Having Respect For The BBU

One thing the last four early morning BBU runs taught me was to have a healthy respect for the difficulty of this course. When I toe the line Saturday morning, I will not have the confidence I expected or originally planned for, but I will have the desire to conquer it.

 I am in pretty good shape right now, have a solid base and have been able to pull off some good quality runs. What I haven't accomplished is the time on my feet needed to feel I can master this distance. If it were a 25K, I would be pretty excited and I would be attacking this course with reckless abandon.

 Being a 50K changes everything and I will be much more conservative from the start as time is of no value and just finishing is the goal. I really need to finish this race if I am seriously expecting to finish the 50 miler at Stone Cat.

I thought I would be starting the 50 miler with a certain amount of confidence but instead I feel about the same as I did last year heading into the Marathon.  I wasn't able to train well for the last month and a half last year before the marathon and felt that finishing would be a luxury.

 This year I am totally ready for a marathon and would go into that feeling pretty good, but running the 50 miler I feel I have not trained very well .......so there is much soul searching  going on.

Right now I am concentrating on The Brad race and will have much more insight once that is over.  Then I will critique my thinking and adjust for Stone Cat.

 My goals are pretty simple, I need to finish the 50K. I have done a lot of thinking and calculating. My times for one lap of the course has hugged the 3 1/2 hour mark pretty consistently so it seems reasonable to expect  at least 3 1/2 for the first loop and considerably slower for the second, probably closer to 4 hours. So.....my unofficial prediction for the inaugural BBU is 7 1/2 hours.

See you all Saturday....