One week to Bishop

Only one week left now until the Bishop Ultramarathon.  I followed the course description the best I could and created a route on Google Earth for the 100K.  Here is a link to it:  Bishop Ultramarathon 100K Google Earth Route map.  

Tapering is going at full tilt now.  Last week I only ran 40 miles and this week I will get in less than 30 and yet I am amazed at how much muscle soreness I still have.  When I roll out my quadriceps at night with the massage stick I can still feel that they have not fully recovered from all those mountain climbs and hill repeats I have put in.  There is residual soreness where the quads attach at the knees and in my calves as well.  No soreness to speak of anywhere else though.  Well it really isn'tthat  bad and everything should be totally healed up in a week.  Here is graph of my mileage build-up for this event.

 The first week of January this year I ran that 50 mile ultra out at Lake Mead.  I'll write more about that later this week.  The mileage increase does not completely reflect the amount of extra time and effort I put into this build up because most of those miles were up and down hills and on rough trails which is of course much harder training. The graph below shows I had 5 week with over 10 hours of training, 9 weeks with between 5 and 10 hours.  In comparison, when I was training for the 50 miler in January, I only had 3 weeks of training with 5 to 10 hours.

Threes days before the race on Saturday, I am going to start camping in Mt. Charleston at around 9000 to 10,000 feet to try to acclimatize to the altitude.  I will be able to sleep up there for two nights before we drive to Bishop on Friday morning.  Friday night we are camping in Millpond Campground where the race starts Saturday morning a 6am.  Things are starting to get exciting.