Lunch with Jamie Dial, TRT100 and winter training

winter

Jamie Dial is one of the very top ultra runners in the mid south. His race resume although impressive only tells a portion of his story, as his personal journeys into the great outdoors are that of local lore. Jamie was willing to sit down over lunch on Tuesday with Mash and me at Ted's Montana Grill and give us a run down of the TRT100. He came in 4th overall in this epic.

J. Dial arrived and proceeded to hold class on the race pouring information out. We would need to learn to run on full stomachs, go run after dinner and run late into the night after a day of work. We discussed hydration ideas and pack vs handhelds. Jamie said, we'd be fit enough, that was the "easy" part, (?) he said the mental part was what we were going to have to really work on. Saying, "I can't tell you how bad your gonna feel at mile 70." Jamie knows how to endure, how to overcome and most of all how to train creatively. He shared with us some little known trail routes where we could get the mountain training we most certainly will need to be ready.

Yesterday I went out for a 6 mile run at lunch with a tempo sesh of about 1.5 miles over the pedestrian bridge and around the Titans' stadium. I keep running over the conversation in my head, each time coming to new conclusions about the future months.

One thing is for certain, for now, I am going to focus on the LBL50, it is nothing to overlook and will be an incredible challenge. There is some comfort in that, being able to look only 5 weeks ahead- one training week at a time- it is much like my effort in races-  I can only run one mile at a time - so I run the one I'm on.

PWP early am

This morning Mash and I got 9+ in on the PWP red trail x2. It was snowing a bit when we started at 5am and was a not quite 20 degrees.