The 50k: it’s not about the distance, really. It’s how you get there.

My husband says the title of this post should have been, “The 50k, finally.” I admit it has taken me a few years and several false starts to get here. For more than a few years he really thought the race itself would kill me. I really thought the training would kill me.

Hal Higdon’s training programs have always been my go-to marathon plans. His 50k program lasts 26 weeks. Six months. The first 18 weeks follow a typical marathon training plan on steroids with three 20-mile runs and one full marathon (26.2 miles for those non runner readers). Then we get to the really fun training weeks where the long runs are simply described by how many hours one should run in one session. When I trained for the 50k a couple of years ago, it wasn’t that I got injured. I just wore myself out.

Luckily for me I’m retired so that I can run every morning. This is handy when you still want to have a life. I followed a Canadian marathoner last year. She ran before work, sometimes during her lunch break, after dinner wearing a headlamp, and followed a long-run route that crossed a frozen lake. We’ve all been there. You just do what you’ve got to do. Even in retirement our alarm routinely rings at 5:30a so I can finish a run before lunch. And if you’re determined to be the best you can be, this doesn’t last for 12, 18, or 26 weeks. If you want to be really good, you follow this schedule to some degree or another all year.

Earlier this year I remembered reading from a fellow runner (Dan’s Marathon) about the ChicagoUltra. The full 31.1-mile course is on the Chicago Lakefront path – imagine flat, scenic, flat, a slight breeze, flat . . . sheer bliss. Even better when I realized this could be an anniversary race of sorts. I ran my first marathon in Chicago in 2007. How perfect to run my first ultra in Chicago ten years later. . . maybe nothing’s worse than a nostalgic runner.

My husband and I decided on a training plan that wouldn’t kill me and I began training in May. Some number of months later, there was an out-of-state family emergency.

It came on a Wednesday. No problem I thought, and I reworked my schedule to accommodate two days off in the middle of the week. Then the same family emergency came again the next week.

It was at the end of the second week that I told my husband I had really screwed up. I had run 80% of the week’s miles in three days for two weeks in a row: Friday, Saturday and Sunday, with the long run on Saturday both weeks. One week later I ended the Saturday long run with stress fractures in both feet.

In my last post I wrote about stress fractures of the lower leg: “Studies released this year build on a growing body of research that suggests it’s not how much you train in isolation, but how the training load changes (training load errors).”

The strategy for this year will go down as “go for broke.” I went into full recovery mode training thinking there was nothing to lose. I had already been cycling for cross-training, so I ramped up the cycling schedule, added extra long walks as soon as I could walk without it hurting, and spent serious recovery time focused on being off my feet. Four weeks later I was able to restart my training.

I’ve emotionally held my breath for every run. Going back to Hal’s programs, I settled on another one that would pick up where I had left off, and hopefully prepare me for the race without re-injuring my feet. Last Saturday I finished my longest training run, and (as of now) I’m still injury-free.

My dad has once again agreed to babysit the dogs, I’ve paid my money, and I’m finally registered for my first 50k.

My husband used to warn us about getting too excited about a successful meeting with investors years ago in our start-up businesses by saying, “It’s a long way from the cup to the lip.” In other words, lots of things can go wrong in a short space of time.

Today is the first day of a shortened 2-week taper, and although lots of things could go wrong, I’m still on a strategy of go for broke. Race day is Saturday, October 28th. Stay tuned.