I don’t think I had ever run a 100 mile training week before. I generally don’t have the time, nor motivation.
However, with lockdown confining me to working from home, and races cancelled or postponed, the Centurion Running One Community event seemed like a good challenge.
The event is a sort of virtual, challenge yourself to a stretch goal of how far you can run in a week. Distances ranged from 5k, all the way up to 100 miles. The miles (or kilometers) could be run in one go, or split over the week in as many runs as you wanted.
There were some truly crazy efforts by people running 100 miles of loops of their back gardens, people doing 230 mile weeks to cover all distances and the like.
For me, I decided to just split the miles equally between the days and cover the days miles in two or three runs.
I actually entered 2 events, the 5k and the 100 miles (as the 5k was a medal and the the 100 mile a buckle, and I’m a bit of a Centurion medal/buckle collector).
So come midnight on 25th May, I donned my headtorch and headed to the local sports field, ran a few loops and returned home to log my time and completion of the 5k event.
A few hours of sleep then it was up to start the first day of the 100 mile event. Again, I headed to the local sports field and ran a few laps.
The local sports field was ideal as it was only 0.6 miles away, and a nice soft (forgiving) surface.
I had planned 2 runs of about 7-8 miles per day, but occasionally bumped it up a little just to allow a lie in the following day or a shorter lunchtime effort instead.
By Friday I was feeling the strain, and felt like I needed a recovery day, so I changed the rest of the plan, took the Saturday off as recovery and then finished the final 31 miles (50k) in one go on the Sunday.
The Sunday run was a bit of a homeage to the Autumn 100, my first 100 mile finish, first sub 24 hrs and one of my favourite races.
I ran ~4 miles out and back on each leg, covering 50k and bringing my mileage total for the week to 104.25 miles. Happy with that, but I don’t see it being a regular thing for me.
