my last week

Well, this is my last week of hard training for Wasatch. Somehow it feels anticlimatic so far, although admittedly, the hard stuff for the week has yet to come.

I purposely avoided excessively studying the course in the early part of the training. I found that the more I learned, the more frightened I got. Therefore I tried to just keep it simple: run lots of hills, do some speedwork every week, do the back-to-back long runs, and be consistent every week. I feel pretty good about my level of fitness, probably the most confident I've ever felt going into a race. Without a doubt I am definitely my own worst critic, so I think when I say I feel "pretty good about my level of fitness," in reality I could possibly run through a brick wall without breaking my stride.

Now that I am slowly starting to think about the specifics of this course, I thought back to when I read a book about the first ever double crossing of Badwater ("The Death Valley 300: Near-Death and Resurrection on the World's Toughest Endurance Course"). One of the two runners had some very clearly defined points of view on what he was about to set out to do. I think his points of view are relevant in my case as well:

Don't ever look at this challenge in terms of conquering, overcoming, or beating the course. That is pseudo-macho and a waste of precious psychological energy. The course is there whether you happen to step onto it or not, and it will still be there in all its glory whether you step off it in defeat, successfully finish it, or come to your senses and don't go anywhere near it. Don't fight the course, because the course is larger, older, wiser and much more powerful than I am. Use the occasional advantages the course allows, and flow with the adversities it presents. It will be there long after I'm gone to dust.

And finally, I ripped this off from Andy Jones Wilkins' website, and since nobody reads this except me, I am not at all scared about potential plagirism or copyright issues:

"In the last 30 miles of a 100 miler everybody's hurting. Everybody is way beyond physical fatigue and mental, emotional, and psychological fatigue is setting in, Big Time. If you want to succeed in these things you need to know that, dig deep, and fight it. In the end, you need to race every step like there's someone three minutes ahead of you and someone three minutes behind you."

While that is certainly good advice, AJW's website also comments that "Brighton eats runners for breakfast." I have put my time in though, and am fully prepared to hang in there trading punches to the face for all 12 rounds. Doesn't mean its going to be pretty, but I'm confident in my ability to hammer it out until the end. This is certainly confidence I did not have 6 weeks ago and was gained the hard way: through hill repeats, thousands of hindu squats, more back to back long runs than I care to remember, triple digit heat, and humidity so bad that its hard to breathe.