The Long and Winding Trail: Massanutten Mileage

Here we are at the start of May. The area's flora is quickly brightening and well on its way to full bloom. Trail surfaces are drying up and daylight hours are increasing. In other words, it's a great time of the year to come out of hibernation and step off the roads onto the trails.

The following are scattered thoughts on what has been my strongest training block to date.

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At the time of this writing, we're only 15 days out from the Massanutten Mountain Trails 100, which happens to be my focus race for the first half of 2019. This past weekend (April 27-28) I completed a huge training block for MMT and am now in the midst of a three-week taper. I think this has been the best training block I've ever had, for any race or distance, and am feeling very confident about breaking 24 hours at Massanutten.

Starting the third week of December, I began the training block with a series of two or three tempo interval workouts per week for five weeks. I followed that up with a string of several 70- to 80-mile weeks, mostly on roads and occasionally on a treadmill. I largely avoided snowy, icy trails so that I could increase my cardiovascular fitness with tempo intervals and steady paced, medium length runs. The treacherous footing on trails would make the pace so slow that I wouldn't be able to benefit from
running the way I intended to. That said, I did run a few snowy trail races as long runs and workouts—the Frozen Branch 50k, the Super Frosty Loomis Snowshoe 10k, and Trail Methods Last Runner Standing—and hiked Lone Mountain and Rocky Mountain in the Catskills with Adam in January.

Mid-March saw an 85-mile week, my longest in quite some time, followed immediately by an ankle injury. I think the high mileage overstretched a ligament in my right ankle, making it painful to run on. After a week of rest, in which I panicked more than the average stockholder in October 1929 and drove Hayley nuts with my whining, the ankle felt better and I ramped back up for string of 80+ mile weeks. (You can find my runs on Strava if you're actually interested in this.)

This brought us into April, where I enjoyed running huge mileage—nearly all of it on trails. The Ithaca winter wasn't all that severe and didn't linger much beyond mid-March, giving us muddy but runnable trails earlier in the year when compared to recent years. April saw four high mileage weeks in a row—80, 81, 75, and 90 miles—with 50-mile weekends on the second and fourth weeks. (Family obligations brought the mileage down on the third week. I otherwise would have been up to about 90.) That first week included the Palmers Pond FatAss 50k on Saturday, and a slow jog of the Skunk Cabbage Classic Half Marathon on Sunday.

By the time I reached this four-week period, my fitness had already improved noticeably and the long runs were becoming easier, especially on day two of the back-to-backs. It's a great feeling when all the effort you put into something begins to pay off and your body noticeably adapts.

My favorite part of the entire training cycle was the solo long runs on trails. It was so enjoyable to explore the trails less traveled on the more remote sections of the Finger Lakes Trail. The highlight was my final long run on the FLT Onandoga Branch from Morgan Hill to the DeRuyter Reservoir and back. This route comprises beautiful and challenging singletrack through pine beds, some nice views of the reservoir, and around 4,000 feet of vert.

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The MMT 100 is a (mostly) single-loop race on rocky trails in northern Virginia. The challenging terrain, little repetition, and 25-year event history are what sold me on the idea. I'll be running in the Solo Division—that is, no crew, no pacer, no headphones—and trying to break 24 hours and bring home a silver belt buckle. (Those who finish over 24 hours still receive a pewter buckle.) At 100.6 miles, I'll have to average 14:18 per mile to nab the silver.

Jamie Hobbs, an ultrarunner from Rochester, wrote an excellent, detailed race report for #TrailsRoc about his 2017 Massanutten run. I've used this as the basis for my pre-race knowledge of the course. Based on my current fitness level, it seems reasonable to follow a pace chart with Jamie's splits for a sub-24. He ran a 23:41 in his first 100-mile attempt and was the final sub-24 finisher that year, although he was crewed by Dan and Amy Lopata, who knew the course well. As a solo runner, I won't have that benefit. However...

At that time, the course measured 103.7 miles (per the race website). New for 2019, they lopped 5k and a rocky, 900-foot climb off the final section. Now it's three miles down a dirt road after the final aid station. This change will give me some extra leeway if I fall behind on the splits. I've also contacted Jamie to get some more intel on the course, and he was kind enough to provide with a detailed description beyond what's in his blog post. He also confirmed that MMT's advertised 18,500 feet of gain seems pretty close to accurate.

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I'm writing this two weeks out from race day eve. This will be two more weeks of a three-week taper, and includes FLRC's Thom B Trail Marathon tomorrow morning. I think I can turn out a solid marathon performance without beating myself up and manage something in the low four-hour range.

That's it for now. To anyone reading this, I hope your spring training is going well. See ya out there!