Run the Climb
1:20:00 – 5.2 miles
This will be one of those days I’m happy to be on conference calls for 6 hours. My legs should be feeling it from this morning’s time on the treadmill. As I’m one that’s up for any ideas of a practice run whether it relate to food or type of run. I once again turned to Twitter for advice in particular to training for the Leadville 100.
This time my question was answered by Paul “Crazy Legs” Stofko. Paul has completed the Leadville 100 5 times, so he had my attention! My biggest question was how do I fit in the runs between family, day job, & consulting? I want to make sure I run enough to complete 100 miles while not dieing. His response was that the long runs will be the bread and butter of my training. That means a 3 hour run then next day a 2 hour run. Cool, I can do that.
With me taking on the goal of a being a curious listener, I continued to ask more. What about cross training? He said that 1 day a week he would do an hour on the treadmill at 15% incline. His reason for this was that he lives in Indiana and there’s about a 10,000 feet difference in elevation. So this morning I decided to give the 15% incline for an hour a whirl. Maybe it was just me, but it felt like time was crawling slower then my steps. I had to crank the music up and do everything possible to not look at the time. My heart rate was quite high for the entire time and felt muscles that have not been worked in quite some time.
The photo here is for the time on the climb and prior to climbing I did a 20 minute jog to warm up. I’m pretty happy with this workout from a mixing it up and mental training aspect. We will see if I’m able to get out of the chair later, but adding an incline workout makes sense. Afterall, ultras generally involve running over a mountain on two.
