High Five By 55

California International Marathon is less than six weeks away. Five weeks of focused training. And I'll be becoming obsessive for those five weeks. No really thinking about the High Five By 55 projects. No thinking about ultramarathons or running in mountains. Just focused on doing the work to cover 26.2 miles in less then 2 hours and 50 minutes.  I become a pretty boring version of Nathan at this point in marathon training. The training is monotonous. The rhythm is well established. Just churning miles and alternating between easy days and workout days. Hoping for a glimpse of a training breakthrough here and there. Trusting the plan will work. And if it doesn't, well it's just running marathons as a hobby. I think what I like about training for the marathon is this predictability. The structure of the training. There are small shifts along the way and through the weeks. But really, it's the same thing week in and week out. And even the outcome is relatively predictabl...

It finally happened. October 16th we finally experienced our first cool fall front in South Florida. Lows in the mid 60s and highs in the mid 70s. Even more exciting, low humidity by our standards...in the mid 50% range. It was wonderful. It is wonderful today. A warm up returns shortly, but these are a glorious few days and the warm up doesn't appear to bring us back to the mid-summer heat of last week. And with that weather change, my running paces instantly changed, too. A promising development as CIM quickly approaches. Mondays are recovery days from my Sunday long run. Mondays almost always include a double, a really really easy run in the morning followed by a still easy but more conventionally easy effort run in the afternoon for a total of about 12 miles. These runs are heart rate based to make sure I actually stay easy. The morning heart rate band is super low with really no bottom end. I feel like I basically can't run too slow in this particular run. Anything goes. T...

Bighorn 100 registration opened yesterday. I am now registered for Bighorn 100. In my mind, this registration is the unofficial official kick-off of my High Five By 55 project. From the first moment I began thinking about this project, Bighorn was going to be the first race I'd participate in while chasing a Hardrock 100 entry. It's not the Bighorn 100 is the Hardrock qualifier that most excites me. It isn't. But it is a race I look forward to participating in. I had planned to run in 2020. 2020 didn't exactly go as planned. It's a race I've heard is absolutely gorgeous. It's a race that I've heard is plenty difficult, but not totally off the charts like Ouray 100. Unless it's a muddy year. Then Bighorn becomes much more challenging. And muddy years aren't all that rare in that part of the country (as I learned at Black Hills 100 50 miler this year.) But more than anything, Bighorn 100 is very convenient. I travel to Rapid City, SD several times ...

Yesterday I used this space to lament the weather I was facing as I prepared for a long tempo run yesterday evening. And the evening's weather did not disappoint. 92 degrees warm with a dew point of 77 degrees as I began my run. Earlier in the day, I really didn't want to do the run. Dreaded it even. But I had gotten past my frustration, and had approached that run with in a good headspace ready to do the best I could targeting the expected stress of the tempo run. I was going to run by heartrate instead of pace.  And I headed out the door and did exactly that. A mile warm up, then into the 15 kilometers at marathon effort (not pace.) I set my heart rate range to 70%-85% of max heart rate. I would try to stay closer to the 70-75% range for the first 10k, then let things drift higher as heat stress built. And the run was going just as intended for the first mile, even feeling a bit easy with a pace near target marathon pace yet my heart rate below the range I had set. But the he...

Today, I am supposed to run a 15 kilometer marathon pace tempo run in my training for CIM. Today, the weather is forecast to be very high humidity with a high of 94 and low of 81. Today, I don't know what to do about my training. Today is October 12th.  Even in South Florida, where to live here one must accept (or even enjoy, as is the case for me) long stretches of hot and humid weather, 94 degrees with high humidity in mid October is highly unusual. That is 11 degrees over the daily average high for today, a giant number in a place where temperatures are generally very predictable. 83 degrees with a stiff dew point would make for a tough challenging run at marathon pace for 15 kilometers, but also a manageable run. The same is not true in 94 degree heat and high humidity. And I am at a loss. I have yet to have the opportunity to do any extended running at marathon pace is decent weather in my CIM training. I expected that in July, August, and September. I expected to have windows...

I spent my day yesterday in a professional online continuing education program. As one of the presenters was introduced, it was revealed that they are a trail runner and (although the introducer didn't use the word explicitly) an ultramarathoner. The introducer mentioned that this speaker had recently completed a Grand Canyon Rim to Rim to Rim (R2R2R) run.  The speaker/ultrarunner's response as this was being mentioned caught my eye. The speaker seemed a bit embarrassed by the mention of his R2R2R run. He did not acknowledge that part of the introduction at all. Maybe there was even a bit of an eye roll as the adventure was mentioned. What caught my eye, though, was not this reaction that gave off a hint of embarrassment. What caught my eye was that I'd seen that same reaction from other ultramarathoners before, and I have had similar reactions myself. As I thought about this, I realized that it's not embarrassment. At least for me, it's not embarrassment.  And I su...

I have few thoughts to share today. Nothing really. Nothing about the High Five By 55 project. Nothing about my current training. Instead, I'm sitting here staring at the giant print my wife had made for me after my Ouray 100 finish last year. It hangs on the wall across my office above my monitors. The photographer really captured the size and the vastness of running true mountain ultramarathons. My pacer and I are just little bitty things moving through gigantic objects. I love this print. I often look up from my work when things are not going well or when I just need a minute and absorb the image for that moment. I can't recall the exact size of this thing, but it's about 60 inches corner to corner. It dominates my office. I love it. So, today, with no thoughts to share, I instead share a photo of the print and hope it can also offer you a moment of feeling lost and joyful in the mountains.