Gearing Up

I just about have next year's racing schedule planned, for both myself and my horse.  At least, planned as much as you can in these sports. I planned on riding at Lake Sonoma in September, conditioned, checked tack, loaded a healthy fit horse, who promptly fell off the trailer and sliced his leg. Things happen. So when I say I have it planned, I mean lightly sketched in pencil and fully prepared to toss it out the window and start from scratch as needed...

First off, I really need a trailer. My 4runner is now for sale, which makes me sad but we really don't need 3 trucks and a car between 2 of us. (Yay, hubby is on the phone with someone now...) I could potentially lose my trail access from Bugsy's house, plus I can't rely on friends to come get us whenever we want to ride together. Yay independence!

I very much want to do a 100 miler next year, and it made sense to select from the WSER qualifying list. There's a few on there I'd like to do, and unsurprisingly there's a lottery entry for several. I have opted for San Diego 100 in June, which is going to be hot hot hot!! I already have a pacing and crew offers, and we hope to make a mini holiday out of it. I have a lot of work to do in between now and then. There is a four day application period next month, and if they receive more than 300 entries it will go to a lottery. Should I not get in, the back up plan is Pine 2 Palm in Oregon.

We had a great run finally finding the correct route for the Mendocino Coast 50k for the segment we keep going wrong on. Not lost, since both times we have found fabulous trails for training runs, but not the route we were looking for. It was quite the climb today:

Profile for Miles 9-16

Ignore the last mile on the chart, we ventured a little way down the next section, so the last mile is our climb backtracking up to the truck. From this point it's mostly down hill and flat all the way to the finish! There are some gorgeous trails in store for the runners. I took a little video on our way back (excuse the loud breathing - don't video when going uphill at the end of your run on a mostly uphill route...)

 I was trying to practice breathwork today.  Breathe for 3 steps in, and 2 steps out. Turns out I'm not great at counting, and moving my feet, and breathing, all at the same time. I would get the hang of it, be able to go back to chatting, then get myself all confused again and have to start over. Who knew such basic skills were so hard to combine. Guess that's my homework for the next couple of weeks :)