First Post

The Mt. Mithchell Challenge, Feb 27, 2010, is a 40 mile race, 20 up, 20 down; goes to the top of the highest mountain east of the Mississippi. Yes, it's a few hundred feet higher than Mt. Washington., but does not have the amount of vertical in the short distance that MW has. The best we can do here is 3,700' in 5.5 miles. The MMC covers 4,324' in 20 miles. http://www.blackmountainmarathon.com/
This is my first attempt at an ultra and this blog has 2 major purposes: 1) I believe it will keep me accountable. I feel like I haven't followed through with long term training in the past 4 years and think that if I have even a few regular readers commenting and providing training tips I will feel a little more committed. 2) Training advice.
My training approach is building back to back long runs. At the moment, I'm running a 20/10, 20 on Saturday and 10 on Sunday every other week on a gentle rolloing dirt road. On the other weekends I'm running for the same amount of time/effort, but on single track often with steep ascents/descents. I want to build this to a 20/20 by the end of November and then start working towards a 30/10 as a peak run around 3-4 weeks before the race. I want to build as slowly as possible and would like the runs to feel "easy." I do not want to just bury myself and be useless the rest of Sat/Sun.
I will start posting my training starting Saturday and look forward to some feedback.