50K is 5 days away

Well, I am on the downhill side of my marathon training now. This will be my max mileage week and I will end it by running a 50k trail race in Fries, Va.

Yes, I said 50k.

50k will be the longest run that I have ever done as a continuous run. And if you need the conversion, it is 31.1 miles which is longer than a marathon.

That means at the end of this weekend, I will have passed by the marathon and entered the world of Ultra-marathoning albeit barely.

Being that I have this racing coming I am both a little scared and excited by it.

It is scary to think that I will be running for nearly 4 hours (which is my goal). I know lots of people have run 50k and even longer - 40 miles, 50 miles, 60k, 100k, and 100 milers. But for me, this will be my first foray into uncharted territory. Being on your feet and running for thatis length of time means that I am going to be hurting for sure.

The excitment that I feel comes from the feeling of doing something entirely new. I have been running for over 20 years and have run numerous 5k and 10k. The races are short and the pain is rather limited and is over fairly quickly. But on Saturday, I will push my body to handle 31.1 and hopefully "walk" away in good shape.

The race is on the New River trail. The trail was converted from the rail road bed to the trails. If you read my blog in July, you will know that I spent some time both running on the trail and riding on it. So I am familar with the trail.

The trail is for all practicial purposes flat. Well, it almost flat. The trail follows the New and Chestnut rivers.

The first 5 miles along the New River has a 100ft or so of elevation drop. Then, we run right and run 11 miles toward Galax, Va. I believe there is about a 250 foot raise along this section. The accent is not noticable to the human but when I was running on the coarse, I felt this slight tug as if I was running up hill.

My suspions are that some of the fast times will be recorded between the 16 and 25 miles of the race.

For my part, I will be hearing my Garmin to track my splits for each mile and track my heart rate. I post my data on Saturday night if I can get an Air Card signal.

That is about it for now. I will be blogging each day leading to the race so that I can give my perspective heading into and running this race. I hope to add some recovery comment post race as well.

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