Bike 200 miles in 16 hours? Summit the tallest mountain in the contiguous United States? Sign me up! After a challenging 2024, here’s what 2025 has in store.
Aftermath of running a 50-mile race and a major injury
The Comrades marathon I raced in June was hard on my body. Really hard. Not only was it mentally challenging to push myself afterward, but I also had numerous physical issues (getting sick constantly, various knee, foot and Achilles issues, etc.). None of it prevented me from running, but it definitely sapped a good amount of joy from it.
This all culminated in a pretty severe sacroiliac joint injury in December, which took a while to recover from: the first continuous 20-minute run I was able to complete was a month later. But as painful and devastating as the injury was, it ended up being a blessing in disguise.
First, the injury made it clear my body needed a serious reset, and it certainly provided one. I could not run or bike and could barely walk, sit or lie. Second, it made the need for strength training obvious. In fact, I started lifting back in November working with Jess as my coach, and ironically it might have contributed to the injury somewhat, perhaps by overflowing my body’s overall “stress bucket”. But when I was recovering, various core exercises as well as single-leg versions of squats and deadlifts with moderate weights really saved me. Third, it reinforced my love for running. I spent countless hours in the gym on the elliptical machine trying to preserve my aerobic fitness. While I genuinely appreciate how it helped maintain my base, I’m definitely not eager to return to this grind anytime soon.
What’s next?
After some thinking, I’ve settled on two main adventures this year:
- Seattle to Portland (STP) bike ride in July. It’s 206 miles and most people do it in 2 days, but the goal is to do it in a single day (the official time limit is 16 hours). It’s a fairly flat route, but just pedaling for 10+ hours and getting nutrition/hydration right will be hard. I’ve been eyeing STP for a few years now, and finally decided to try it this year.
- One-day hike to the summit of Mount Whitney in September. After hiking Grand Canyon rim-to-rim the past October, I got an appetite for long non-technical hikes with beautiful views that can be done in a single day. Mount Whitney is an obvious candidate for such a hike. The new challenge will be dealing with extreme altitude: the summit is at 14500 ft, which is no joke, especially given that I live at sea level.
In addition to these two major goals, I plan to race a few short races. Currently, there is a 5K and a sprint duathlon (2.4 mile run + 15.5 mile bike + 5K run; it’s really funny how multisport people call “sprint” an event that takes more than an hour) on tap. I have not raced since July of 2024, and have not done a 5K since 2023, so it’s time to remind my body the searing pain of such intense efforts. These shorter races will serve as great checkpoints of fitness and scratch the itch for competition without overly taxing my body.
My current training
Given that STP is my current focus yet I want to preserve my running fitness as much as possible, my current training now is roughly 50/50 between biking and running (thanks to Lindsey for being accommodating and flexible!). It ends up being around 3 rides per week (2 of them on the trainer to save time), 3 runs per week and 2 strength sessions per week (courtesy of Jess). Last week it was around 5 hours of bike and 5 hours running. Typically this includes some combination of threshold work as well as harder intervals, and it can be split between runs and rides in a different way: for instance, one week there can be 20 minutes of tempo within the long run, and 10×2 minutes on the bike, and another week I can do 15×1 minute within a run, and 15 minute tempo/threshold on a bike. I actually love this mixed program more than doing running exclusively, since it’s much easier on the body. Hopefully, if I want to race a marathon or an ultra in the future, I would be able to ramp up the running volume reasonably quickly, but for now I have no such desire.
My history with bike
Current immersion into bike training reminded me how it all started. I haven’t owned a bike for many years until the pandemic. But in March of 2020, my friends Besa and Marco lent me a bike and brought me along on a long chill ride. And I was immediately hooked. A few months later, I got my own proper road bike (you can see it on a trainer on the picture above), and started riding it a lot for the next year or so. And it’s precisely the aerobic fitness that I built over hundreds of hours of cycling allowed me to transition to “serious” running smoothly in September of 2021. I didn’t know anything about zones, FTP or intervals back then, but it didn’t matter: I just rode (sometimes for 100+ miles at a time).
In fact, I think that riding a bike in an unstructured way is the most beginner-friendly way to build endurance. I love running, but it’s quite hard on the body if you are not used to it, and it takes a while to reach the point where you can even run easily at all (and cycling can help you with that immensely).
Coming soon
On a loosely related note, I plan to write a detailed blog post about strength training greatly expanding on what I wrote above, since I feel that for the first time in my life I’m finally doing it right and there is a decent chance it will actually be sustainable and beneficial long-term both for my endurance training and the overall health and well-being. Stay tuned!