Kyrie Eleison (2023 Badwater 135 Training)

I was recently having some completely natural doubts about covering the Badwater course again.  I’ve shared with several people that the entire endeavor seems more forboding the second time than the first; the first I had the fear of the un known, but this time I have the fear of the known.  I know there is no amount of sweat, tears, miles, or elevation I can put in that will make this race easier.  The best I can hope for is to make pieces of it a little “less hard,” and I will continue faithfully in those efforts over these next ten weeks.  All that said and done, I still sit here today and think “how on earth do I do that again?” Darris chimed in and reminded me that’s why I’m doing the work; right now I am not ready, but by July I will have transformed into iron.  “Well, right now I feel like tin foil,” I responded. Somehow this devolved into a ridiculous conversation about the stages of becoming iron, which – serendipitously – mirror the training blocks I...

So that escalated quickly. Back-to-back weeks of increasing run mileage, additional hiking miles, time in the sauna, and reacquainting myself with balancing work obligations and the additional sleep my body is demanding had me overwhelmed, motivated, and completely drained - sometimes all on the same day.  The line between complete preparation and overtraining for Badwater is even more blurred than a "standard" 100, and while I definitely danced with that line a bit, I also recognized it and made the adjustments my body started screaming for.  I'm excited to see the early signs of increased fitness ~ and thrilled to have a lower volume recovery/taper week that includes two days off before heading into the next tougher block. Because work, family, and church demands (Holy Week) got the best of me in week 3, including a Thursday that boasted two doctor's appts for me as well as our cat Oliver having five teeth pulled, I supply only totals: 75 miles running including a ...

Week two saw a deliberate hold on mileage, but layered in my first sauna sessions, the “Towne Pass Trainer,” dedicated uphill hiking, and more frequent upper body and core work.  The result, as expected, was increasingly tired and heavy legs, a literal cat nap on Thursday afternoon, and an impending feeling of doom. Okay, not quite “doom.”  But definitely “what on Earth have I gotten myself into?  AGAIN?!?!” I’ve generally found the first two weeks and the last two weeks of a hard training cycle to be the most difficult – the first two adapting to the volume of work, the last two just counting down the days to the taper.  Hoping this holds true for this cycle as well, and therefore bracing myself for the week to come.  (I consider last week more a recovery week from Cape Fear than dedicated training, so while I count it as “week one” of Badwater training, it is this past week and the one to come that are really turning up the volume.) With that, the detail...