[Dane]

Hi,

Obviously it’s impossible for anyone to tell me what I will or won’t be capable of a year from now over the internet but I want to make sure my plan doesn’t seem obviously dumb.

Quick background. I have no real running experience before this year but I’ve spent the last 15+ years backpacking in the Cascades and Olympics. I love long hard days in the mountains and caught the mountain running bug after spending the first half of the year training for Mt Rainier following the guidelines in TftNA.

I just started a new training cycle with my sights set on the Chuckanut 50k as my first ever race. I’ll have about 26 weeks of Base+specific training before race weekend and my goal was to treat it as an A race and really go for it. Now I’m kind of eyeing the Bigfoot 40 Mile (43 miles w/ ~9,000′ of gain) in the beginning of August since I’ve always wanted to do the whole Loowit trail and circumnavigate St Helens.

Would it be completely stupid to treat Chuckanut as a B/C race, take a week or two off after and spend the next ~18 weeks training for Bigfoot given my relative inexperience with mountain running?

Thanks!

Topic

[Rachel]

Rachel on September 11, 2019 at 11:26 am #28255

It seems like both could be A races with that much time in between them. Chuckanut is in March right? You’ll have time to recover then start back up with training again. I could be wrong but it seems like the main difference between an A race and a B/C race is that one you taper for over 2-3 weeks and the others you train through or do a shorter taper.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous on September 12, 2019 at 1:25 pm #28336

What @rarichard said!

[Dane]

Dane on September 12, 2019 at 5:55 pm #28354

Rachelp/Scott,

Thanks for the response. I guess my assumption was that I would benefit more longterm from doing base training right up until Chuckanut given my lack of a running background and slight case of ADS. Then I could jump right back into training afterwards to make sure I’m as ready as I can be for Bigfoot. Would I benefit more overall from adding in the specific work before Chuckanut and then going back through a whole training cycle to try to peak again by August?

[todd.struble]

todd.struble on July 2, 2020 at 10:32 am #43236

@Dane I randomly saw this post and noted you signed up for the trail race I was (Bigfoot 40). With the race now being cancelled, I thought I’d reach out to see if you’d be interested in connecting with a “random” stranger for an unsupported Loowit trail run around the same weekend. Please feel free to reach out via e-mail if you see this. I can be found at my username here at gmail.

Apologies for raising a dead thread but I don’t think there’s a private message feature here. 🙂