Training for a 48-Hour

Having signed up for Across The Years 48-Hour, I've been trying to figure out the best way to train for the race.  Two weeks ago, I went to Texas for the Ultracentric 24-hour.  My thought was to run at least 100 miles at a moderate pace to see how things went.

In Houston, I met up with Jamie Donaldson and we ate our pre-race meal in of all places Cleveland, Texas at the local Pizza Hut. 

The next morning, we drove to the race in a nice park setting about 30 minutes away.  As we drove the .6 mile loop, we noted the rolling hills, a fairly steep downhill at the mid-point and a short steep uphill at the end of the loop.  Pretty much at that point I decided that 100 miles would be a good place to stop.

Jamie and I got to catch up before the race with fellow 24-hour teammate Amy Palmiero-Winters, who was also running the race.  Here's a picture with our Drymax socks before the race!

I put on my I-pod right away as the race was very small and lonely!  The weather was partly cloudy and got warm after a few hours. Given the hill at the end of each loop, I walked every loop which ended up being every 6 or 7 minutes. I wanted to experiment with walking breaks at this race as I am planning to take walking breaks during the 48-hour but this is a little more frequent than I had planned. I also tried something new, Hammer Perpetuem solids - coffee flavor.  These worked really well and were easy to ingest until I got sick of them after about 12 hours.  Further experimenting, I tried some longer shorts that had a pocket in the back.  The pocket was nice but the shorts drove me crazy.  I ended up changing into shorter shorts at the 12 hour mark.

I hit the 100 mark around 19:15 and called it a day.  I tried to get some sleep and then watched Jamie keep looping around the course.   She was very strong and ended up with almost 137 miles.  Jamie had a great run given that the course was a bit challenging.

Now, on to actually run the 48-hour.  I just need to find enough music for the I-pod....