Preparing for failure
The past 12 months have been all about preparing for the Barkley Marathons, a race that hasn’t seen a single woman come even close to finishing. Although I am facing near certain failure, I wanted to take on the challenge. I trained harder than ever through the winter, logging 250 hours of training and 250,000 feet of elevation gain in three months and spending hours wandering around in the woods with a map and compass. Despite living in the Midwest, I did almost all my training outside, completing up to three hill repeat sessions a week.
I found plenty of briars while bushwhacking, but my most memorable was this 10 foot plus briar!
Despite my best attempt to prepare, I will still need to battle factors outside of my control. Will I be able to adapt?
Preparations for “Out There’“
As a Barkley virgin, I knew despite how much I prepared, I’d still be facing many challenges on race day. So my training goal was to take a multi-faceted approach to prepare for the variables within my control. I broke my preparations into five basic categories:
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Physical training – time on feet, elevation, and off trail bushwhacking
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Learning the course – reading race reports and familiarizing and memorizing as much of the course as possible, running trails within the park to be able to go into autopilot on those sections and reserve precious brain capacity for learning landmarks on offtrail sections during the race, and learning the lay of the land over four scouting trips
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Mental training – solo efforts, overcoming challenges, and pushing myself into unchartered territory
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Navigation – orienteering off major landmarks, taking bearings, and pace counts
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Gear – researching gear for the volatile weather and using poles
Physical training
I didn’t think I’d ever be able to train harder than I did prior to having a family, but with a supportive husband and flexible work schedule, I was able to log about 250 hours in a three month period leading up to the race. To put this in context, this is the number of hours I trained in all of 2014. With consistent endurance training since 2008, logging over 9000 hours since May 2005, I had a solid base to be able to rachet up my training volume. I came off of 2022 with my fastest 100 miler and the Barkley Fall Classic (BFC) was arguably my best race performance, especially when I put pressure on myself to outperform the prior year’s performance (read my race report here).
My turnaround point after 7 1/2 hours of 1/4 mile hill repeats.
I was on the ski slopes when they turned on the snow guns for the first time and had to find a different way back home!
The physical training was the easiest aspect of preparation for the Barkley since I could set some numbers to hit for time on feet and elevation gain. Other aspects didn’t have a straightforward formula. I knew I needed to get a ton of vertical following BFC, and I was thrilled to hit the “magic number” of some of the past Barkers with 250,000 feet of elevation gain. I was even more pleased to hit the number sooner than I originally expected, reaching it in exactly 3 months, 2 days. More importantly, I did so without injury or overtraining. Throughout training, I constantly had two voices battling between my ears. Should I keep pushing or was I training too much, risking ever arriving at the start line? Listening to my body, taking recovery days, cycling my training volume over each week, I did it, hitting the numbers without injury!
Often, I was floored by my body’s adaptability. Especially when I’d come off high volume with a fast hard workout, I’d feel invincible. When I was doing 10 hour runs in fall, I wondered in the back of my mind if it was sustainable until spring. Without a coach, I was my sole source to vet, so I needed to be vigilant without a bias. I tried to focus on my overall training, working towards a couple capstone workouts, and not to fixate on numbers. Admittedly, I tracked my vert and mileage for the first time in my life.
Last year, I ran the most I had ever over the winter months and topped that quickly by putting cross country skiing, my winter sport since age 16, on the back burner for the first time. In fact, I took several years to get a fat bike since I didn’t think I could take on another winter sport. I remember many winters driving for snow and skiing on lakes and golf courses to get on snow, now I hoped it would be one of those low snow years (which didn’t happen).
Hill repeats supplemented by the treadmill
As winter arrived, my limited options for vert further narrowed as snow fell. My best option evaporated even earlier as snowmaking started in mid-November on the ski slopes when the weather literally flipped a switch overnight and the ground instantly froze. I continued repeats on the outer ski slopes, through the early snowfalls until snowmaking operations moved to those too. The descents slowed as we received natural snowfall until my descents were treacherous and I couldn’t get down without multiple falls on the steep grade. I was happy to survive those workouts without injury.
I didn’t know with my Midwest winter snow depth, temperatures, and lack of climbs I’d be able to hit massive vert. So I had my husband modify a $25 treadmill from 11% to 23% grade…then we put blocks to get up to 34%.
After studying topographical maps, I was able to find a hiking trail on the other side of the hill that was comparable for hill repeats, but found it not a good use of my time unless the trail was packed down. I also had a second hill that was regularly plowed which I could easily run from my doorstep to squeeze in extra elevation, although not nearly as steep.
With nearly all my training taking place during the Midwest winter, I prepared for the worst by buying my first treadmill for $25 at a summer garage sale. The weather remained tolerable that we didn’t need to dig the treadmill out of storage until January. My husband re-configured the max grade from 11% to 23.4%, the most he could rig it without snipping wires. We quickly learned that the wires weren’t even needed, since the belt ramped up more and more at that pitch until we couldn’t sustain the speed. After several more hours MacGyvering, he added an adjustable brake. The unplanned perk is our treadmill is now carbon neutral! Since my local hills were much less steep than the terrain at Barkley, we occasionally added blocks to reach 34%. My longest workout on the treadmill was to do something productive during the Super Bowl.
As I built up vert, an Everest attempt tantalized me especially since I knew I had the fitness to break the US women’s record, but I needed to keep my eye on the real prize. In reality, the subfreezing temperatures and increasing snow depth was probably a blessing to deter the temptation and keep my eye on the real prize ahead.
Next up
Be sure to follow my blog to read my race report and follow along for my other adventures!
Related:
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Barkley Fall Classic 2022 recap on The Inspirational Runner Podcast
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Barkley Fools – Frozen Head State Park training
