"10 miler Tuesdays" continue; midnight 20 milers = running goodness

Really digging the 10 miler Tuesdays, and it's becoming a hard and fast effort as part of 50 miler training for me. It's really encouraging for me to see that I can now hammer out 45+ miles per week without issue, injury or fatigue. I know that ultramarathon training is supposed to get you to that point, and it really seems to be working well for me thus far.

I will finish up this week with around 50 miles, which is a decent week of training for me. Along with the "Tuesday 10", I"m incorporating Thursdays as hill workout sessions, and Monday and Wednesdays as 7-8 mile easy/recovery days. Saturday marks long run day, and I'm being considerably more disciplined about my long runs, and that's a first for me. During previous marathon training seasons, I was quick to cut out a long run at a moments' notice, knowing that if I grabbed a couple of 18 milers and a single 20 miler, I would be okay for race day. Not with ultra training. I've hit every single long run (except one) AND the back-to-back run that follows on Sunday. In fact, here's the breakdown of what I've done for long runs thus far:

• Two 12 milers
• Three 14 milers
• One 16 miler
• One 18 miler
• One 20 miler

The sweet thing is that I've done all of these within the first (6) weeks of training for the North Face 50 miler in October. By the time I toe the line on race day, my long run mileage tally will look like:

• Eight 12 milers
• Ten 14 milers
• Six 16 milers
• Six 18 milers
• Five 20 milers

The latest "weird thing" in my training revolves around the timing of my workouts. For the past few years, I've been religiously up at 4:30am to get the day started with a run. Since last November, I just have not had the discipline to be consistent about getting up that early to run. Eventually, I would find myself running in the late evening/lunch/nighttime hours, but it was not consistent at any single time of day. Since summer has started, I have (for some strange reason) gotten back into the swing of really enjoying doing my run (ESPECIALLY long runs) around 11pm. 

This just seems to really work for me, and it's the weirdest thing. Last night saw me start a 20 miler around 11:40pm, and I ran until around 3:15am this morning. I remember how much I used to enjoy running in the dark, and it really is speaking to me again now. I love just running through our neighborhood while the entire street is dark and everyone is asleep. For me, it seems to be easier (for now, anyway) to run until the wee hours of the morning, come in and shower, and go to bed. My wife thinks I've lost my mind, but I seem to make her think that on a regular basis anyway. :)

At least for now, I'm living the title of the blog; I'm definitely running after daylight ... :)