Pre H.U.R.T. 2013

In 2012, I ran one of the hardest 100 mile races in the country. I had heard all these stories about how technical it is, how muddy it can be and how unforgiving it is. After running it, I can now understand what everyone was talking about. I agree, it is one of the hardest 100's in the country.

After completing a hundred mile race you usually get a low for a day or two and wonder if you ever want to do a race that long again, but after H.U.R.T. it took a lot longer. Mentally I was destroyed. I had never felt so exhausted in my life after running a 100 miler. It lasted for nearly 3 weeks. I was forcing myself to go out for short runs to help with my physical recovery, which was not nearly as bad as my mental was.  When I finally got back into the swing of running consistently again and having fun doing it, I looked to the future: What am I going to do next? Will I ever sign up for H.U.R.T. again? 

I planned on doing several 100's throughout the year. Some were races while others were my own adventures at the 100 mile distance. The big question was, am i going to run H.U.R.T. in 2013? As you may already know, yes I decided to put in for H.U.R.T. 2013 and I got in. I was all excited and started to set my training plan to get ready since I was disappointed with my previous result. As I began to ramp up my training, I was plagued with three injuries in a two month period. It was frustrating and even devastating to me. I had never had this many injuries at once in my 10 plus years of running. I wanted to do really well, but now all I wanted was to be healthy and finish. With only a few days left til the start of the race, things are looking up!! The ankle is getting stronger and my excitement for the race is returning. It is time for H.U.R.T. 2013.

You can follow me at http://www.ultralive.net/hurt100/webcast.php.

Traveling & Running

My Experience:

A few months ago I had to go on a business trip to Eastern Washington. We arrived at the hotel late after a five hour drive through fog and smoke. I knew I need to go for a run as I had not run that day and surely was not going to be running the next day either. After checking in and getting my bearings in the hotel room, I decided that it was not a good idea to go out and explore the town as it was late and I had no idea what the layout of the town was like. A pet peeve of mine is I like to know how far my runs are. So, I found my way down to the hotel gym. 

However, I am not a treadmill runner. When on a treadmill, I start to get light headed and dizzy. This usually occurs when I stop. I was dreading this feeling but knew that I needed to run. This was not just for me but for the sake of everyone around me. I ran 5 miles on the treadmill. When stopping and hopping off, I actually felt decent. There was no spinning or dizziness. I was surprised. After discovering that I was ok on the treadmill I then subsequently ran twice on another trip to the East and even ran a few times at the local gym at home when time was short.

My Advice:

My reason for this post is to help people with running while traveling either for business or vacation. My above experience is an example of how you can fit in running while traveling. I recommend when traveling that you scope out the town where you are going for good places to run or to ask the hotel before going if there is a gym and treadmill. When scoping out a run in a new place, I would recommend calling up the local running shop and see what advice they have for you.

If there isn't one i would go on to the internet and look up parks in the area. If that fails you can go to google maps and create a route from the hotel of a desired distance. There are occasions when you just may not have the time for it and would like to just hit up the treadmill. This is what I had to do. The treadmill is not my cup of tea but had to do it to get in my run.

Another idea is if your trip is only a day or two, you can plan your day off for the week for the couple of days you are traveling. I just did that this past week. I went home for Christmas and knew it was going to be tough to run as I have not seen my family in two years. I am also slowly recovering from an ankle sprain. I decided that if I got one or two runs in, I would be happy because I know that my ankle would need some more time to recover. H.U.R.T. 100 is on the horizon.