My thoughts on running both roads and trails together

I have been training for the Bartlett Ultra 50k this summer and had some set backs due to surgery and tooth problems. I wasn’t sure if I could play catch up to get my mileage high enough with enough time to taper and still be ready for the race come Sept 10, 2011. On top of that, I have switched from walking to running 2/1s this summer so my running is still slow since I got started during the summer.

Map of the different trails

I have been building up my mileage for the last 3 weeks and next week will be my last long one at 25 miles. I got the 22 miler out of the way yesterday. I have been trying something different and I hope it will help me become a little faster over all. Since we are having really high temps I have been getting out early before sunrise and running on the roads. Once the sun has come up enough to see I head for the trails to be out of the heat.

I have done this for the last two LSD by splitting them almost into half. Yesterday, I got out a little later and end up running with some old friends on the sidewalks and streets for the first 2.5 hours. We stopped a few times trying to decide which way to go; I was lucky this group does 2/1s but they did go a little faster than I am used to but that was good because I do need to speed up a little bit.

Once I finished I headed about 25 minutes away to a local trail, Herb Parsons Lake, and got started around 8 am. It was a little hard to get started but I had been wanting to run on this trail for a while and there isn't any where to run safe (in the dark) because of the rural roads.

Started out with the 2/1s but it was warming up and the humid was high back in the woods so I end up dropping down to 1/1s and decided to just keep going forward. I don’t know if I would do this again with me stopping and sitting for the time it took me to get to the other location. I didn’t accomplish anything by getting out so early and then to be so late to get started on the trails. I wanted to be on the trails by 6:30 or 7 at the latest and got there around almost 8. I told myself that I needed to be out later any how since the race will take me almost 8 hours to finish.

One of the pros about doing part road and part trail is it doesn’t take me as long to get in the miles as it would if I was doing all trails. The other is I can get a little faster pace going to get me used to going faster. The con might be that I am not doing all my training on the trails since the race is on the trail. Only time will tell if that is going to help or not.

I am still not too sure about me finishing the 50k the way I want, I might end up walking a lot of the later miles of the race due to the heat. Toward the end of my run yesterday I was walking more then running on the last 5 miles. I still got 5 weeks to go before the race so maybe I will improve a lot between now and then.