At the start line of the Bear Mountain 50k, feeling very unsure about what I was doing with my life.

The end of the journey!

Week 21 (4/9/18-4/15/18): Fine tuning. 47miles. Back into high mileage, but I’m not going to go beyond the 52-mile peak from two weeks ago! I did a midweek speed workout, which was kind of a nice change: 15 minutes warmup, then 6 sets of 5 minutes hard with 1 minute recovery jog between, then 15 minutes cooldown. The weekend long runs were hard – I did 20 miles on Saturday at the Rockefeller State Park Preserve in 72-degree sun, which was a shock after so much cold weather … and then 10 miles on Sunday at Palisades in 40-degrees-feels-like-34-with-windchill. Which was another shock.

Week 22 (4/16/18-4/22/18): Fine tuning. 38 miles. One hill/stair workout, one hilly run followed by stair machine, a few easy runs, and a final 18-miler up at Bear Mountain.

Week 23 (4/23/18-4/29/18): Taper. 23.4 miles. A speed workout early in the week, a few short runs, and a “long” run of 8 miles. Feeling weird not to be running a ton.

Week 24 (4/30/18-5/5/18): RACE WEEK. 39.5 miles. Super-light speed workout, a couple tiny runs, and suddenly it’s race weekend! I’ll write a separate post about the race report itself, but the summary is that I did it and it was amazing.

Total: 148 miles running.

Feeling: SO weird, confused, and unsure going into the race, and incredibly satisfied after it. Training pays off!