Grindstone 100 Miler Prep - Week 1 recap
This week kicked off my training for the Grindstone 100 miler that’s takes place in the Shenandoah valley in Virginia in mid September. The week did not start off the greatest. I was going to be driving 9 hours total for an errand on Monday to Big Stone Gap Va. and back, so being in a vehicle all day was not ideal. However, I planned to make the most out of it and found a trail near my destination that I could get in a few miles in the mountains.
I planned on running the roaring branch trail just a mile outside of Big Stone Gap. It took me a half hour to figure out where the trail head was as it starts just on the side of the road with no parking (parking is a couple tenths up the road which took a bit of research to figure out). Once I finally figured it out I was on my way.
Shortly into starting the hike I realized it wasn’t going to be ideal for training as there were several large trees down across the trail that you had to climb over. The further I went the worst it got. About 3/4 of a mile in the trail appears to cross the creek but there were so many trees down I could not find where it came out at on the other side, so decided to cut my losses on a good training day and head back. I did 1.5 miles and it took about 50 minutes.
Tuesday was an easier day, I did about 10mins of core work and then 10 easy miles on the treadmill keeping my HR in zone 2.
Wednesday I did a hard track workout, 1K Repeats at about 5:50 pace.
Thursday morning I did muscle endurance training in the gym. This consist of the below. All workouts I used 8lbs dumbbells. I did 3x20 of each exercise with 1min rest between sets.
Squats
Lunges
Step ups
Jumping split squats (I didn’t use dumbbells for this one)
Frontal step downs
Single leg calf raises
The light weight might make this sound easy but it will leave you quite sore. The idea is to train your muscles for endurance so you can build fatigue resistance late in a race that has lots of vertical gain and loss, which Grindstone has (roughly 21,000ft of it).
Thursday afternoon I did 12 miles at some local trails. I tried to keep effort easy but my legs were already sore from the workout that morning so it was hard to not feel like I was working as I did 1500ft of gain on this run.
Saw a lot of deer on this run
Friday we did core work again and then an easy day on the treadmill. 90mins at easy pace/Z1 recovery HR. About 8.3 miles.
Saturday was an easy 10miles with some rolling hills and then yard work that afternoon.
Sunday, we did a big day at Hanging Rock state park. It’s the first mountains near the Virginia border in the Central/Piedmont NC. It’s become my go to place for mountain ultra training as it’s the closest mountains I can to (about 1hr 20mins). We did 25 miles and 5,000ft of vert. So a good solid day of training.
View from the top of Cooks Wall in Hanging Rock State Park
For this build I’m trying some new things. I used an ice bandana for the first time and definitely helped to keep me cooler for about 30mins or so. I am also trying new sports nutrition. I’m testing out GU Roctane drink mix and GU Cola flavored liquid gels. I had GI issues and had to stop twice to answer natures call. I’m also not a huge fan of the Cola flavored gels. I’ll be going back to Tailwind for my drink mix. I’ll may try out some other gels like Precision and SIS. I’m officially scratching of GU product for me though.
It’s important to practice these things in training to find what works best for you and what your body tolerates.
Additionally, I am trying to increase Carbs per hour. I was able to avg right at 100per hr for this run which I was happy with. I plan to get up to 120gr per hour in training knowing I won’t be using that much during the race. The theory is that if I can train my gut to tolerate that amount, if I use less in race day my body will be well adapted to the amount and I won’t have any GI issues. Time will tell.
Overall, it was a good week. We got in 75+ miles on the week (74 in six days) and 8,000ft of vertical. A great start to this build with plans to get up to 100 MPW and 30,000ft of vertical at peak training.
