thruhikemaine

Posted in the challenge before I realized this was last month. Bravo on some great things happening in this challenge, will now find the next one!

Makes me want to live in a warmer climate. Earliest race in the northeast is April! Hoping to go out west in 2017, no HH or HH12HR in northeast!

Nice and simple! any thoughts on which parts of your workout your trimmingo out at this point?

Which race were you considering?

Has anyone in nerd fitness attempted a Hurricane Heat 12 HR? I am considering attempting this, but am wondering if anyone had any personal experience I can learn from.

Just looking, as it looks like I missed a fellow nerd last year, any nerds looking at going to Killington next year?

well, Didn't realize this was a thing. AWESOME! Will be there volunteering and racing all weekend!

Either that or I'm going to die young!!!! Nah no midlife crisis, I just always thought sailboats were awesome, and I likely have found one that is affordable and in pretty good shape! I ended up buying a used fluid trainer, a travel trac millennium. From the reviews I have found it tends to overheat, so I will need a small fan blowing over it, but other than that it's supposed to be amazing (and it was used only twice, so really isn't very used). Last week involved 2 things - running a 50k and meditating. I did all my planned meditations, and seem to be turning that into a habit. The 50k, was brutal. I summited 1 mountain 4 times, and another one 2 times. If I had stopped at 25k (the end of the first lap) I would've considered the race within the range of sanity. Since I decided not to stop, I became in what is somehow affectionately called "the sufferfest". By the last 2 checkpoints, every swallow of food or water brought the question "am I going to puke?" The whole time my mind was trying to convice my brain and body to give up. It got louder and louder, only quieting down when I screamed, "fuck you, get moving!" out loud. (Thank god there weren't to many kids at this race!) I kept forcing myself to eat, because my body was starting to give up completely (I didn't have much feeling in my arms). I made it, coming in last place, 3 minutes before the 9 hour cutoff. I made it though, and impressed the hell out of myself (turns out my girlfriend finds it pretty impressive too!) Unfortunetly, I also injured my knee. Lining the symptoms up - Pain on the outside of the kneePain is increased going uphillPain occured suddenly after a sudden increase in physical demand (read - that race was huge!)It looks like I have IT band syndrome. Which sucks, as I had 4 more races coming up - 2 next weekend - and some are definitely going to need to be cut out. But this is the last week of the challenge so this week is going to be about messages, ICE, and strength training. IT band injuries apparently stem from hip and glute weakness, and my right hip has been feeling the leg raises more than my left hip, so I am going to take this week to do the massages and ICE, while making a plan to strengthen my hips. Any tips for recovery appreciated!

I may be tempted to join you for that. I'm training to bust the fastest known time on the presidential traverse anyways, why not keep the crazy going!

Alright thoughts on Killington (sorry for being late). For me Killington was hard but a blessing. The hill climbs were unreal, which included 2 full climbs up the mountain plus multiple smaller steep woods climbs. There was 2 of a lot of obstacles, including the spear throw (0 for 4 now) atlas carry, and so many walls to climb over I lost count. There was even 3 barbed wire crawls, all pretty long. The tire drag was uphill and the tires so big it took me a while to get it moving. I nearly puked and fainted doing burpees while starring at the finish line. I found the race challenging, even with only 1 water element. The one negative to the course was the lack of preparation by the crew. I waited 40 minutes at a water station for water because they were not well stocked up. At the same time I think that's more on the resort crew, as the cause was a lack of water pressure. I think this was unfairly laid on the crew, who have to work with what is given to them. It was nice to see Joe trying to find some way he could alleviate this problem personally, something many at the corporate level of big businesses would never do.

Well, I suck at keeping this thing updated that's for sure! This last week was spot on for my activities, although it's REALLY HARD to not pay attention to the distance when your on a treadmill. I ran inside once due to the gross weather. I also did all 3 of my meditations, although 20 minutes was a bit of a struggle to stick with. This week i'm changing my workout schedule, as I have decided for my 29th birthday (tomorrow) I am going to do something completely crazy and out of the range of sanity. So crazy my sister laughed and decided to come watch the crazy spectacle. On October 18th, I will be doing a 50k with 9k ft of elevation change, fully twice the distance of any race I have ever attempted. Can I do this? I haven't a clue. The last time something I did involved over 30 miles, I was backpacking and it took me almost 3 days. I'm going into this positive though, planning as if I am going to complete it before the cutoff of 9 hours. I've got food ready, water planned out, and even a small cheering squad. So this week will still have a short run, and a short bike ride, but no hill climb and no body weight training. Meditation will still happen (likely not done after my 50k) but my left hip is very sore so self massage sessions are a must. From this week on, every week is likely going to have to be a lower volume week, as almost every weekend I have a race. But, that doesn't mean I am not looking towards the future and what I will be doing in the next challenge. On that front - Just ordered an indoor bike trainer. My extra time not training will now be spent cleaning my room and rearranging furniture to fit this into my room. The plan will be to start with 2 hours of biking weekly indoors, and possibly add more time as winter progresses. I have this vague idea of seeing how quickly I can bike the coast of maine, with the first attempt being next fall.Looking at how tight money is, I am looking at ways to free up money so that I have more funds available for athletic endeavors. As crazy as it sounds, I might move onto a sailboat.This week has possibly been a radical start to an interesting new life!

Haven't updated in a while, so here's me catching up. Last week was a recovery week, but I went a little to far on the rest end. I only ran once and only meditated once. I was bummed out at first by missing some goals last week, but have approached this week wanting to be back on track, and so far I have done 1 run, 1 hill training and 2 meditations. Since it was raining pretty hard yesterday, I caved and did my run on the treadmill at the gym. This made it impossible to focus just on the time, but instead of focusing on a pace or speed, I did interval training. I did 5 minutes at a low speed, than added 2.1 mph for one minute, subtracting 2 mph at the end of the minute. This ended up increasing my speed by 0.1 mph throughout the workout, and I ended up moving at a pretty good speed by the end of the workout. the hill training was the best one I have done yet, setting a new record of 125 floors in 30 minutes. The first meditation I attempted was for 30 minutes, but I wasn't able to sit still that long. I ended at 20 minutes and am changing my goal to 20 minutes for my longer session instead of 30 minutes. I also did a 10 minute meditation last night. Since I ran without compression shorts and caused some pain on my inner thigh, I am going to do my 2 hour bike ride tomorrow, and put an audiobook on my phone instead of pump up music to remind my brain that it's supposed to be slow and steady. Also hope to be posting a recap of the beast later this week.

Little over halfway done with week 2, and have done 1 half hour meditation, 1 10 minute meditation, and 1 30 minute meditation. Will update on the beast later!

A few on my team are thinking hurricane heat, beast and ultra beast. Not sure if I'm up for that yet

I think there is a beast in new jersey. They list one in western mass for pre reg every year but they have yet to actually do it.