causing problems. And it seems to be working, because despite 14 miles, no blisters. That’s a big win in my book. (Running is such an attractive sport.)

I got home, ate, drank, but didn’t take a nap because I had socializing plans. Today I’d planned to do an 8 mile hike but I’m tired and got a late start – I’m still debating whether to go on a longer hike or a shorter run, and I think I’m leaning toward the latter.

I am still very nervous about making the cutoff times for this race. It doesn’t seem impossible, but it does seem like I’ll have to hope everything goes near-perfect in training. It’s unlikely that my running pace will get much faster by July, but I think it’s reasonable to think that my uphill hiking can get more efficient, and that I can get better at running downhills faster. Those things will help trim time off my miles and make the cutoff possible.