Week 8 of Training, 50mi Training Plan Completed

     I'm in my 8th week of training for my first 50 mile Ultra Marathon. I have 8wks left on my base building phase. On June 10th I will be done with the base phase and will be moving up to the Strength building phase for 12 weeks, followed by a 6 week recovery period that will end 5 days before the big race. I finalized my training plan this afternoon, It took some time to get the details and mileage for each week. I really should've started developing the plan about 6 weeks ago, But it kind of helped having already put in 8 weeks of training runs and seeing how I felt, that way I know the plan will work. That is, In completing the 50 miles without falling out due to bonking or injury. I am doing the training plan with a 4-week cycle, meaning I will run 3 weeks with a gradual increase in mileage and on week 4 I will recover by dropping the mileage down by 10-15%. Then it will be a repetition process for 28 weeks, followed by the 6 weeks of recovery and tapering before the race. I've been doing a lot of research on ultra marathon training and have found that this schedule has kept many other runners injury free, due to over-training, and also many have suggested 6-8 months of proper training will give you a successful ultra marathon race by being able to at least finish.

       I was going to be running a 50 mile run to celebrate my 2 years of running on May 5th at the Relay for Life. I planned this 2-3 months ago with hope that I would be about ready to run 50 miles in 12 hours. I am not ready for this run, I will be running a marathon on that day at the event rather than 50 miles. I cannot risk putting myself at a point for injury by running 200 laps around a 400m track. As long as I am able to stick with my training plan and stay focused with every run and (fingers crossed) Stay injury free through all of this I have confidence in finishing the ultra. I do not have a time frame in which I'm trying to set a goal for, however I know I want to do it in under 10hrs, That's a 12min pace so that can include walking and running. I have 6 months left and so far I'm running 2 long runs a week that average a pace between 8:10-9:40, In 6 months of more runs and increasing my mileage, adding 2 hill workouts, and never giving in to defeat I will be ready!

Thanks for reading and I will try to keep posting atleast once a week to keep updates on my training.
                                               ~Stay Strong...Never Stop Moving Forward!~