Would it be possible to finish a 100-miler with only about three weeks of training in the past six months? That is a crazy question and I knew the answer was no. After six months of long recovery from a serious stress fracture that almost broke my tibia in half, I had only been able to start doing some sort of careful running for three weeks. My longest run was 15 miles. I had spent many long weeks limping around and laying on the couch for hours.
I continue to recover from my broken leg. It has now been six months. I now can run cautiously. It is wonderful to be back on the trails somewhat. Pain still exists, but I’m trying to be careful and thus far the activity seems to help more than hurt as I see improvement every couple days now. It seems like most of the pain is soft tissue now, but I’m still not ready to really pound the downhills. I’ve been able to run three 50+ mile weeks in a row and my fitness is coming back. I’ve summitted Mount Timpanogos (a 4,500-foot climb in 7 miles) five times in the last few weeks and have progressed to a 3:59 round trip. It seems like my fitness would allow a 3:30, but I have to back off the pace to keep the pain level down. A 3:30 pace is fairly typical when I’m in good ultrarunning shape. I do most of these summits in the dark, so that also limits the pace.
