I'm back from...well, from the place I was in. I don't recommend it, and I hope not to go there again.
Had to take some time off near the start of the month (6 days of zero running) due to a combination of my ankle, my left hip/glutes, my left sartorius (damaged doing stupid effin' burpees) and plain old overtraining. I've spent the last 16 days rebuilding when I was supposed to be doing peak weeks for the 100k next month, and that plus the adrenal fatigue did nasty things to my mental health for the first bit. I couldn't even go hike on pretty trails because the hip/glute & sartorius were causing pain while hiking uphill, so I had to start back with very flat, boring trails and not even much walking. Aggressive rehab (three sets of exercises per day with increased gelatin & vit C intake to assist repair of my ankle) has me back on singletrack for multiple hours, but I needed time away from setting weekly goals as I had to be guilt-free about bagging any workouts if things didn't feel good.
I just finished a weekend of back-to-back decently long runs (2h45m each - 21.5km + 19.5km) with over 1,200ft of gain in each, the latter of which was on highly technical and muddy bits of the Bruce Trail.
I think it's safe to say my new pair of trail shoes are broken in for racing this year..
It's always a good run when you find a waterfall (Swayze Falls at Short Hills Provincial Park)
So, this is going to be my peak week for the 100k. I just finished a lunch run and, while I'm a bit stiff from the weekend, everything seems functional. May try a second run this evening.
I have a 50k with ~8,000ft of elevation on Saturday, which kicks off 206km of racing in a 9 week span - the 100k is 4 weeks after the 50k (which will just be a time-on-feet day for me; hoping to use the full 8 hours before the cutoff), then there's a very technical 56k race 5 weeks after the 100k.
I'm clearly not good at planning.
In any case, after the 50k I'll take a few days off and then just run quite lightly until the 100k - enough to keep the rust off and my brain in check, but hopefully giving myself plenty of time to recover and arrive at Sulphur Springs healthy and ready to take on 5 x 20k loops at Dundas Valley Conservation Area.
I also need to be ok with shutting things down at any point this week if feels like I'm aggravating anything, so I won't set formal goals. Just do my rehab exercises, run when it's good, rest when it's not, and use every recovery trick in the book to get me through until Saturday afternoon.
Hope all the womens have a great week!
__________________________________________________________
ill advised racing inc.