As I’m looking at my workout for the day on the CrossFit Endurance website I’m feeling a little uncertain about my readiness for my upcoming 50 mile ultra marathon. When you’ve trained the conventional way for a long distance races you constantly feel like you’re body is getting pushed to new levels of readiness. With CrossFit Endurance you feel like you’re pushing your body, and your times improve, but there’s a different sense of readiness, and to be honest it’s a little unnerving. You really have to just trust that the CrossFit Endurance workouts are going to get you to the fitness level that you need for your event.
What is this feeling… I think that when you’re training with longer distances you feel more confident psychologically because you’re getting closer to the main event distance. With these lower distances and higher intensities as prescribed on CrossFit Endurance you get beaten down by the toughness of the workouts, but there’s not much sense of getting closer to your objective. That being said I was able to complete the 48 mile run around Lake Washington last November with little more than a few 13 milers and consistently doing CrossFit main site workouts, so I know that I will be fine for my 50 mile race in Bear Mountain NY next month. Some part of me also believes that once I’ve done a few races training in this style my mental conditioning will change, and I’ll be more confident about the readiness of my body for these ultra marathons and Ironman events. Thinking back to my training for the first few ultra marathons that I completed I was a little uncertain about those training schedules as well. With conventional training you’ll usually work your way up to 20 milers on back to back days, but rarely go above that distance in one day.
Headed out to do a workout now! 🙂
If you’ve had any experience with high intensity training for ultra distance events or have questions about my training please write in the comments section below.
