I signed up for a 50 miler a few months ago because it sounded like a good idea at the time. [After an informal poll this weekend, not once did this sound like a good idea to anybody.] Back when I signed up, I had some fitness in the loosest definition of the word and then I proceeded to do absolutely nothing fitness wise (had a beer or two though). The last time I did something physical was the 9/11 Memorial Challenge in NYC and then a whole lot of nothing until a free marathon came up which turned into a half marathon 0.25 miles into the race on December 13th. That was a pretty miserable experience (fun still, aside from nipple chaf (3:20-40) and I realized for the second time this year that I was incredibly out of shape.

I needed a plan so off to the Internets I went. I looked but all of the 50 mile training plans erroneously assume you have a base of fitness and that you want to run 4-5 times a week.

Um.

Pass.

Seeing that none of those were right for me, I came up with an 8 week couch-to-50-miler plan. Here it is free of charge: do nothing the first two weeks but bitch and moan about a 50 miler, lose some weight, run-walk 30 minutes every other day and work it up to 60 minutes and hope you don’t over train.

As it’s not possible (well, might be but I’m lazy) for me to get my cardiovascular system up to snuff I’ve been doing high reps of light squats until my quads are smoked and then getting on the treadmill and playing Zombies, Run! for 30 minute x 2 sessions so I can cheat and get twice the supplies to fix up my base. I have a rower I should use but #effort

I want to throw in some short rucks to smoke my legs so I don’t have to do a long run on the weekend but still be out walking and moving for a couple of hours. Two weeks after the program started, I started (following The Plan). I’ve been squatting and deadlifting and walking and it’s kinda of fun walking with smoked legs. A bonus is that I was able to run my first non-stop mile in months so you can see where I’m starting from – 15:00!

For weight loss, I’ve decided that going low carb for the next five weeks will be the easiest way but last time I did this I had a massive headache and took a day off from work on the fourth day of no carbs (just being a giant bitch basically) so maybe I’ll try carb backloading or 2 weeks off/1 week on or something I’ve read over the last year.

For recovery, I’ve been massaging my calves with The Stick, massaging that area between the foot and calf, massaging the posterior tibial tendon (my biggest weakness) and using a lacrosse ball on my feet to hopefully release any tension down there.

Anyway, that’s my basic plan.

All signs point to me not finishing this race: attempting it in sandals, undertrained, overweight and my attitude of a DNF not being that bad. On the other hand…

I know I can move for that amount of time (15 hour time limit but I don’t know if there are earlier cutoffs), I’m dumb and I know that if when I fail I will have to give this another try next year and that’s another $100.