5 months has come down to this!

It started out as a very casual conversation between Ken and I as we were running in the Seaton trail one Tuesday morning. I told him about my desire to run a 50 mile trail race and was targetting Sulphur Springs in May. I told him that I wanted to run the Seaton 52K as a training run for that race. He then said, "why don't you run the 78K in Seaton instead?"

As he said that my focus shifted from Sulphur to Seaton and I decided that I would make the Seaton my "virgin" 50 Mile race. It made sense since I have been running the Seaton trails for the last 3 years. Even though I still get lost I still know the terrain very well. Many of the trail runners joke about the fact that it is my home base. In fact, I'm the only person from the Pickering/Ajax area who is signed up for the 78K trail race this Saturday which I find very ironic.

Whenever I make up my mind to do something I usually get it done and as soon as decided that this was something I wanted to do, I researched about a dozen different training programs for running a 50 mile race.

The problem was that there are so many different models to choose from and because of the fact that I have my 2 boys so much on my own, it limits my ability to follow an "exact" plan. There were times where I had to run for 7 consecutive days and then take 3 days off because that's the best I could do. Other times I had to run at 5 AM just to make sure that I got my mileage in.

These last months have taken it's toll on me physically and mentally mostly because of the extreme weather conditions that I have run in over the winter months. This has included wind chills of minus 25, freezing rain, wind gusts of 50KM's per hour, icy sidewalks and impolite drivers (LOL).

I've had to do the bulk of my training on my own which hasn't always been easy. I'm proud of the fact that I never quit on any run during my training and this has increased my internal strength tremendously. There were certain training runs that will stand out for me and that included driving to St. Catharines to run with Diane, who is an amazing trail runner and running through incredibly cold wind gusts where I honestly was hoping that a car would hit me and put me out of my misery!

Over the course of thes past months there must have been close to 80 training runs and I'll remember the good and bad ones while I'm racing on Saturday. I've done everything I can to prepare for this race and now all I can do is wait for Saturday to get here. Between now and then I'll do lots of thinking and will stay as positive and focused as possible.