I had a training run last year I was thinking about, where I needed to get in two plus hours as I prepped for the North Face 50K Trail run

Even though I have run some really long races, you don’t always have the mojo on demand that you find at peak moments in your race.

I find gamifying and breaking it down into units is the way to get through. In addition, I focus on managing my energy, when I know it will be at its peak. Most of that time is in the morning, however I had a friend visiting in town and needed to help him get some things for his move to the city.

I had the choice of doing a 2:15 run as a loop, up and back to Central Park with some stairs in the middle on a cold rainy day. Usually I embrace the elements as they will only be worse in my race and I gain by seeing them in practice first. However I wanted something more engaging and what would actually be tougher.

So I broke the run into three sections:

45 min run on treadmill incline

45 min on stair climber machine (interval sets)

45 min run on treadmill incline

I then break each of those 45 min sections into 10 minute segments and compartmentalize the larger goal and be present to push hard in the moment with a cool down break in between changes.

In addition, I’ll have a mix of music and audio books keeping me engaged along the way.

In my larger adventure races, you ride through highs and lows and need to find additional gears to get through the day. In this workout I found two accelerator gears, an hour in and with 15 minutes left!

When you feel unstoppable it makes the run that much more fun!  That’s part of the draw of these long runs for me. You get in a rhythm where you feel like you can run forever.

I had another long run the the next day but I got through the toughest one first, so mentally it will be a little easier to prepare for and execute on…and it was.

Colin