I Climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in December!

Source: www.smithsonianmag.com

I would have to say, for the most part, December training was some of the best training I have done in years!  I completed over 153 miles of running (I haven’t been over 100 miles in one month of running in 3 years) and that was with one week off for a flu/cold. I also climbed close to 20,000 feet, the most elevation I have climbed ever in one month!  That’s the equivalent of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro at 19,341 feet! 

I did have the benefit of taking a week and a half off for the holidays, and since we don’t participate in the festivities, it was pretty easy to wake up early with my wife and get the mileage in.  She also is training for the Way Too Cool 50K in March and is really working on building her base and endurance.

I will say, though my cycling during December was non-existent.   I normally put in between 150 to 250 commute miles per month; however, with the sub-arctic temperatures (in the 20’s and 30’s in the mornings – cold for this California boy) for most of the month, getting sick one week, and having the rest of the month off, well this means I will have to working back in this volume into my training in the short term.

So why all of the elevation gain when the first up race, the Surf City Marathon, is flat?  I am working on both strength an thinking in terms of the Way Too Cool 50K 5 weeks after and Diablo Challenge 50K in April.

This is the elevation profile of each race:

Surf City Marathon (February 2^nd)

Source: runsurfcity.com

Way Too Cool 50K (March 8^th)
 

Source: Way Too Cool 50K

Diablo Challenge 50K (April 19^th)

Source: Brazenracing.com

To be honest, I was a bit afraid that with my focus on trail and steep hills that my pace would be affected for road running.  I have made some gains in the past couple of months, especially when taking advantage of the Wednesday group runs.  However,  I found that my road pace has continued to drop, with the most recent 7.7 mile road loop on the Ygnacio Valley Canal trail averaging 9:22. Take out the first mile “warm up” and the pace is 9:02.  Much better than the 9:47 that I had settled into.  So the trail running actually helped instead of hurt this time.

While I felt that I might have bit off more than I could chew with this schedule, it is looking more and more as if things are going to work out fine.  Let’s see how January goes.