"I'm sure there's plenty of summer weeks where I've done 25 plus" - Hahaha, liar liar! Talk about self deluded. I just checked through Garmin Connect and the last time I did a 25+ run week was July 2016, and only because Outlaw full distance was done that week! And what's more, apart from the Challenge Half in late October I haven't even done a 10+ week since beginning of September. Tom, I'm eternally grateful for your simple prompt. Being an old fool I'm still minded to stay with the streak for the moment, but with extreme caution and alert for early niggles. Hope this may serve to help anyone else in same state of delusion, or maybe I'm just hoping I'm not the only idiot.

Excellent stuff here Calamity Jane and very encouraging. Re stress, I meant physical stress, ie keeping things easy rather than max efforts, although as I've now established I've fallen at that first hurdle with the large weekly mileage increase. MAF - Max Aerobic Function, see Dr Phil Maffetone, huge book on it but in a nutshell running at 180-your age for a longish period. That's 125 for me which seems an impossibility but I'm assured it can happen. If I'm lucky enough to make 100/100 I can already imagine the most enormous post challenge blues and I'm looking forward to my Day 25 (not) but your new muscles and stabilisation is what I'm looking for. Really appreciate your great answers, just the sort of encouragement (yes really) I was hoping for.

what do you mean when you say "jump ship"? let's say you take tomorrow off. if you take 1 day off out of, say, every 10, and then you find yourself a lot fitter halfway through, and you find you can run 2-a-days twice a week, even if you still keep taking your days off you'll catch back up to 100.

and if you don't do 2-a-days you'll end up with 90 runs in 100 days, which earns you gold status, or silver or whatever it is. next year you come in a little fitter and you try for more.

so, if "jump ship" means give up, no. if "jump ship" means take a day off, fine.

---

Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Cheers Dan, "Jump ship" was meant as a give up option, but is already off the table. Having quickly established that my percieved starting point was clearly way out of whack I feel the sensible thing is indeed to start taking rest days. Problem 1 is my take on that would be to immediately do a double day followed by a rest day (whereas your catch up later plan is clearly a more sensible option) and problem 2 is that the streak part of the challenge appeals as much if not more than the 100/100 average. On balance, rightly or wrongly, my gut feel is to try and hold the streak for now, but default to your rest days and double ups later in the challenge if I get any niggles or just keep heading wrong way on performance.

Another option, Claypole, is to do 3x 10 minutes of running and give yourself a few minutes of walking in between as a "rest day." I think you can make any run pretty easy. I'd recommend hyping it up to yourself with a lot of self-talk. ("Wow! This walking makes it EASY! Good job, Me!") I'm a fan of ridiculously positive self-talk. Be your own best friend.

I like that you want to keep running continuous days. Realistically, the universe will conspire to force you to miss a day. So, wait until you have no choice.

One thing I really liked from the challenge last year is that I began to notice the subtle differences between Pretty Rested (24 hrs) Tired (12 hrs) and Very Tired (4 hrs) and Goddamn Tired (1 hr since last run). My perspective changed.

I also liked how my hydration and nutrition plan changed from being focused on a workout to a larger 24 hours time period. I would eat and drink while running 3 miles if hadn't already eaten much in the day and I knew I would run again in an hour or two. I stopped thinking that carrying water on a 3 mile run was silly.

Don't be afraid to run a double at some point. They are easier than 1 long run. Easier than you expect. And you can make up for the missed days.

Hi claypole, keep up the good work.

I am curious, what types of feelings or aches/pains make you feel you are ready for a rest day?

examples:

quads hurt
calves hurt
joints / knees hurt
heel pain
just overall tired fatigue / lack of energy

I'm no expert and also a lot younger than you so obviously can't compare. I am only asking the question to maybe help you figure out your own solution.

For instance if I get heel pain, I know the only way to recover is to scale back volume or take days off.

If my quads and calves hurt, I can focus on stretching throughout the day, self-massaging, short walks throughout the day to increase blood flow, increase sleep etc and continue volume as normal.

Some things you just can't ignore and continue as is without injury. Others you can possible treat and cope with. And like Slowman said, if it truly is something that warrants a day off you might be surprised down the road you might be able to sneak in a two-a-day. And even if you don't reach the full 100 you may still be a huge success.

Keep it up. Obviously there will be physical limitations but having yourself prepared mentally and making a plan will put you in the best possible position to succeed.

---

"If it costs you 30 minutes at Maryland so what" -dwreal

Great points again Calamity, much appreciated. I am 99.9% certain that events will indeed conspire to stop the streak, but my hope is to do exactly what you say, and use the streak as incentive whilst I can.
Bluestacks, you're a mega star taking time out of your schedule to comment - big congrats so far. In past years I've been a bit injury prone, taking 1 step forwards and 2 steps back. Massively improved the last year or so, mixing in Pilates, better recovery planning, listening to niggles sooner rather than later. I'm keen to do the 100/100, I'm confident I could do a double tomorrow if I chose to (I could of course be wrong) but I'm probably keener to maintain the injury free streak if I can. Hope that makes sense. Mind you I feel an even bigger idiot saying that having just discovered I've tripled my weekly mileage!

To answer your specific points Bluestacks, now I'm back on a pc:
Fatigue / Tiredness - wouldn't stop me. Raises an interesting point though. Just 3 days before the challenge started I set out on a short unscheduled brick run after a super easy 1hr bike. I abandoned after about 200yrds for no other reason than the fact that I was tired and didn't want to do it. I honestly can't remember a time when I've abandoned a run. Unplanned stops or run walks yes, very occasionally a shortened route if I've been over ambitious, occasionally switch an inters set to something easier if it's just not there, but never abandon. I was strangely indifferent to this (I thought I should be angry) but when the challenge email arrived a day or 2 later I'm pretty sure it was this run abandon that compelled me to take up the challenge.
Quads / calves hurt, would endeavour to run through it unless it developed into something more.
Joints / knees / heel pain would all be red flags and have me on high alert and prepared to stop the streak.
Which kind of brings me back to the answer I'm seeking, am I right to run through tired/fatigue/aches and non red flag pains. General vibe I'm getting from you guys and gals is YES, keep at it. I'm happy with that. It's also kind of useful that for the first time in a long while I have no targets on the horizon so it wouldn't be the end of the word if I got this all wrong. Big congrats to all you people who have done this before and/or are cracking on with it now, and thanks again for the encouragement.

Yes, it's normal to have leg fatigue with increased volume. It manifests differently in everyone. Tired, achy legs/knees/back...When I was running 40-60 mpw, I ached all of the time. It was one of the things I didn't like about running, but it mostly happened with volume builds. Less of an issue once you can hold mileage and your body is more used to it. The connective tissue and core strengthens a bit with time/miles on your feet.

Hang tough-the benefits are out there...

7 days down .... 9 runs and 103km seems like an ok start. Not bad for an old dude! Legs are a little stiff since I haven't been running as much through the fall but it shouldn't take long to get back in the run groove and focus on the Boston prep.

When I was in my marathon build I got new (minor) injuries and weaknesses and imbalances to fix at each step of getting to 40, 45, and 50mpw. In each case though, exactly like you said, it went away after being dealt with and holding the volume for a bit. And the speed...

---

The point is, ladies and gentleman, that speed, for lack of a better word, is good. Speed is right, Speed works. Speed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.

claypole wrote:

Which kind of brings me back to the answer I'm seeking, am I right to run through tired/fatigue/aches and non red flag pains.

CLICK THIS LINK NOW. Go to 7 minutes 15 seconds in the video and listen. Listen very carefully ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NddkZj16I_4

THE BODY ALWAYS HAS MORE. THE MIND DOESN'T WANT TO EVOLVE. BUT THE BODY ALWAYS HAS MORE!

Yeah Bobby!
It’s often the mind playing games. Just make sure the body is ready.

We can all often push much harder than we think. The really tricky part is knowing when we cross over the edge...

Great vid section link. Have been there many times on the turbo and in TTs and proven the point to myself. Love the shouty bit, that's usually in the second half of FTP testing for me. Wife and kids used to come running out to the garage ready to phone an ambulance. They don't bother any more so I hope I never need one :-). I guess I'm just a little more cautious with an impact sport like running and don't want to take the injury gamble. But I'm sure that opens me up to more mind weakness than I need.
Meanwhile, 8/8 today no probs. Clam - I did manage to pace even slower whilst still running, I did put on a smiley face and made happy thoughts, and I bagged my target sub 130 HR ave. Yay! Maybe no co-incidence that a rumbling domestic issue eased a little last night, I ate a proper dinner and got first decent sleep in a while.

I seem to have the opposite problem. My mind thinks it is stuck in a 25 year old body. Fortunately in my new career as a masters swimmer, I generally can't do too much (says the guy who is trying to do 10,000m of IM in one session before New Years....goal 20x{400IM+100IM} ). I was actually pretty good yesterday. I was at the gym before my swim and was alternating jogs on the Woodway curve and 10 min sessions on the Concept2 Erg. I actually cut myself off when my cumulative running got to 25 minutes. I was really tempted to add another 10 min leg after doing some weights, but decided that I should not get sucked into the challenge and do another 30+ minute run as I knew if I got back on, the 25 minutes could easily turn into 40 minutes. If I am to use this challenge for what I am supposed to use it for (which is hopefully get back into some jogging), then I should not let it suck me into overdoing it.

As it stands if I look at my training log, I did 1:25 of jogging the week before (and including weekend of 100/100 start) and at 2:16 this week and I am pretty sure, I'll end up close to 3 hours this week because of this stupid challenge!!!! The problem is that my cardio and past running ability is telling me that this barely feels like I am doing some walking, when in reality I have barely been walking nor jogging, so even though it feels like nothing, it's probably waaaay more than my body is ready for. On a positive note, I am getting to better and better coordination with my bad leg, just from these shuffle jogs.

That section of the Lionel video really struck a chord with me the first time I saw it. Whenever I start to have thoughts of taking an unscheduled day off (usually because the couch is more appealing), I make sure I don't get sucked into that trap as the inertia of doing nothing can get overwhelming.

Having quickly established that my percieved starting point was clearly way out of whack I feel the sensible thing is indeed to start taking rest days.//


Ya, this is not an all or nothing proposition. Last year I set out to do every other day, did fine for quite awhile, then got sick and had the usual 2 week off in the middle. I recovered and ended up with 38, which I was happy with when all said and done. More runs than I had done in a very long time. Just set your sights on what you think you can do, not what others are doing, and if you have to adjust midstream, then that is ok too. Shit happens...


So far I'm doing close to the minimum, and I cannot recall ever running 8 days in a row, my entire life!!! And I was a pro, but also recall no one ran everyday either, that just doesnt make sense in that arena.

Ok, I've got a data entry question for record keeping purposes.

I've got my Strava setup to synch over and that works great. The thing is that I ran a 5k this morning as a benchmark to see how things progress during the course of this challenge. Not a super fast time (23:44) but I'll take it after basically not running since mid-August. This run is already synch'd over.

The thing is that I did 6 mins of warmup and then another 3 mins of cool down. Thus my total run time this morning was right around 33mins. How do I capture this so I get credit for my 30 mins today?

yeah, Petr Vanbrousek and Cam Wurf probably only run 1x per week but those guys seem to do an Ironman every darn weekend LOL! And Monty, when you guys were racing pro, unlike today, you too were racing a shit ton, flying around the country/world, trying to bag a paycheque doing weekly racing. So you guys had your fair share of frequent intensity. When I met you and Jurgen Zach at the Syntace booth at Ironman Roth back in 1993, Jurgen was saying that you guys were racing sprints and olympics every weekend in the Triathlon Bundesliga and every Wednesday Jurgen had his hammerfest 200km bike route that he would TTT with a few of you guys and the goal was to break 5 hours every week on that ride.....not sure there was any running tacked on to the 4:59.59 200 km weekly ride, but of what we know of Jurgen, I would think that he'd make sure entire train finished the bike ride on the verge of bonking such that the only transition activity would be something involving large steins and nothing to do with running!

As it stands if I look at my training log, I did 1:25 of jogging the week before (and including weekend of 100/100 start) and at 2:16 this week and I am pretty sure, I'll end up close to 3 hours this week because of this stupid challenge!!!!

Dev, the past few months I think I've maxed out around 40 miles in a week and was over 60 the first week of this challenge.... so much for a gradual increase! Fortunately, I am not running them fast and I have 40 years of racing under my belt so it doesn't really feel like I'm overdoing things but the challenge does get you psyched up. Only 114 days until Boston so I need to embrace the run focus. As a nod to my advancing years and the wear and tear I've subjected my body to, I spent 2.5 hours on the trainer this morning and only ran for 47 minutes. This will be my strategy to avoid overdoing it on my weekend running.

still unable to sync via strava. do my activities have to be set to public?

The log doesn't read activities that are marked private.

-Eric

After week 1, so far feeling pretty good. I'm 8/8 mostly doing about 4 miles each, except for my longer run which is more like 6 at the moment... Which brings my weekly milage to 31, and 35 for the challenge. I was down around 22 avg over the last month.

Don't really see taking a day off for a while. Maybe a 15m or something on Christmas day and then 45+ on boxing day to keep the streak alive.

This could get tricky. For the future, I'd suggest a combined single entry for warm + workout + cool. You can alter the log entries but it might try to re sync the warm and cool if you delete them. Hmmmm. I'll have to ponder this.

-Eric