I developed a little bit of an ITB issue in December, so I had fairly low volume training the entire time (at least from training plans I have seen and what I have read online). I never ran more than 56 miles in a week. For those of you looking for low volume training plans, that worked (sort of, see below) My training looked like this:
| December 29 | x | x | x | 4 | x | 24 | x | 28 |
| January 5 | x | x | 5 | x | x | 18 | x | 23 |
| January 12 | x | 1 | 5 | 4 | x | 24 | 6 | 40 |
| January 19 | x | 4 | x | 5 | x | 24 | 8 | 41 |
| January 26 | x | x | 5 | x | x | 12 | x | 17 |
| February 2 | x | x | 5 | 4 | x | 28 | 9 | 46 |
| February 9 | x | 5 | 2 | 5 | x | 30 | 10 | 52 |
| February 16 | x | x | 4.5 | x | x | 8.2 | 5.3 | 18 |
| February 23 | x | 4 | 5 | x | x | 47 | x | 56 |
| March 2 | x | x | 3.5 | x | x | 13 | 4.5 | 21 |
| March 9 | x | 5 | x | 4 | x | 20 | 8 | 37 |
| March 16 | x | 4 | x | x | x | 14 | 3 | 21 |
| March 23 | x | 3 | x | x | x | 100 | x | 103 |
Although I finished, I essentially was forced to walking the last 25 miles. I developed a calf strain around mile 70, which I would attribute to 3 things: 1) I had ran 70 miles already; 2) I didn't get enough vertical during training; and 3) my volume was so low that since I didn't get enough vertical my calf said enough was enough. Without the calf strain, I likely would have came in sub-24. Oh well, another year perhaps.
In concluding, the race is extremely well run and the volunteers are better than any race I have previously ran. If you can manage to grab one of the coveted spots, I highly recommend it. If you are running the race and want to talk about the course, etc. please reach out. I used to live in Raleigh and the course was my old training grounds, so I had the added benefit of knowing every bump of the course before I even started.
