The St. George Marathon on October 3 was supposed to be the first leg of what I was calling a “trifecta.” In my loose definition, this was a marathon, a 50-miler (Le Grizz in Hungry Horse, MT on October 10) and a 100-miler (the “Javelina Jundred” on October 31) all in a calendar month. As it turned out, this idea was a complete fantasy, and a really bizarre one at that.
St. George is a pavement pounding, downhill marathon, the type that wreaks havoc on the quadriceps muscles and results in a “beat up” post-race feeling. Further, I didn’t take it easy and instead ran it at something near full effort. For some reason, I thought my aging legs would spring back to life after a couple of days and be ready for a 50 miler seven days later. I even got a massage early in the week to speed healing. By midweek, I was feeling OK.
My flight to Denver then Kalispell, MT was scheduled to leave late Thursday afternoon for an evening arrival. The Montana weather forecast took a severe turn at midweek, with record low temperatures forecast for the weekend (like, three degrees at the start). This wasn’t so much of a deterrent, although not particularly desirable. But suddenly four inches of snow appeared in the forecast (after a period of freezing rain), timed to coincide with my arrival. This did give me some concern….flying a small plane into a small airport for a 20 mile drive in inclement weather. Considering it was also the last weekend before the October 15 filing deadline, and the associated crisis projects, I opted to pass on the trip.
Of course, forecasting snow is no more accurate in Montana than in Missouri. I’m not sure if it ever snowed, but the flights were on time and any wet weather held off until well into the night. I was pretty disgusted with the turn of events and my decision to miss Le Grizz. And I still needed a long run before Javelina–Le Grizz was supposed to fill that bill. So I headed out early Saturday morning for a planned 40-miler, still sort of grousing inwardly about the turn of events and my decision making.
About 30 minutes into it, the “fantasy” part was fully in evidence. Stiff legs, general fatigue. There was no way I was going to make the planned 40 mile distance, and if I’d been at Le Grizz it would very likely have been a DNF…..or a death march for a whole bunch of miles to a very late finish. As it turns out, I ended up with a modest 29 mile training run, and was dang tired and sore afterward. What the hell was I thinking when I put this schedule together?
So now comes the paranoia…..have I done enough training for Javelina? In my three previous hundreds I’ve always done something between 40 and 50 miles for a last training run. I did the Lean Horse 100 seven weeks ago, or 10 weeks before Javelina. Since then, there have been three runs / races of 26-29 miles. Is this enough? There should be some conditioning left over from Lean Horse, shouldn’t there? Man, I just don’t know if I’m ready. I guess we’ll see on “Jalloween.”
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