March Madness

So, have you been following the NCAA BB tournament? Very fun. Lot's of upsets and Cinderella's playing. (see ya Kansas, Villanova.)

It would be awesome if the BCS could let the college football teams have a playoff.

2nd 20 miler is in the bag for this training period (3rd if I count the New Year's day run with OldMan.) Today's Nashville Strider training run was on the CMM course and covered the 1/2 marathon course with 7 miles tacked on. It's a confidence booster to run the 1/2 in around 1:49, which would put me on pace for 3:45 time for the Full. I would be very satisfied with that for my time. Problem is, the 7 miles after the 1/2 course were much slower and I could feel the BONK heading my way. In fairness to me, I repeated some of the hillier portion of the 1/2 on my way back to the start/finish of this run, and the 2nd half of the Full is not as hilly. Still, 20 miles is 20 miles. I'm going to shoot for 2 more 20 milers in this training run, one on my own and one with the Striders.

Next weekend will be a fun/hard one for me. I'm going to be doing my first trail race in Chattanooga. If you ever been to Chattanooga, then you know that it is in the foothills of the Smokey Mountain's (you should interpret this as HILLY). It is a 10.2 mile "leg" of the StumpJump 50K course (The "easy" section of the course.)

Here is the description:
These are single track trails with varied terrain. Lots of hills, rocks, and the occasional mild stream crossing. - Remember that trail running is strenuous.  Practice before you participate; it makes the race more fun.

Yes, hilly trails have kicked my butt when I have ran them in the past but I am going to go have fun with it. My nephew lives down towards Chattanooga and has run on these trails before, and he says they are hard, but worth the effort. He is a very good runner, so I hope he doesn't feel obligated to wait on me.

If I can finish in 2 hours that would probably be a boost, and I get to see if I REALLY WANT TO TRY STUMPJUMP in the fall. We'll see, but when I was on mile 19 today, I told myself, "self, I'm not too sure you want to be trying to run 32 miles on those Chattanooga hills, because the hills (i.e. bumps) on this training run is kicking your rear - R U CRAZY ???"