Preparing for St. Pat's 24 Hour

St Pat's 24 Hour

The title of this post is a little misleading, in that I'm not actually sure how to prepare for a 24 hour race.  St. Pat's 24 Hour is a 5k loop course at St. Pat's Park in South Bend, IN.  Basically, the goal is to run as many miles on this loop as I can in 24 hours.  It's likely the best way to prepare for a 24 hour race involves a deep base with some very long efforts on some weekends and back to back long runs.


Although my long runs have been much longer this year, I'm not sure that I've come even close to putting in the amount of miles many do to be ready for a 24 hour.  My biggest week of miles totaled 92 miles three weeks ago.  I've heard the course has one very small hill so being that we're talking about South Bend I'm hoping it's indeed a very small hill as is likely.

I'm trying out an "extreme" taper this time, with all of my running this week consisting of a 10 mile run on Saturday, a 6 mile run on Monday, and a 3 mile run on Wednesday.  I felt great on Monday night running with the group at the Indiana Running Company but can't say my legs have felt all that great the rest of this week.  The previous week I also ran very low miles so I think that should help with my recovery from the miles I crammed in and the previous race (60k) at Hocking Hills.


Probably the hardest part of my preparation was actually abstaining totally from coffee for the four days prior to the race.  I'm hoping a little loss of caffeine tolerance will be of use when the long night starts.  My coworker has been brewing a full pot every day so the temptation has been tough to ward off.


As fars as supplies go, I have two cases of GU, a bottle of endurolytes, four pairs of socks, two running shorts and technical shirts, gloves, hand bottle, two pairs of shoes (Lunar Racer 2), a headlamp, two running caps, and a some other random assorted nutrition.  The food at the aid station is supposed to be substantial so I hope that helps.


I also just finished a last minute trip to the Indiana Running Company and got a few supplies, including a new Amphipod belt to hold my cell phone, a case of GU gels, a new technical shirt and a Saucony beanie cap in case it gets cold overnight.  Ben was also nice enough to "loan" me a nice Sugoi hydrolite rain repellant jacket in case it actually does rain during the predicted Sunday morning low temperature of 40 degrees with rain and wind up to 30 mph. Thankfully Saturday looks nice overall with a partly cloudy sky, a high of 60 degrees and a tolerable but perhaps nasty 25-30 mph wind.

As far as race support, I'm looking forward to Katie bringing me to the race on Saturday morning, and then visiting in the afternoon with my parents in the evening and also coming back with my parents early Sunday morning to see me through the finish.  I'm allowed "pacers" after 12 hours, so maybe my mom or Katie will run a lap with me Sunday morning!  I may be struggling to run or even run their pace so that should be nice.

To get myself in the right mindset this week, I've finally finished the book "C.C. Pyle's Amazing Foot  Race" for some inspiration.  The book has commentary on all 84 days of the 1928 "Bunion Derby" race across the country and has tons of stories about the runners and the absolute pain and misfortune they endured along the way.  I doubt anything I will deal with will be even remotely as bad as what they suffered through so I hope that helps!


I'm hoping to put up some status updates on my twitter account (@jeffyoder) and on Facebook so if anyone is interested hopefully they'll be able to follow along.  I may even use my phone to listen to some music for once since it is 24 hours long and the night may seem rather long.