Last night I went home from work, changed into running clothes, grabbed Chloe and got picked up by Carmine within 20 minutes of arriving home to go for a 2.5 hour run. We ended up being in the trails for closer to 3 hours with stopping to eat and giving the dogs water and of course take pictures but our running time was 2.5 hours.
I can still remember training for my first half-marathon and my long runs on the weekend were 2 hours max. And that felt so long. I can remember training for my marathon last year and gearing myself up for a post-work long run of 22 km. But it was my “long run” for the week. Last nights run was just another mid-week run. I’m still planning on going out for 4+ hours on Saturday.
I can’t even fully express how much time ultra training is taking up. When I trained for my first half I thought it took up a lot of time and then I trained for a full. And now training for an ultra? Wow. I was gone from 5 pm – 8 pm last night for a run and by the time I showered and sat down to eat dinner with my sweet husband who waited for me to eat it was 8:30 pm. One episode of Lost and it was time for bed! Last Sunday I did a 4 hour run that included almost a 1-hour drive each way to get there. I was gone from 7 am – 1:30 pm. And that kind of run wipes you out, you don’t really want to do much the rest of the day after something like that either.
Anyways, it was just crazy for me to think that last night I was just heading out for a 2.5 hour run. On a weeknight! I would have found that NUTS a few years ago. Now it’s just all part of the training. Sorry if this post sounds complain-y. I don’t mean it to be. I chose to train for an ultra and this is something I really want and most of the time I love it. I can’t even express how much I love running in the trails and bringing Chloe with me on runs and sharing this journey with so many friends (I can’t even remember the last time I ran alone!) This weekend I am super excited to explore two new beautiful trails in the Vancouver area with Solana and a whole bunch of other people. I know that I’m so lucky to live where I do and have access to amazing, beautiful trails. I still love trail running and I’m glad I’ve taken on this huge challenge, it’s just the time commitment has been crazy and maybe a little bit more than I initially expected or imagined. 9 – 10 hours of running a week on paper is a lot different than actually putting in that kind of time! I have four more weeks until taper time though, so it’s time to just push through these peak weeks.
I have a crazy busy 4-day weekend coming up so I likely won’t pop back in again until next week. Have a great Canada Day weekend to all my Canadian friends and a great weekend in general to everyone else 
Have you ever taken on something that turned out to be a bigger time commitment than originally planned?
