One Month Out

I will be back home in southern California for a few days soon, and I was looking at volunteering at a local 50 mile race thats happening while I'm there. I quickly looked up the race again (I am familiar with Old Goats 50 and have read about it before) and I got on ultrasignup.com and started learning more about times and stuff. LONG STORY, SHORT: I thought about racing instead of volunteering-I contacted the RD Steve Harvey of Old Goats and found out that despite it being sold out, I had a good shot of making it in from the wait-list.
I gave it a night to think, then promptly put in my credit card # and did a couple longer-than-usual runs on Mt Ashland in next few days. (I had been in pre-season track & field training)

Me nerding out on some of Ashland's local talent's ultra trophies on display at rogue valley runners. No big deal or anything. :)

SO, about 2 weeks out from the race and I find out I am in, then before I can think at all.. I get to the big red deny or green confirm button and click confirm as fast as I can. Then immediately think "what did I just do".

The longest running day I had about this time was 2 hours and my biggest week was about 8 hours or 70 miles and all I had was 2 weeks before the 50 mile race-my first race over a marathon distance. I began to worry. I got sick with a decent cold after a 3+ hour run and wasn't able to run as long or as well as I planned prior to finding out that I got in to the race. So, with 2 weeks to get in the most important stuff, I set it for two 4+ hour runs with a lot of vert within 8-14 days out from race day. I had already done one 3+ hour run but it left me sick and weak.

11 days out on a tuesday, I got my 4:08 run in and about 29 miles according to my educated guessing, with about 5000+ of vert(and then decline). Now time to focus on recovering to do it again on friday or saturday. Second guessing myself, I looked for some confirmation (or some tweaking of my plans) from a running friend/old coach Liam. I settled on running a double of 90 minutes each run on friday or saturday instead of a 5 hour effort in an attempt to focus on being fresher and recovered for the race. Liam added "WWJD" in a text, and I responded "Jurek?" and I was right on.

Today is Thursday, 9 days out. I will be accepting all good thoughts and mojo from now until I toe the line and eventually finish(thats the plan at least! haha) a week from this saturday in Cleveland National Forest.



P.S. To those of you more familiar with Ultrsignup: What is with me being ranked #1 with a top 5 time ever on the course? My only result on the site is a 21k from a year ago! When I saw this I couldn't help but laugh to myself about the whole situation and what fun this is going to be, and how much I am going to learn from it!

P.P.S. I'm also accepting all advice and thoughts on preparation and during race ideas for a first time ultra-runner. Thanks!