Treadmill Run

I decided to run on the treamill at home today, since I wasn't supposed to get out of a meeting until 4pm, and my run today was for 6 miles. Of course, I got out of the meeting at 330pm, it was sunny but alas! I had brought no running clothes with me.
So I did the six miles on the treadmill. It's amazing how much less thinking I do on the tread than the trails. In fact, all the thinking on the tread seemed to be: "3.4...3.4....3.41...is this thing working? Okay, 3.5...only 1/2 mile to go...3.6...."

It has also been on my mind as a blog entry that I haven't done much writing as representing the newby ultra runner out there, that most of my blogging is just my personal running journal (not that there is anything wrong with that) but I thought I would do some basics, kind of get back to my mission statement.

I currently am training toward the Umstead 100 Endurance Run. I am using the training schedule geared toward a 50 mile race.
My goals for this race is:
A) Run 50 miles
B) Run more than 61 miles (my most mileage to date)
C) Run 80 miles (kind of just a nice arbitrary number for a goal)
D) Run 100 miles

Do I think I can run 100 miles? Yes, I do. I also realize it is a far longer distance than I have ever attempted. I had a good 41 mile run the other week which gave me some good confidence. I also have a person who has volunteered to pace me! His name is Steve, and he's also a Mohican runner, but he happens to live in Raleigh. He volunteered, and I'm happy about that. Having someone to distract me and keep me company into unknown territory has to help.

I have long runs planned for most weekends, the shortest being probaly 20 miles, followed by 10 miles the next day. I have several organized races that will suffice as training runs, the Buckeye Trail 50K January 27, the "Last Chance for Boston" Marathon February 11, and a FA 50K Run on the YUT-C course March 10. I am hoping some of my other long runs of 24 or 26 miles might be done on the trails of Mohican, weather permitting.

I also am keeping up much better with my strength training. I have started to adopt the idea of "functional training"; to me this means doing strength training excercises to enhance my main role of endurance running. So I generally concentrate on core work, and upper arms. Why upper arms? Because after running my 61 miles last summer, I was really surprised to feel how sore my arms were. But I was using them, pumping them, for 16 hours. Of course they were tired! So I am doing more weight training with the idea of strengthening these muscles for future long runs.
I am also keeping up with my stretching. I was kind of insulted last year, when I hurt my IT Band, that I was told to 'stretch more'. I'm probaly one of the most flexible runners out there! But then I realized just because I was flexible, did not mean I did not need to stretch. So I do it on a pretty regular basis-and I can feel it when I do not stretch!