I am committed. I decided to change my fall race goal from full marathon to ultra marathon (in the shortest sense of the word!). I am going to do the Run for the Toad race at the end of September. It seems like a great race, and good for me on a number of fronts: a few months away so I can build up my mileage, close to home, not unimaginably long (like 50 & 100 milers still are to me) and it’s well established (which usually equates to well organized!).  The reviews of this race are great, and I am really looking forward to it.

Though I realize this is the shallowest end of the ultra pool, I am hoping the experience will lead to even longer races.  I remember being in awe at the amount of time that Adam Campbell (and the other 799 participants) spent running in the Ultra Trail Mount Fuji race at the end of May.  I was up early before work, and was streaming the race on my computer – at 6AM racers were coming into an aid station in the dark after starting much earlier.  I headed off to work for the day, then came home and spent the evening removing 2 trees from my front yard.  We put the kids to bed, and later that night (around 10PM) I watched Adam Campbell finish UTMF in second place at 19 hrs 26 mins.  I thought about how much time had passed in my life and the fact that these racers were going that whole time (and more).  Someday when my kids are older I would love to train for something like that, but for now I will be happy to build up to the 50K distance.

I will try to summarize how my training towards this distance is going in my future blog posts.  I can already see that I am going to have to be creative to make up the time for some of my long runs.  Today I split up a longer run – 12K to work in the morning and 12K home at the end of the day.  I tried to work on my pacing, and keep it slower and sustainable.  This will be my biggest challenge!

Not a bad view on some parts of my morning run to work