Some of us did not stay up until midnight to ring in the New Year.
Happy New Year! I don’t know about you but I am excited about 2024. I have felt a shift inside over the last month and feel like I am carrying a good perspective and mindset into the new year. I am not hoping for the best year ever, instead I am working on being in a place where I am ready, willing and able to take on what I face without resistance. 2023 felt like a debacle from the start and a lot of that was simply resistance over things not going how I wanted them to. It is not that I am expecting the worst out of 2024, it is more that I feel like I am not basing my mental/emotional state on things working out as I planned. I have some great goals and plans and intentions, but I am holding them a lot lighter than I did last year. I am excited for the opportunities on my plan, but also feel like I am in a place where I am “loving what is” and am more excited about how I am approaching each day, then worried about any single outcome or goal or plan.
To catch you up, the last two weeks could not be more diametrically opposed. The end of the week before Christmas I was still very much struggling to feel healthy or good in any way. My runs felt awful and I spent most of my time feeling like I was able to fall over at any second. I felt like I had lost all of my pep and fitness, although I do not say that in the catastrophizing way that athletes usually mean. I was not worried that my fitness had actually diminished as I understand the science of detraining and it doesn’t happen from taking 5 days off for being sick. But I definitely continued to feel the effects of being sick which feel a lot like a robber in the night stole your fitness. I didn’t worry as I knew it would come back eventually. I was not stressed. I simply did what I could to feel good. I still was not feeling very good on Christmas, but Nathan and I enjoyed a quiet Christmas at home with the animals.
On Wednesday of last week (December 27th), I kicked off a challenge that I have been planning since I started my training for FURTHER. I started a DOUBLE David Goggins’ Challenge, which meant I would be running 4 miles every 4 hours for 4 full days (96 hours). The normal Goggins’ challenge is 4x4x48, but I figured I needed to level up if I wanted to get the learnings I needed for FURTHER. It certainly delivered.
I filmed everything and made a decently long YouTube video about it, so I will not be recapping it again in this newsletter. But you can watch that video HERE.
Currently, I am just recovering from running 96 miles in 4 days (which was actually 114 miles since I was also solo with the animals which means almost 5 miles of dog walks a day on top of 6 runs). I feel mostly good, which was what I had hoped. I was mostly testing a theory that there is a way to run a lot without totally breaking your body down. I feel like I accomplished that. I am mostly recovering from the weird sleep schedule as running at 8pm/ midnight/ 4am doesn’t make for the best sleep. Although I will say, one of the best discoveries I had was that I can feel very rested and refreshed after just 2.5-3 hours of sleep. I also practiced getting down to rest and awake to run quickly and was very excited to see how my body responded. Sleep is going to be a big factor in performance at FURTHER so it was great to get this data. I will not be doing much sleep deprivation beyond this in my training so I was pleased that I was able to get so much rest and feel rested. I definitely admit that I am very pleased that this 4 day challenge didn’t mean I had to feel totally wrecked and like a zombie, which I do not enjoy. My body felt great during the challenge and I really never felt like there was an “oh shit” moment in which I really had to call upon my toolkit of problem solving. I think my brain really liked the repetition and the schedule. I didn’t really have to rely on motivation, I simply ran when I was supposed to. My routine was very simple and that made it also predictable and enjoyable. I would run, eat, take care of the animals, do some work and then repeat, during the day. At night I would run, drink a recovery shake, sleep, repeat. Overall, my pace never lagged and I pretty much ran the same pace the entire time which was delightful to see.
Now I am heading into week 7, I am focused on proper recovery from this challenge as well as getting ready for my next challenge which will be Houston Marathon followed 6 days later by Coldwater Rumble 100 mile. I am using it like the Goggins’ challenge as a specific training block for FURTHER and will be interested to see how I handle it. I am very pleased with how December went, despite getting sick and am excited to see how January unfolds. The only sadness I have is that I didn’t get an opportunity to put in quality workouts for Houston as I was excited to let it rip on a fast course. I am not saying I won’t give it my best, but I figure best case scenario I will probably run the pace I usually do in a marathon instead of having the opportunity to send it for a marathon PR. I still think I have a much faster marathon in me so maybe in 2025 I will give it a proper go. 2024 won’t be the year for that as my current race plan is pretty much the most incongruent to racing a fast marathon.
Ok, that’s all the energy I have for now, so will hopefully be back on the more weekly dispatch this week. I hope you had a great start to the new year and are looking forward to great things ahead!