Pre Cactus Rose 100
In the last two weeks, during which I probably didn’t taper enough, my left knee and right achilles tendon were bothersome. They didn’t hurt or feel sore, but they felt weak in some way. If they felt like that during normal training runs, how would they feel in the late stages of a 100-miler?
Thankfully, in my last few training runs, the issues seemingly had resolved. A day off here and there works wonders.
I’d thought that maintaining low weight while backing off training would be difficult, but it appears I’ve undershot, and in the last week, I lost more weight than intended. It wasn’t clear if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
Thursday, my dad came down to serve as support crew. Always good to see him, and great to have the help. Spent hours Thursday night and Friday afternoon packing the aid station bags. Who’d think a simple activity like running could require so much stuff? Normally, the minimal needs of running is one of the things I like most: You can do it wherever you want, whenever you want, there’s hardly any gear required, and you don’t need any teammates or partners.
A few of my students also intended to serve as support crew, but only at night. That sounded like it would work out well, since my dad didn’t intend to stay out all night, and that was potentially when I’d need support the most. The trick would be trying to coordinate and find me on the course. I could be anywhere by then.
In the interest of not waking up at 4:00 AM in order to run until 3:30 AM or later, my dad and I got a hotel in Boerne, 45 minutes from the park. The air conditioning didn’t work, and we only had to call the front desk three times before they did something about the block party being thrown in the parking lot.