Wednesday Wrap Up: Ho, Ho, Ho-ly Crap

The title above could reference a number of things, including, but not limited to:

• my diet of late.  All crap, all the time. Shockingly, a steady diet of baked brie hasn't been kind to me, my digestion, my self-esteem, or my running.

• my sense of astonishment when I realized the time to start training for what I plan to be my first 50 miler starts, like, now.

• my feelings of discouragement, when I just left my (windowless) office and went into the hallway, where I had a great view of the blustery, snowy, generally unpleasant, and already quite dark conditions outside.  At 3:57pm.

Number of Miles Run Last Week: 29.  Despite having 2 double-digit runs last week, my mileage was on the low side.  Food and booze got in the way.  I don't feel bad about it, though, since as I mentioned, spring training is basically here.  I'll take a little food coma now while I still can.

Number of Beers Consumed Last Week: 12.  I think.  

Types of Beers Consumed Last Week: Bud Light, Guinness, Brooklyn IPA, Sapporo, Blue Point Oktoberfest (this was actually really good, even though I swear I don't drink Oktoberfests, and also I seldom like anything from Blue Point), Bear Republic Peter Brown Tribute Ale, Smuttynose Robust Porter, Victory Prima Pils.

Moving right along...

As I mentioned above, spring training season - of the running variety - is upon us!  Based on my usual Training Peaks marathon plan, Day 1 of Boston training kicks off on 12/30.  But if I'm really going to tackle this 50 miler (for which I have yet to register; I will, but I'd rather first spend all my money spoiling my nephew at Christmas...) in May, training for that kicks off on 12/15.  That's on Monday.  Shit.

My training for my first 50 is really with finishing in mind.  Granted, I want to finish strong and not have a sad-sack, woe-is-me, I-am-literally-broken pity party along the way (a la Connemara Ultra).  To that end,  I conducted a somewhat exhaustive Google search for a training plan, during which I kept displayed on one computer monitor several tabs, including my work calendar, my personal calendar, and the wedding websites of everyone I know getting married in 2015.  

In addition to schedules, here's some of the other criteria I took into consideration:

• Given that all my training for everything to this point has been mileage-based and not time-based, I knew I wanted to stick with mileage-based training for my first 50 miler

• My weekly mileage during Chicago Marathon training this summer peaked at 77 miles.  This felt heavy, but manageable.  Some "just finish" 50 mile training plans called for peak weeks of 50 miles, which felt much too low for me.  Conversely, 90 miles felt too high; I want to finish a race, but I'd rather not wind up single and jobless from spending ALL my time running as a result.

• I did not want to run two-a-days.  I take a lot of time to get ready, where ever I'm going. My view is: what's the point in heavily investing in nice clothes (which I do, to a fault...) if you wear them with wet hair and no makeup?  As a result, I'm only showering once a day.

• I did not want a plan with prescribed paces.  While this is my first 50 miler, it's not my first ultra, and I'd like to use own my (admittedly limited) experience to gauge how fast I should be both training and racing.  I didn't want to be locked into 35 mile weekends if those 35 miles were meant to be run at a 12-15 min/mile pace - ain't nobody got time for that.  Also, I will actually be running a marathon during the course of this training, and while I have no intention of racing it, those Athlink results are forever... 

With all that in mind, I found a training plan that seemed like a good framework from the Ultraladies (I don't know who they are).  The original plan looked like this: 

Source

5 days a week of scheduled running left me a day to either cross train or add another run, which I appreciated.  Further, a three week taper is both what I'm familiar with, and also allowed for the running of the Boston Marathon the week before if I cut other workouts.  Lastly, midweek mileage seemed manageable even with a job that has frequent travel and late-night events. So far, so good.

However, closer examination revealed the mileage looked to be on the low side, peaking at 62 miles. So I made myself a little spreadsheet and started making some changes.  And kept making some changes. In fact, the last change I made was 30 seconds ago when I went to upload this and saw I should be running 16 miles this Saturday, event though my longest run in a month has only been 12 miles.  Anyway, here is my very much still under construction plan right now:

In the 30 seconds since I first hit publish, I already had to
 go back and make another change...

While the peak mileage is still only 70, I have two 70 mile weeks in there, two 60+ mile weeks, and five 50+ mile weeks.  That should, hopefully, get my legs good and used to running tired.

So, that's the plan.  Any thoughts (besides "don't run Boston the week before," because I know that seems like a foolhardy move, but it's done)?  Any tips?