Karl Meltzer Appalachian Trail 2014

This morning I had the great fortune of seeing Karl Meltzer (aka Speedgoat) working his way southbound on the Appalachian trail. Karl is going after the record for the end-to-end hike currently held by Jennifer Pharr Davis, who completed the feat in 46 days, 11 hours and 20 minutes.

Here he is descending into Gathland State Park ...

... and this one of us just before he disappeared into the woods.

I have a hard time coming to grips with the challenge he's undertaking.  I've run over this section of trail quite a few times - it's part of the JFK50 Mile course.  I always think that getting out there and running that trail makes for a 'hard' training day.  I'm just gob-smacked by the notion that he did way more than that after he disappeared on the trail today, and that he's been doing this every day since July 27th.

Keep your feet under you Karl, and God speed!

today's comic

This was today's "Non Sequiter" comic.

Moses was an older guy who knew how hard it could be to go the distance.

vertical

Vertical ascent is one of my new favorite training metrics.  You don't get much vertical running in the suburbs!  The streets in my neighborhood do roll up and down, but my new Garmin reports I get just 400 feet of vertical climb on a typical 5.5 mile loop I run a lot.  The biggest hill near my house - Powhatan Hill - rises 110 feet over .4 miles and seems like a grind every time I run up it.

Looking at the elevation profile of the JFK50, there is a vertical climb of 1200 feet in the first 5 miles.  That's a bit daunting if I equate it to running up my own Powhatan Hill ten times in a row, and then still having 45 mile run to go.  Last weekend I took my water bottle to the base of Powhatan Hill and ran it ten times just for the vertical.  I now track my total vertical ascent, and plan to add more climbing to my workouts every where I can.

So with my new interest in tracking vertical, the list of things I watch or try to include week-to-week to manage my training includes:

- my total mileage as a sliding 7-day sum

- long runs

- intervals (long intervals up grade or on hills, but I still enjoy running 400's on the treadmill)

- vertical ascent

- heart rate data, to track TRIMP / ATL / CTL as used in SportTracks Training Load software

Punxy progress report

In my last post I wrote a bit about my 'crash' training plan to get ready for the Punxsutawney 50K. Here's an update now that the race is just four weeks and a handful of days away.  The good news is that I've trained hard and made a lot of progress. I haven't hurt myself (though I did run with inadequate recovery time in my drive to rapidly build my weekly mileage).   I've had some hard, strongly-improving workouts, but I'm lacking in the long runs needed to really be ready  Punxsy will be a struggle  - I really started late...