My next read was a book called So Others May Live by Martha LaGuardia-Kotite and Tom Ridge. The book offers a collection of stories about Coast Guard rescue swimmers (technically known today as Aviation Survival Technicians (ASTs)). So Others May Live is the motto ascribed to them, taken from a quote given by a member of the US Lifesaving Service back before it became part of the Coast Guard. I REALLY enjoyed this book. When I was first looking into joining the Coast Guard, my ultimate goal was helicopter rescue. Obviously that path has diverged quite a bit. But taking an EMT class, looking into fire and rescue stuff, it's clear that I'm still itching to do this. I'm getting near the end of my class, and I'm not sure whether the medical side or the rescue/response is where I want to concentrate, but I AM going down those roads. Ironically, though I'm on the last leg of my Coast Guard IRR commitment, I can't honestly rule out pursuing that again.
Book to come? Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond.
After a few weeks easy, it's back to the grindstone. Another 30 miles today. The trails were still pretty snowy and icy from our frigid weather earlier this week. The day after (Wednesday) was kind of a tough run. I didn't do my hill repeats, but the run was still crazy tough. The rest of the week wasn't so bad, just cold. My hands still get crazy cold, though I've been wearing some hefty-feeling ski gloves.
All the weather put work on hold. For some reason, it's kinda hard to clean pools when it's snowing. I totally understand that, but it isn't that great for the whole making a living thing.
Soundtrack:
"Dark Horse" by Katy Perry - Sorry, but I heard it on the radio before my run, and it was the ONLY song to get stuck in my head the WHOLE 5 HOURS
"Heavy" by Collective Soul
Duran - something I've always meant to ask you. How did you generally progress from more 'average' long distance running (when you were running during college, and training for a marathon) to ultrarunning? I would so love to see a breakdown of that progression over the years, if you care to share!
ReplyDeleteSeeing 'another 30 miles today' will never cease to blow my mind.
I had just written a very detailed history of my build up, but I'm redoing it to try and make it simpler.
DeleteI started off with a sort of run "heavy" triathlon schedule. So having aerobic work from cycling and swimming, I was only running about 4 days a week. For my first two marathons, the run portion was pretty similar to a typical marathon build up. During the "off" time, I just kind of ran how I felt, but kept my mileage similar to the middle-higher portions of my marathon training.
After that, the frequency of workouts I've done has been what has increased, to now I run 6 days a week (there were times I'd only 4 or 5, but might run twice in one day). Really since that second marathon, my weekly mileage hasn't changed all that much. I used to run some farther distances (11-13 miles) during the week, but my weekend long runs wouldn't be too different from a typical marathon plan (<25). NOW, my weekdays are reasonable (10 miles), but my weekends go much longer (25, 30, 35).
But everybody is different. I know some ultrarunners, who do the 10 during week, 20 on the weekends, and maybe once hit 30 on the weekends. Some people may do no more than 5 during the week, but then really pound it out for the weekend.