Keeping Pace

Keeping Pace

Reasons to Believe

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Three days from now, I will be finding my way up and down the hills of Tejon Ranch.  My mental and physical strength, agility, and stamina will be put to the test with a number of obstacles which have yet to be revealed. I am excited and nervous. But… I will NOT be alone.

In addition to the many Spartans who have signed up to take on this Beast of a course, I will also have the joy of having my sister, Carol (aka Lil Sis) doing this thing with me.  The process of reassuring her — that she would be able to show up and take it on — has reinforced that I too am ready to find my inner beast.

We each toe the line with different strengths that will provide us with a nice compliment of reasons to believe that we can and will succeed. Even so, please pray for us to have a safe adventure (including the the race as well as the trip to SoCal and back).

Just-In-Time Training

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It has been nearly a month since I made the judgment that my Spartan training was sub-optimal. The decision to bail on my planned race soon followed, although I continued my efforts to get stronger and further develop my grip-strength. I added box jumps to my training with an emphasis on overcoming my fear of whacking my shin on the box’s edge. In the process, I faced my fear and made myself keep up the effort. Why I didn’t resume my running efforts, I cannot say? I simply didn’t make time for it.

Yet, for reasons I cannot explain, I did not process my deferral and continued to search the web regularly for hotels at a reasonable distance from the start – just in case. So, when Jen and George, two of my biggest Spartan inspirations, reached out to me about the upcoming race, it didn’t take much for them to talk me back into going for it. You could even say that I was secretly hoping for it.

Of course, I now NEED to do some serious just-in-time run training. I pulled up my old training logs from my distance running days and plotted out a plan on the calendar. Within 2 days of opting back in I’ve run 7+ miles. It’s going to be a push. It’s definitely going to hurt…but I think know that I can do it! Right?

Success

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Successes come in a colors, sizes, and styles. Sometimes we recognize our successes, and other times they pass unnoticed. Successfully doing a 72 hour fast is, in my book, a big success.

Until you’ve tried to pull off this task, you have no real idea what it takes. In doing so, I was surprised at how easily my body took to it. The strength of my mind, however, was what was really being tested. Of course the nursing side of me monitored my glucose and ketone levels, blood pressure, and urine output for signs that I should end the attempt. I did my best to keep busy but not overdue it. I kept to my regular routine (minus the eating) as much as possible.

On Day 3, after weights and yoga, I packed up a few snacks to use for reintroducing food at the end of the day. The day was just beginning but, in the back of mind, already I was considering the possibility of extending past 72 hours. I tucked the snacks in my glove compartment as I drove to work.

That evening, just 30 minutes before hitting the 72 hour mark, I seriously wondered if I should just continue. I felt FABULOUS. I joked with my brother and Lil Sis that I was high on ketones. I had plenty of chores to keep my evening occupied and food was the farthest thing from my mind. Until… it wasn’t.

I realized that I had no idea what I would eat if I were to break my fast then and there. What? What would I eat? 

Before long, I had decided that a good steak was in order. Yes, that’s it. A rib eye steak would be nice. Ahhh, but we are out of propane. I should pick some up tonight so I have it when I am ready to eat again. While I am at it, I might as well get the steak too.

Well you can see where this was going. Right? All of that thinking and planning what I was going to eat (when I was to eat again) got my salivary glands flowing, my stomach grumbling, and my ghrelin levels rising. By then, it was a done deal. The fast was ended.

So… I ate.

And it was good. Oh, so good.

PLAN A, B, C, D…. ?

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It’s been five days since our return from the wilderness. Thankfully, we were smart enough to leave a day in between our return to civilization and returning to work. This forethought has made our re-entry into everyday life a lot smoother. Even with that cushion, I found myself exhausted from my first couple of work days. I’d barely swallowed my last bite of dinner before passing out on Monday. With these five days having had passed,  the trip now feels far away and I am a little lost on what to write about it. So, please bear with me.  There are so many aspects of this trip that I wanted to share with you. I just don’t know where to start.

Some of these topics include:

  • Details of where we trekked.
  • The impact of the ongoing California fires on the journey.
  • Ketogenic nutrition in the backcountry.
  • The cool people you met on the path less traveled.

If I don’t get to a topic in this post, you can expect it to be covered in a separate post which I will write later on. Today, I am simply going to begin writing and see what transpires…

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Medal Monday

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When I first heard about the Spartan Trifecta, I brushed it off as something for OCR maniacs. However… now that I have 2 of the 3 pieces to complete my Trifecta, I am eager to collect the final piece and complete my puzzle.

It was Spartan Monterey +1 day and theMAN and I were in line for coffee near the hotel. There were two young ladies in line behind me, they looked energized for a day of racing. As it turns out, one of them had run the Super and was taking on the Sprint. The other had raced the Hurricane Heat during the night and was off to the Sprint as well.

I expressed my admiration and told them that I had just done my first Super when they asked me what race I was going to do to complete my Trifecta. I said, “next year.” To which they asked me why I would wait when I was nearly there and could build upon my current level of fitness.

So…I am now registered for another race. Two actually, but the second is a race for fun that I’m doing with my siblings and our kids.

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