Toward the end of a training program for a race like Cocodona, the volume, intensity, and fervor can just take over your life. That's certainly what happened to me the past few weeks. Every night I'd get in bed, tired from the day's exertion and sleep well for a minimum of eight hours until waking up around 4am to do it all over again. Starting about a month out from race day, the logistics and specifics of the course become all I can think about and close to every waking moment that I am not actively distracted is spent going over and re-going over small details like what I might want to eat at mile 190 in Munds Park. Or how can I avoid stubbing my toe in the rocky single track section that leads up to Fort Tuthill? Without any prompting consciously, thoughts like this just float through my head on an obsessive treadmill that is attempting to prepare me for every possible eventuality that could unfold during a 250 mile race likely to take close to (or even more than) three days to complete.
Now that training is winding down and I am entering two weeks of tapering, this conveyor belt of thoughts is going to ramp up to a level reaching a kind of temporary pathology. As my energy levels rise during two consecutive easy weeks, the likes of which I haven't experienced in succession since a couple months of an off-season in the early winter of 2023, my brain is going to start running scenarios for the race at breakneck speed. Sure, there will be some actual terrestrial running done in the next two weeks which will, of course, help bring the stress level down. But taper anxiety is real, and until I take the first step of the race on May 6, there's going to be a loud and seemingly unignorable voice screaming at the top of its lungs in my head day in and day out.
I'm not sure everyone goes through this same experience, but I know lots of people do. The same thing would happen to my teammates and I in college preparing for the Patriot League Conference Championships (I was a swimmer). After months of hard work, the approaching apogee of effort brings out unfamiliar emotions from a body and brain recuperating toward levels of energy not normal for the dedicated athlete during intense training.
One of the ways I deal with these anxious feelings and thoughts is to think about the process rather than the result. I tend to try to focus my thoughts in moments of rest to all of the work that has been accomplished during the training program. And that's what I intend to do here, provide a little breakdown for myself, and for anyone else who might be interested, in order to calm some of the unfounded thoughts telling me there's more I could have done to be ready in two weeks time.
The Facts and Statistics
It's helpful that January 1, 2024 fell on a Monday and that is when my training program started. To find the relevant statistics for this post, all I've had to do is look back through my Strava data and add up some numbers. At a glance, here are some relevant statistics:
16 week long training program starting January 1
105 runs totaling 1178 miles, 223 hours, and 179,500 feet of vertical gain
60 hours spent lifting
173 walks totaling 265 miles and 76 hours
Typically when I focus on data, I won't necessarily include walking my dog as miles in a progression, but I like to add it in when looking back at a program like this because it is a relevant data point. After all, much of a 200 mile race is spent walking rather than running and so, though walking miles may not be a progression metric I use to determine weekly mileage, I feel like it gives me a little extra edge in the battle to convince myself that I'm ready for the challenge ahead of me.
I like to structure my training programs into four week blocks that include three progressive build weeks and then an easier week. Often enough, these structured blocks don't fit exactly into the time I have before a race and so there was one training cycle where I cautiously fit four build weeks into a cycle. Little improvisations are something that an athlete gets better at with experience. Part of the game is just figuring out in the moment where your body is at and how one is recovering from each longer and more intense effort. I posted earlier in the year about how heart-rate data was helping me make these decisions, and I've continued to be happy with the results using just a little bit of numerical accuracy to help me along the way.
My last training cycle was truly a doozy, at least for me. Three 100+ mile volume weeks for running were accompanied by an escalating difficulty of lifting, typically done on a Friday a day or two after completing my long runs. I scheduled my weeks like this on purpose, to attempt to gauge how well my legs were recovering from longer and longer efforts and I was pleasantly surprised with the results. Week after week my long runs became more intense, not in the sense that I was running faster, but I was spending more time on my feet. And yet, even as I increased running volume, ending with a 45 mile long run in the midst of a 120-mile peak week, I was able to synchronously increase the weight I was lifting on Fridays for both dead lifts and squats. When I began this last training cycle, I had the somewhat arbitrary goal of lifting 250lbs for 10 reps on both dead lifts and squats. And after running 96 miles over the course of four days this past week, I felt good enough in the gym to push myself and reach that goal. It's the most I've lifted since college, when I was a younger and more explosive version of an athlete.
What has Contributed to Improvement?
What's been most notable and encouraging about my progression in 2024 is the speed at which I've recovered from significant efforts both running and in the gym. Never before have my legs felt so good after six, seven, or eight hour efforts on feet. A few changes I've made since last year are probably contributing to this improvement including:
a focus on eating 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight daily
the strength training itself, increasing muscular endurance so that the muscles just aren't as tired after long days out
a determined commitment to foam rolling and stretching at least every other day
You can find experts espousing many different opinions about recovery practices. I know Physical Therapists who recommend stretching and some who think that stretching may actually be harmful if done in certain contexts. There's PTs who are fans of foam rolling and those who aren't. My general philosophy is that whatever you might think about any specific recovery practice, doing something is better than doing nothing. And it's for this simple reason: just switching one's mindset to being focused on recovery is going to help send a signal to the body that this is what we're doing right now. I firmly believe that ultrarunning is a mental sport as opposed to a physical one especially at high mileage, and this belief applies to training as well.
Think about the moment you cross the finish line in a race. It almost doesn't matter how long the race is, if you're giving a solid effort the experience is one where you find yourself able to run all the way through the finish line and then a couple steps later it would be almost impossible to convince yourself to keep going. The few seconds it took to cross the finish line didn't result in a physical change to your body, but a massive one to your mental state.
This little example is just to illustrate the power of the mind when it comes to the feeling of one's body. It's why I think having some kind of recovery practice, whether it's stretching, foam rolling, sauna sessions, light walks, or really whatever you want it to be, is better than having nothing. Even if none of those practices have solid studies or a specifically strong scientific foundation of research determining their effectiveness, I'm still a proponent of doing something, if only to get the mind to pass on the message that it's time to recover as opposed to train.
Approaching Cocodona
Even as I've written out this little training recap and analysis, I've felt my anxiety and stress level decrease. I've put in the work. Now it's time to focus on executing a plan and making it through these next two weeks ensuring that I get adequate sleep and stay healthy. Other stress reducing practices I enjoy include meditation, reading, and writing. Everyone will have their own way of coping with the chaotic taper energy, but just like I was professing with recovery, I think having something is better than having nothing.
It's pretty crazy how much one sacrifices in the pursuit of a goal like winning the Cocodona 250. Hundreds of my free time hours over the course of 16 weeks have been dedicated to achieving this thing that isn't likely to earn me any money, is going to be extremely difficult and painful, and will inconvenience several other people who are going to travel to Arizona to help me on the way. When I put it like that, ultra running seems like an insane thing to do. But like many runners who find themselves training for these events, it is one of the most significant joys of my life.
In addition to the hours spent in the gym and on local trails that I've run hundreds of times by now, I've traveled all across the American Southwest and been privileged to see incredible landscapes in Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and Colorado. I've connected with nature on a level that I think few modern day humans will ever get to experience. And I am just so grateful for the opportunity to be able to do so. When an activity puts so much pressure on me and asks so much in support from family and friends, it better have a pretty strong "why" underlying the venture. And for me, the primary reason I do this is centered on the connection I feel with both the land and my ancestors who came before me. I'm lucky to live in a beautiful place and in a country where I can freely travel to and from different places of equal majesty. And in these varying locales, I feel as if every step brings me closer to the humans who lived long ago, relying on endurance to hunt and provide food for their tribes. Humans are, after all, the pre-eminent endurance animals on land. Running long distances is the only physical venture that humans are best at when you compare us to other animals. Simply put, it is in our DNA. I'm beyond excited to be able to express this ancestral genetic gift the week of May 6 as I make my way north through the harsh and rugged landscape of the Arizona desert. In a way, it doesn't feel as if it's just the past 16 weeks of work I've done to prepare myself, but that millions of years of primate evolution has led up to it.
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