The ‘100 Miles In Two Weeks’ Challenge. Are You Up For It?

• Posted: September 14, 2008
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• Author: Shéamus
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• Filed under: Motivation, Workouts
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• Tags: No tags set for this entry.

Recently, on this very blog, I casually asked my readers to guess at which day I would reach the 500-mile mark. Spartan7 boldly suggested it would be as soon as Day 116, to which I replied:

“That’s generous - almost a 7-mile average. I was actually going to run 7-miles today and tomorrow, curiously enough. Maybe I should do two solid weeks of 7-mile runs. Hmmm.”

After writing that I found myself musing over it with some frequency. I’m not sure whether it was his intent, but on some level I took his remark as some kind of challenge.

It got me thinking about whether it could be done.

After running back-to-back 7-milers this weekend (at a reasonable pace, certainly for me), I concluded that it could.

So, I present, if you will, the challenge within the challenge: Can I run 100 miles in two weeks?

I think I can!

Why Am I Doing This?

For many reasons.

1. For some time I’ve been wanting to move up my weekly runs to the 50-mile level. It just hasn’t happened, for various reasons. This is a perfect opportunity to do that.
2. I’ve felt of late that my weeks have become a little stale, blending in with each other and not having much identity. This challenge should spice things up a bit!
3. While I never take any days off (ever), I’ve found myself using my 20-minute or 3-mile runs as basically the same thing. Hence, if I feel a bit rough or have had a bad day, I tend to drop down to doing the minimum. That almost feels like taking a day off. I don’t like it when I do it, but without any incentive it’s easy to fall back on that when any given day hasn’t gone as well as I liked. I won’t have that excuse now - days that short in duration and length will put too much pressure on me to finish the task at hand.
4. I’ve read a lot recently that you don’t really start to burn the good calories when running, and therefore lose weight, until you reach the 50-mile/week plateau. I’m curious to see if there’s any merit in that. I weighed myself this morning and I was at 174.8 pounds.
5. Quite simply, I want to see if I can do it.

How Is It Going To Work?

Pretty simply. I’ll break the 100 miles into two even 50 mile chunks. My goal is run 7 miles each day from Sunday through to Friday, and then 8 miles on the Saturday.

Of course there may be instances where for whatever reason I have to run less miles on any given day, but I really want to avoid that. One thing I’ve learned ever since I dropped a lot of weight at the beginning of this year is the key to all this stuff is consistency - and that’s relevant in fitness work, nutrition, rest, and pretty much everything. In this case, that means pounding out the same mileage each and every day.

Speed isn’t really of any major importance, although I would like to keep things to somewhere around the 8-minute/mile marker.

I still have to balance all of this with ‘life’ - that is, my unusual sleep deprivation patterns thanks to my overnight work shifts (for the moment, at least - actually, for the next fortnight, too), picking up my children from school, sorting things out for my upcoming job, and so on.

I’ll obviously keep everything logged as I normally do.

What Happens When It’s Over?

I’m curious as to how my body would deal with the same miles every day and the bigger weeks. My biggest week to date has been just over 40 miles - this is obviously a 25 per cent improvement on that, and this past week I only did around 35 miles, so it’s an even bigger leap week to week. How is my body going to handle this poundage?

I’d like to know if I can maintain the 8-minute/mile pace for all of this time, or will I start to slow several days in?

As said, I also want to see if this expedites weight loss.

When I’m done, I’ll drop down to a 30-35 mile recovery week, and then see how I feel about the fifty for the week after that.

Are You Up For The Challenge?

Do you think you can run 100 miles in a fortnight? If you fancy taking on the challenge yourself, let me know in the comments area below! You don’t have to run every day like I do, and you’ll set your own pace and program. There are no rules per se. All that matters is that you complete the 100 miles in the two week period. It would be nice if you kept some kind of log so we had some accountability, too. Anyone can say they’ve done it…!

Obviously, for serious, longstanding or professional runners fifty miles in a week is no big deal. For the likes of me, however, it’s a definite step up.

Day 105 (And Also Day 1 )

The first day of my mini-challenge is already in the bag. Seven reasonable miles at a pace a little softer than yesterday, but reasonable overall, especially as my left knee felt quite tender throughout, and my hamstring, also on the left side, is tight as a drum. I’ve really got to sort out that sports massage - the problem is trying to find somebody who seems capable enough to do it. Small towns, and all that!

I hit the 10K mark today at about 49:12 - quite a bit slower than yesterday but, again, respectable enough (particularly as it was notably windier today).

Splits:

(Again, thanks to blundering the stop on my Garmin I actually completed today’s run about 12.5 seconds faster than the time it actually shows - about 55:23, I think.)

Tomorrow: another seven miles. Then another… and another…

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