Running into Bear, Horse & Fish

Last night I had an amazing 6 mile run late @ a 7:00 min/mile pace, 8:00pm-ish in the dark in Central Park & lots of people were still out running. This morning I clocked 8 more which brings me to 64 miles in the last 4 and a half days. I've got 2 and a half days left to clock 36 miles and notch a 100 mile week. I feel strong & mechanically solid - no pains of any kind. The NYC Marathon is in 45 days + some hours. I do want to average about 14 - 15 miles / day for the next 35 - 38 days with a 10 to 7 day taper. Okay, I see yesteray Suz noted as I stated in the blog - my pattern of profiling women. What I try to do is highlight inspiration. As I said it's women that far and away are providing the most compelling illustrations of the passion and will to run. I'll do it again here and now- meet Cindy Weaver - that lady in the photo running below on the left. She's described as a "naturally gray-locked, makeup-free 50-year-old" who seeks to run Montana's 50-mile Le Grizz ultra-marathon next month. Get this ya'll, the race starts in a town called "Spotted Bear" and ends in a town called "Hungry Horse" - love those names. Cindy aims to finish her 50 miles in 10 hours. Background on her that I read : When her 11-year-old daughter Rebekah was one year old, Weaver, saddled with diaper duty, gazed into the future. “I could look down the road and see the possibility of running Le Grizz, 50 miles when I’m 50!” To get there, however, requires training – especially for a runner who had done only one marathon 30 years ago. Through raising four kids, now 11 to 21 years old, she ran. “I never stopped running,” she says. “But I kept getting slower and slower, so I had to go longer and longer.” She ran through her pregnancies and pushed tots in strollers. She learned to train early in the morning before the family woke. “If I wait, it doesn’t happen,” she says. “Women often have to work around more people’s schedules. Are lunches ready? Who needs picked up? Who’s fixing supper? Is the wash done?” Now get this ya'll, In 2006 her neighbor who had never run more than a few miles, talked Cindy into entering the town of Whitefish, Montana's Two Bear Marathon. Gotta love that name too. The pair trained together and used books and the Internet, they gleaned training tips, deciphering the difference between distance running and marathoning. While running five days per week gets Weaver’s muscles firing right, marathoning also requires mental preparation. “Oh, you have to play huge games with yourself,” she sighs. “You have to break everything up and avoid thinking in the big picture.” Contrary to many marathoners, she opts to runs sans iPod, choosing instead to sing songs, calculate pacing, count steps to reach points on the horizon, and run in five-mile chunks. On race day, Weaver won’t eat solid food until after she’s finished. While training combats injury, dehydration, and hitting the wall, she bolsters calorie burning with a total liquid Hammer Nutrition diet – before and during the race. “Using a fueling strategy of all this high tech stuff makes a really big difference for me,” she confesses, dreading like most marathoners, not finishing the race [ end]. I'm man and smart enough to know, and pass along inspiring stories when I read them - the preponderance of them happen to be about women like this runner - with a busy life yet nonetheless finds a way to make her goal(s) happen! That's what Harlem 26.2 is all about. Have a great day!