HELL YEAH Mrs. Bluestacks! Don't be embarrassed - you STRUT your bad self!

I had a slightly ambitious goal for today, hatched upon hearing the fundraiser event I was attending had been altered.

First, a road run to the farmers' market on clear sidewalks in beautiful sunshine - I dressed for the -9c with -18c windchill, and overheated drastically!







Then off to the annual Valentine's Fatazz at Huron Natural Area, where the trails had been deemed too icy to mark a loop. My screw shoes were just barely adequate..



I actually saw a dude coming out of this section on hockey skates, and there was a shinny game going on as I passed the pond beside this trail.



The singletrack was actually less sketchy than the main trails, though still icy..



I brought a pole just in case I needed tripod traction, but didn't use it - was ok without & messed up my hands pretty badly using an ice chopper for 2hrs on Thursday night trying to unearth my driveway.



The weather turned nasty for the last challenge, just over an hour after my 6.66km trail loop (for run #66) - no sun, bitter wind, snow squalls and all the damn hills for the 8k road loop that had been mapped for the Fatazz as a replacement for the icy trails of peril.



No overheating this time - had to tuck my thumbs inside my (fresh, dry) mitts and was grateful I'd thrown a tubular on my head as a hood & brought a warmer, dry jacket!




So, that makes 11 runs in the last 7 days for me, with yesterday having been my day off.



Now to see if this can get me into some kind of shape for a double tomorrow - there are 2 trails (that will be glare ice) I want to explore..



Jet tub, lavender scented Epsom salts and a cauldron of green tea FTW - even if it's a little on the basic white chick side.

Edited to add: please consider making an online donation to the fundraiser at this link - the organizer is a huge advocate for mental health awareness through his Defeat Depression campaign. He lost both of his brothers to suicide, struggles with mental health challenges of his own, and each year (apart from the Valentine's Fatazz) stages a 10-day 720km Canal Pursuit ending on Capitol Hill in Ottawa to raise money for the Mood Disorders Society of Canada. It's a cause close to my own heart as well, and I donate throughout the year to all of his fundraising efforts.

Stay safe out there, all you iced-up compatriots..

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ill advised racing inc.

I'm sorry to hear about the illnesses. I took 3 days off because of knee pain/swelling and a slight head cold. I think I could have run, but I feel bad asking for sympathy from my fam when I'm out running and looking peppy. I wanted sympathy.

Congrats to Mrs. Bluestack! This challenge is actually perfect for her. I love how speed and distance just don't matter a whole lot here. I think this challenge measures grit-- being able to come back to try again and again. According to our local teachers, grit leads to success. Grit, baby!

And I may be derailed due to injury. Day Fifty-effing-seven. I go out for an easy 5 miler, and manage to give myself a calf strain. It hurts. Oh man, it hurts. Not likely to run tomorrow, which is a shame. Might even stop me for many days, based on prior experiences. Meanwhile, MsPaulDavis, after weeks of mostly very slow running (including the Arches 50 miler in UT), throws down a 6:19min mile split "just because". I don't expect life to be fair, but really ... sometimes.

Yay! Mrs bluestack!

I managed #66, 67, and 68 today. My first triple. Felt surprisingly good on #3.

Glad to see you back at it Ms. Jane! Even if it means I have to hustle to keep up.

I always love your pix mistressk! I'm not sure I want that much snow in my back yard all the time, but it's fun to watch from the frigid south.

I'll add my sob story into the mix. Things were cruising along nicely. I was keeping in the top 25 until I caught the worst cold of my life!! 1 week of ZERO workouts. No S, no B, and no R. Week #2 was very difficult to find the energy to get back into it. Going into week 3 right now realizing that even though I don't "feel" sick anymore, my body just isn't up to taking the punishment I was giving it before. Hopefully by the end of week 3, I will be back to 100%. Good thing is that I'm still above the 1:1 ratio for the 100:100!

Way to go Mrs. Bluestacks!!! I remember my first no-walking 30 minutes and it was a BIG DEAL.

I haven't chimed in on this thread, but this challenge has been just what I needed. I've been doing MAF runs of 30 minutes as often as I can, with a few doubles here and there and I've seen a solid improvement in my pace, HR and perceived effort. Running is by far my weakest sport, so it's nice to feel improvement there.)

Thanks everyone for the motivation!

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The beatings will continue until morale improves

Day 58 challenge was an ice storm. Everything slick as snot. Put on the Yak Track and ran the grassy perimeter of the ball fields behind my house. Very slow 30 minute run/jog/slog and safely got 58 done without busting my ass. Either the midwest and the north should get a bonus on these days or the west and south should have to take a penalty run ;)

actually broke away from the treadmill for a run. breezy 22 degrees (-5 C), but good footing, and good to get a tiny bit of Vitamin D. saw 1 dude on a cross bike, cruised over snowy sections flawlessly.

That's stunning, ZDD - if I had views like that I don't think I could persuade myself to run indoors! Not that I try anyway..



Told myself - after running polished ice for today's first run - that I'd stick to the main trail for the second run, and not dodge off into the singletrack along the river.




I did poorly with that.

My only excuse is that the Royal Recreation Trail along the Speed River is one of the most beautiful places I have accessible to run.




Congrats on not letting the ice get the better of you TJ56!

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ill advised racing inc.

Are you in Cambridge? I had some nice routes in that area when I lived there 27 years ago.

Today was really cold for my 25k run...visiting my daughter in Calgary where it was -30....Would have been nice to be back in Ontario today where my eyelashes wouldn't be freezing together mud run.

Haha. I don’t think my wife had any suspicions whatsoever. She has always known she married an idiot. I may be part of the one and done too. I am really aiming for 100 this year just so I can aim for like 60-70 from now on.

I won’t lie but I tried this like 4 years ago and failed after 15 days. But I’m only behind 3 runs right now and doubles yesterday and today and feel pretty good. Had a decent half marathon in there last month too. I never thought I could even contemplate running this much, but it’s been surprisingly semi doable. However, I still hate having to run at 10-11pm kuz I didn’t get to run earlier. It’s stinking freezing. Let’s keep it up folks!!!! Lol. I wish I could say I am sooo much faster now after getting this far but I’m only a little faster. Hahahaha

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berndog
How did we all get sucked into this crazy sport anyway?!!

Yep - we have some pretty nice trails here, though definitely no mountains!

My in-laws are in Calgary; some really nice running there, too, though it was much warmer the last time I was there! I remember my eyelashes trying to stick my eyes shut at -34c visiting my sister-in-law in Edmonton just 2 months after I started running in 2008..

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ill advised racing inc.

I'm just tired, not a bit faster. But maybe when the dust settles in March and sanity returns, I'll see a benefit! a final crazy Monday of runs, so now I'm coasting to the end.

Nice work everyone, winter gets tough, with weather, illnesses, etc.

Cheers!

My treadmill broke 20 minutes in this morning and the sidewalks are sheet ice today. It's bugging the crap out of me.

I was certain of exactly the same thing and then did a 10k last weekend and set all kinds of PRs along the way. I was very surprised. I'll bet you will be too.

Eric,

I have been keeping up my slowtwitch log manually but now have a strava account. If I sync to Strava, will this overwrite my slowtwitch log or am I at risk to have duplicate entries?

Thanks

Cool! So yes, you could. How much overlap is there? Did you log a bunch of stuff in both places or only a couple?

-Eric

Well...all of my runs since December 15th are in both. I joined Strava as a whim to track against a group of guys I run with but now realize how much easier it will make logging all of my training going forward! Am I best off to delete all of my slowtwitch records before I sync?

I decided to throw in the towel on getting to the 100. I have been volume training.
If I look at time, I'm at 45h32m, translating into 91 runs of 30 minutes. But I only have 46!
I ran 297 miles, quite a few on trails so they're rather slow.

I'm a single almost fulltime dad, I work, and then I train. I needed a few days off, and I have an ultra coming up. Rather than forcing my parenting, training plan, and probably overall health, to the 100/100 I decided to do the smart thing. And after the long run race, I need to get ready for tri season because I have hardly done any biking or swimming, and I want to race short and fast again!

It's still a really inetresting challenge though and it's really made me think of how I run. 100 (pun intended) % worth it!

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Mr. Alabama Viking (SS on Strava, and such an appropriate screen name, it just....fits):
Congratulations on the huge volume of miles! 300 is spectacular, especially if you have a long run race coming up. And these frequent runs have certainly helped solidify a nice R base. As you transition to more structured Tri training, you likely can add short runs off the B or S, if/when you have time, but I'd focus more on 'off the bike' runs that are short (~20-30min for sprint/oly tri's) but add some intensity to them.

Volume run builds in the winter are a natural to lead into runs with short reps>then tempo/threshold>then interval pace as one of the key runs of the week. Volume running really is aerobic and even a 5K is mostly aerobic, so your speed is there, for sure, and all that running will help both in the ultra and in the triathlon races at all distances. Hopefully this is something everyone learned from this challenge...and how to better listen to their body's signals.

Finding balance in life to train is always a challenge for triathletes and more so for those with family/work commitments. Consider continuing to log runs that you do until the end of the challenge, since you'll still be doing some R training.

I wish you well in your racing. Let us know how the ultra went!


My training has shifted to a true focus on tri training too. Up to 2 hrs of S; 5 hrs of B and still 4 hrs of R. Going to get more busy as my race is a 3/4 distance tri so I'm going to have to squeeze more time out of the day. Had to take vacation days to be able to fit in training (that's crazy, huh? wonder how many others have done this...). But I'm at 58/62 right now, so I'm happy.

Props to those who are above 'pace' (>62/100) and have some solid intensity. I see 7 peeps with Aerobic points >2165 (which is the bar set by bluestacks-still pretty darn impressive work by him): HVP, danstu4, bsmak24, PDX_Ron, bfinz, Allan, Tony.White--big congrats to you!! I'm super impressed!

Keep up the consistency folks!

Well, the standard Strava sync is going to pull only the last two weeks: 14 days exactly. I'd recommend deleting your manual entries in the log for 12 days, doing the Strava sync, and then eyeballing the couple of duplicates and removing the non-strava versions of them.

-Eric

I take A/L (annual leave aka vacation) for "me" time quite often in the summer. Either for a bike ride or run with the dog (and I don't even race). My husband worked crazy hours - having alone time was necessary.

I took my first OFF day in 4 weeks---in that time I've run 162 miles. I even had one 7-day period where I completed over 50 miles. I've taken a very heavy frequency focus...doing multiple runs every 2nd day on average, and every other day for the last 10 days. In the last 4 weeks, I've doubled 10 times and tripled once. I'm at 74/62 with 301 miles, and that has me siting 18th in the standings as I type. I'm pretty damn happy with that, as a 50 yo first timer to this challenge.

This last week, has revealed that I need to do a better job of recovering (mostly sleeping). The fatigue of all those miles, especially the doubles and triples started to catch up with me the last few days. I'm sure the business travel, and associated drinking/poor nutrition/worse sleep habits didn't help.

I'm hanging in for a few more weeks, and still intend to finish out the challenge with a "best effort". After all, it is a one hudred day challenge, not a 62 day challenge. I'm proud of having broken into the top20 with some seriously amazing runners. I don't want to give that back.

That said, my focus from here on out willl begin to shift the mileage into less runs. I'll be slowly reverting back to a more typical BarryP 3:2:1 structure. Initially, I plan to place doubles where I would be doing 3x or 2x miles. And, then I'll shift more and more of the mileage into ONE of those runs. I actually started doing that last week, doing 5+3.5 instead of 4+4.

I'm not sure if I'm any faster, yet. There's some data that seems to suggest it, but most of my runs float around the 8:0x range. Same as they did before the challenge. I think the big difference is that I'm running at a considerably lower heart rate (155bpm to 147bpm at the same pace). That said, my "best 5km segment" in November was at 7:40pace with an avgHR of 156bpm. My "best 5km segment" in Feb was at 7:33 pace with an avgHR of 153bpm. Neither of those were race-pace runs...just runs where I was feeling good and just kinda let myself run---more tempo than race-pace. But, that's just one data point...most of the others are more confusing to try and tease out meaning from.

I know I'm still carrying excess fatigue. Even after my day off, yesterday, I didn't feel great on my lunch run. Maybe once I get back to a 6-runs a week with a rest day schedule....I'll see more effects. I'm really happy to have been able to manage consistent 40 mpw, week after week with no signs of overuse injuries or even any niggles. I'd hope that means my joints/ligaments/tendons are getting pretty tough. If I can keep the bulk of my weekly mileage and concentrate it into 6-ish runs and a day off (4/8/12 ish weeks), I'd hope that manifests in more pace eventually.

I am currently at 74 runs and tomorrow I will nudge over the 900km mark (around 560 miles for our American friends). Feeling pretty good.Today I cruised a warmup for 3k then picked it up at bit for a 45 minute 10k split on my 11.5km run. Finally had some decent conditions to run in with -3C temps and a 2k loop on a road that was free from snow and ice. Running a lot less than 1999 when I last did this challenge but that is by design and I am still getting in 3 swims and 4 or 5 bike rides each week. Tom Hampton mentioned he is doing well for a 50 year old (congrats Tom you are!) .... I am in that age group too. It would be interesting to see the ages of some of the folks cranking out the big numbers.

I am not a believer in the training effectiveness of cranking out a huge number of 30 minute sessions just to pad the stats so, while it is cool to see how many are either already at 100 or will be in the next few days, the most impressive numbers in my opinion have been put up by dual sport .... 957km in only 37 runs ..... those are "holy crap" numbers!

This challenge has been helpful for me this week. I was stressed/anxious/depressed Monday through Thursday and all those mornings it helped to think "just get to 30 min then you can be done", most days I did more than 30 minutes.
Had an unplanned rest day yesterday as I woke up sick.


Day 1: 3.6 mi easy
Day 2: 11 mi easy
Day 3: 4 mi moderate
Day 4: 6.2 mi easy
Day 5: 5 mi easy
Day 6: 4.3 mi run (1.5 mi @ 8:34 pace, 1.3 mi @ 8:27 pace)
Day 7: 12 mi run (8.3 @ 8:27 pace)
Day 8: 3.6 mi
Day 9: 11.2 mi
Day 10: 6.45 mi (w/ 1 mi @ 8:00 + 2.1 mi @ 7:53)
Day 11: 7.3 mi
Day 12: 3.6 mi
Day 13: 3.7 mi
Day 14: 4.3 mi progressive
Day 15: 3.6 mi
Day 16: 9.8 mi
Day 17: 12.1 mi
Day 18: 3.1 mi
Day 19: 7.3 mi
Day 20: 5.8 mi
Day 21: 5.5 mi
Day 22: 13.7 mi (w/ 1 x 4ish miles and 1 x 2.3 mi at marathon-ish pace)
Day 23: OFF (1 hr stairmaster + 2 mi walk)
Day 24: 9 mi (w/ 8 x 45 sec fast, 75 sec recovery)
Day 25: 4.8 mi
Day 26: 9 mi
Day 27: 4 mi
Day 28: 6.6 mi
Day 29: 3.5 mi
Day 30: 12 mi
Day 31: OFF (4 mi walk + 2225 yd swim)
Day 32: 4.6 mi
Day 33: 10 mi
Day 34: OFF (31 mi bike)
Day 35: 5.1 mi (last 5k fast)
Day 36: 13 mi (took 2 hrs flat so I entered this as two runs to get credit for the double)
Day 37: OFF
Day 38: 9.1 mi
Day 39: 6.5 mi
Day 40: 10 mi
Day 41: 3.5 mi (w/ 2 x 1.5 km @ 8:41/mi)
Day 42: 7.2 mi
Day 43: 3.5 mi
Day 44: 14 mi
Day 45: 4.3 mi
Day 46: 8 mi
Day 47: 6 mi (w/ 1.25 mi + 5 km tempo)
Day 48: 7.5 mi
Day 49: 8.5 mi
Day 50: OFF (totally completely off)
Day 51: 9.4 mi
Day 52: 5.1 mi
Day 53: 6.2 mi
Day 54: 4.8 mi
Day 55: OFF (totally completely off)
Day 56: 9.5 mi (4.6 @ tempo)
Day 57: 13 mi
Day 58: 7.3 mi
Day 59: 3.3 mi
Day 60: 5.7 mi
Day 61: 8.2 mi
Day 62: 7 mi (1 mi + 4 mi @ tempo)
Day 63: OFF (totally completely off due to illness)
Day 64: 10.1 mi

60/64 , in 58 days of running (and 58 runs; have done two, two-hour runs)

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maybe she's born with it, maybe it's chlorine
If you're injured and need some sympathy, PM me and I'm very happy to write back.
disclaimer: PhD not MD