It is now less than a month away. I will be lacing up to attempt to run 100 miles and this has been a crazy year for my running so far. I set bigger, higher, more challenging goals than I ever did before. I suffered my first running related injury, hip bursitis, which is still nagging me. I DNF’d my first attempt at 50 miles due to the heat. And in really only my second year of trying to have any form of structured training I have struggled for various reasons to meet the standards of training I wanted to get for this adventure.

Now that everything else on my calendar as far as running goes is behind me I am really trying to focus on this huge challenge ahead. I have been wanting to get down to the Pine Creek Rail Trail all year, but have been unable to due to my inconsistencies in training. But I finally made it happen. I really wanted to see it and feel it. I needed to get a sense of what it was going to be like running there all day and all night and possibly longer. I wanted to feel how that trail would feel under my feet. I wanted to test out what shoes I might want to wear on this adventure. (FYI I still don’t know).

My plan for the day was to run the trail from the starting point for the race for the Pine Creek Challenge and run 10 miles out and 10 miles back. It might sound silly to say I wanted to know the trail conditions, I mean it’s on a rail trail after all, but all the trails I have been on have a different feel to them. Some are soft, some are more gravely, and some are pretty firm. Getting this knowledge could help me to plan for the appropriate footwear. I have run most of my races in the same style of trail shoes and my preference would be to run the Pine Creek Challenge in that same style of shoes as well. I have loved Altra shoes for the past several years and I am currently running in The Altra Superiors. However, after running 20 miles on the Pine Creek Rail Trail I am not sure if that is the best option for this race. The trail is pretty firm. I think I need footwear that may be more along the lines of road shoes with more cushion and less tread. As I ran I could just feel the tread of the trail shoes under my foot because there was no softness for them to sink into. Over the last couple of years I have been doing most of my road miles in one specific model of shoes, the Saucony Kinvara, currently the 9’s. So I think I might use something more like that style of shoe for this race, but right now it is still up in the air.

This was also ended up being my first 20 mile long training run of the entire year partly due to injury and partly due to other factors. I was excited and nervous to get out there for a 20 mile run. I have been feeling pretty good. I have been running consistently but keeping the mileage and effort relatively low to minimize risk of aggravating the injury. Last week I broke 16 miles up into 3 different runs, 10 miles, 3 miles, then 3 more miles at night to see how it would feel to absorb that many miles on my hip. It seemed to go pretty well. So I was encouraged going into this run. As far as my hip bursitis went this run went really well. Of my entire body system my old achy ankle bothered me more than anything else. My hip felt pretty good and mostly painless until the last few miles when there were moments of tenderness. They were not intense and did subside so that is encouraging. Nothing like what I experienced back in May. I think this will add an additional element of challenge to this event but I don’t think it will prevent me from finishing at this point.

The one other strange concern I ended up with by the end of the run had to do with my hydration pack. I have been using this pack all year for all my long runs and my long races with no problems. But, for some reason during this run it was rubbing on the center of my chest. The left upper section where the straps are able to be adjusted up and down and there is a herder plastic there just kept rubbing to the point where at times I was holding it out off of my chest while I ran. I tried different strategies to try and get it to stop while I was running to no avail. I did not want to stop and meddle with my pack during this run. It ended up leaving an inch long red raw mark on my chest. Needless to say I will have to do some work to dial in the fit of my pack before race day. Luckily there are adjustments I can still make.

I am planning to head back out on another run on the trail soon.

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