Runs Around The World: First 100 Mile Week

Happy Independence Day to all of you in the US! This has always been one of my favorite holidays and always a great day to get a fun race in before the grilling started. 🙂 The one race I did every 4th was a 10K that went through a beautiful (hilly) park. Always a lot of fun and even some age group prizes for me!

Any of you run a race today? Which one and where? Always on the lookout for great race recommendations!

Runs Around the World: First 100 Mile Week

For those that may not know, in September, I will be setting out to run 6 marathon distances (26.2 miles) on 6 continents in 4.5 days. Of course, the whole trip around the world is being taken care of with miles – and in business/first the whole way! To read more about it, check out this post.

Building It Up

I have been slowly building up my training for this event. Having previously run 5 marathons/5 continents/5 days, I know what it is like to do something like this and also what I need to do this time around to improve my training. The training for the last event similar to this took place 6 years ago and I only hit 100 miles in a week once in the training leading up to the event. I know that doing that more often will be key this time.

The reason I have been building up slowly is to avoid injury. The rule of thumb with mileage increases is not to add more than 10-20% of your previous week’s mileage. Going with the full 20% each week is pretty aggressive and not the wisest of moves for most people. Since a two week injury would be a big detriment to me at this point, I played it more cautious in the lower teens of increase each week.

I had been running between 70 – 80 miles each week for a while (with recovery weeks of around 50+). I had some scheduling setbacks that prevented me from getting to 100 miles earlier but now I am finally there. It has been a few years since I had a training week of 100+ so I had been looking forward to hitting the triple digit training week again!

100+ Mile Weeks

My training log of the first 100 mile week of this cycle!

My schedule is set to average at least 100 miles per week from now through the middle of August with a peak week of 140-150 miles. My paces are much slower than typical marathon training (again, because of injury). However, I will be adding more “pace” runs into the long runs as the weeks go by (pace runs are when you run a portion of a run at the pace you desire for the specific race). I am also adding some speedwork into the non-long run days to give me a little bit of pep.

One of the toughest parts about this week was the heat. It was warm, but it is nothing like it will be next week! Near/at 100 degrees a couple of days! That is good, though, because it will help to prepare me for the 3rd marathon leg – Abu Dhabi. I am waiting to pick the best day to pop over to Abu Dhabi for a long training run in their intense heat to help me prepare a little more for it.

The Numbers For This Week

Anyway, I still have one day left to the training week (using Dailymile had switched me to using Monday as the first day of the training week) but it will only be 3 or 4 miles. So, I should end this week at 105 miles. Here is the breakdown:

• Monday – ran 13 miles (8:18 minute pace)
• Monday – walked 4 miles (brisk walk)
• Tuesday – ran 12 miles (8:20 minute pace)
• Wednesday – ran 10 miles (9:10 minute pace)
• Thursday – ran 27 miles (9:37 minute pace)
• Thursday – walked 4 miles (brisk walk)
• Friday – ran 2 miles (8:30 minute pace)
• Friday – walked 3 miles (brisk walk)
• Saturday – ran 26.5 miles (9:44 minute pace)

That comes to a total (so far) of 90.5 miles running and 11 miles of brisk walking. If you are wondering about the walking, I have learned that walking is a valuable exercise as well. When doing an event like an ultra marathon or multi-stage run, there will (most likely) be some walking involved. If you do not work those muscles for walking, it can cause more of a drain on your muscles and body than it should. So, by adding in some walking, I am able to condition those muscles as well as build up the miles and time on my feet since both are important.

Looking Ahead!

As the weeks go on, I will be adding more 26.2+ mile runs into the schedule each week and gradually reducing the runs on off days to 5 or 6 miles. I am still on my streak for this year of running at least 1 mile each day, so I will always have some run on every day anyway!