Thursday, July 8, 2010

Lean and Mean in Forest Green

God loves crazy people. Why else would he make so many of us?

- anonymous crazy person
And the races keep on coming. Today I signed up for the Rocky Raccoon 100 miler which is going to be my main goal race for this coming winter season. I have a very ambitious time goal in mind - I'm not going to say what it is other than it is faster than the 21:35 I ran there last year, and I would need to work my butt off to get it. But I have figured out the required loop splits, and I think that if I work hard and get extremely lucky on the day I may have a shot at it.

Winter sunrise over Lake Raven. Huntsville, TX

Of course, it's very easy to have good intentions this far out and that goal may well be revised as we get closer to the race. Still, there's nothing wrong with aiming high and we'll see how it goes.

In the immediate term I've added cycling (on the bike trainer) and weights to my weekly workouts. All the weights workouts I've designed make use of either a Swedish ball or a wobble board to engage the core muscles. On the bike I'm concentrating on leg turnover and keeping my cadence between 80 and 100.

I'll use El Scorcho as the starting point for my base building stage, much the same as I did back in 2008, and then start building up the miles.

I have to say, I'm looking forward to pitting myself against five loops of Huntsville State park again.

2 comments:

K said...

Superb! I will be there as well! I am planning my first 100 at Cactus Rose, with Rocky as my back up. I'd rather run Rocky as my first, but I thought I should pick something sooner so I don't chicken out... Lame, eh?

Are you running any of Capt. Karls?

Mark said...

Not running the Capt Karls this year but I may volunteer at a few.