I am officially in training mode for Capital Backyard and am right on track where I want to be with 192 miles for January after today’s run! My training plan is to use December’s mileage as my baseline and match or exceed my monthly mileage from the previous month until May. I hit that target for January even with record breaking snowfall and a week long bout of the stomach flu in our household. I wasn’t sure if it was going to happen with those extra challenges, but I managed to keep this train on the tracks. Three more months of training with tentative monthly mileage goals then it will be time to run some yards before I know it. I am psyched! My only worry is that I may have started out too hard. I question whether I can keep the momentum and energy going for the next 3.5 months. I fear I may burn out in March or April. Earning a place on the US International Backyard Team to run at Big’s Backyard this October is a big goal which requires a big effort. No other way to do it other than to put in the work and grind!
I am a Midwesterner (Quad Cities) who relocated to the East Coast (NJ) in 2006. I have been interested in trail running since before I realized I was a fan of running. Some of my most vivid and pleasant childhood memories are of sprinting on a dirt trail imagining I was Indiana Jones escaping from the Temple of Doom. Things have changed a bit since then, but not completely. I still do a good amount of imagining and daydreaming while trail running, but for the most part at a more sustainable pace.
I ran my first marathon in 2009. I began training for what I hoped to be my first ultramarathon in 2013. Unfortunately, as I began to increase my mileage I was hindered by an unrelenting pain in my hip every time I ran which lasted for several days following the run. After several visits with the doctor, x-rays, an MRI, and a visit with a surgeon I decided corrective surgery was the best option. The arthroscopic hip surgery repaired the anterior labral tear. According to the surgeon, my labrum was shredded due to a bone spur which caused a one way valve to form resulting in a painful cyst. Therefore, the shredded cartilage was cut out, the bone spur was shaved off, and the cyst removed. Two years later, I ran my first ultramarathon, the 2015 Blues Cruise in Leesport, PA.
Since then my passion for trail running and ultrarunning has only grown. I somewhat inadvertently ran my first 100 miler in 2016. The 2016 season was coming to an end and I realized I was the most physically capable of finishing a 100 miler than I had ever been. I decided to go for it and registered for a 100 mile race. It went far better than I had ever hoped it would. Up until that time, I had thought about writing race reports, but never did. I figured no one really wants to read about me running some race. Ironically, at the same time I was reading and enjoying other race reports regularly. Following finishing the 100 miler, I decided I would write a race report on it. Even if no one else wanted to read it, I wanted to have an accurate recollection of it. I found I enjoyed recalling the details of the event and reinterpreting them in a race report format. Since then, I have made the process of writing a race report a standard part of my ultrarunning habit.
