High Five By 55

I'm terrible about taking time off from running after races. I usually take two or three days a little easier, then jump right back into a structured and disciplined training pattern. I am committed to not doing that on this occasion. So, I've set myself a little challenge. I have a short 3.5 mile loop in my neighborhood that I often run as a double or on recovery days. I'm challenging myself to see how many days in a row I can run nothing more than this 3.5 mile loop. Nothing longer. No joining the Sunday long run group. The only exception would be the short runs I take with my dog. I'd love to make it to through the month of December doing this. I have not had an unstructured running period since I took 10 days off after Ouray 100 in 2022. I'm just three days in so far, and I'm feeling real joy in having no running focus or structure. But I know I'll struggle to make it nearly a full month. I do really enjoy the structure of a set plan and having to practi...

Today I ran the California International Marathon, regularly called CIM, in Sacramento. About 18 months ago, I had decided to see if I could take the next leap in marathon finishing time and find out if I could finish in under 2 hours and 50 minutes. I decided I’d do all the things and take one big moonshot at the time, chasing a time that seemed probably too big for me. I hadn’t thought I’d be able to run under 3 hours, but did so a few years ago and fairly comfortably. So I wanted to make sure I wasn’t leaving that next big 10 minutes improvement on the table before I gave up marathon time chasing. I picked what is often considered one of the fastest legitimate marathon courses in the country. I worked through a variety of shoes to pick just the right pair. I tested lots of nutrition options. And I followed my training plan almost perfectly, missing only one workout in about 16 weeks. I did the work. And I failed. But even more so, I succeeded. And I’m totally satisfied, even happy, ...

I always forgot, yet it always happens. To me, there's one true sign that I'm deep in marathon training. That sign, I have heavy legs for every single run. The intensity and volume just keep piling on top of one another. And the legs feel heavy day after day after day. But that's not the sign. That's just a product of the training cycle of hard and/or fast run, then long recovery. The real sign is that while the legs are heavy, it doesn't matter. A run starts out with a thought like "no way I can do what's planned today on these heavy legs." The thought somewhere during the run is more like "hey, this is going totally fine despite the heavy legs." It's just heavy legs. The heartrate is where it's expected. The rate of perceived exertion is on point. It's just heavy legs. Layers and layers and layers of training not every quite allowing the legs to fully recovery. Always just enough recovery to be able to do the next workout well. ...

I spent the past weekend in Madison, Wisconsin. I make an annual pilgrimage to the University Of Wisconsin to spend some time with my mother, bring the kids to the old college stomping grounds, attend a Wisconsin Badger football game, and basically revel in bits of nostalgia and memories of likely the most formative adult years of my life. My running hobby also has its roots in Madison. My journey to becoming a regular runner was a long and arduous one over more than a decade with many fits and starts. That first stab at running was while a student at the University of Wisconsin. I had put on a lot of college weight once cut from the college soccer team early in my freshman year. In my final semester, I decided to do something about it and took up running. Short runs from my apartment along Lakeshore Path on the shores of Lake Mendota. It didn't stick long, maybe a couple months. I didn't run far, perhaps 5 miles at most. These were the very early days of GPS watches and I didn...

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 ...