Pre-Race Report: American River 50

At the beginning of the year, I continued to have runner’s knee pain, and it was already cutting into my 15 week training season for American River 50 (AR50).  I signed up for physical therapy on campus and learned some interesting things about my body.  The PT seemed to work, though it took some time, and my knee was healed after a couple weeks. 

So I was left with a somewhat daunting task: by the time I was ready to start training, I only had eight weeks before the race!  Considering I basically didn’t run for the two months prior, well, I was in a bit of sticky situation.  My plan was to have a 2 week base, and 3 week period with some longer mileage weekends, and then a 3 week taper.  Not exactly ideal, and I also had to be cautious about ramping up the mileage.  My knee pain didn’t come back, but I did develop some pain on the lateral side of my lower left leg.  It seemed to only hurt whenever I ran under 9:00/mile, so I eventually stopped doing all forms of speedwok or tempo runs. 

I used a time-based approach for my training, with the program based on an article that can be found on Runners’ World.  I didn’t follow it exactly, though, but I felt I had some quality long runs.  My longest run was 27.8 miles though Redwood and Chabot parks, which at the time was the longest distance I had ever run in my life.  I had two weekends where I took in about 40 miles in two days of running.

Taking an ice bath after my 27.8 mile long run, the longest of the season.

Once I got into the 3 week taper period, I was feeling pretty good about my chances of finishing the race.  I had done a lot of research about American River, namely the hybrid road-trail nature of the course, and the perils of running too fast in the 1^st half.  Though my primary goal was to finish, if I could go sub-10 hours in my first attempt that would really be nice.