Slow, Slow, Slow

I don't know if it's possible to run a 100 mile race as a "training" run but I'm going to try this weekend. My hope is that I can run comfortably again by Tuesday at the latest. To achieve this I'm going to have to be smarter than I've been in my last few "training" races and not push myself too much, even if I'm feeling good. The problem is that I have a very hard time mentally going slow when I know I could be going faster without too much stress on my body. In a 3 or 4 hour race this isn't a problem but in a race that's likely to take me around 20 hours I really need to be disciplined or I will need to take a week off from running, which really wouldn't be too good for me right now.

Aside from being disciplined with my pace I'm really going to try to focus on my nutrition and hydration. Usually in a race like this I would end up running a deficit that I get back over the next couple days, but this weekend I'm going to attempt to take in as much water and calories as I'm burning/sweating. This will mean eating 7,000+ calories whereas in a normal 20 hours of racing I might take in 4,000 and then catch back up after the race. This time I don't want to have to catch back up after if I can avoid it.

Then of course there is the reality that at some point I'll just throw all this aside and start pushing myself to see how fast I can go... I just hope I can find a way to delay doing this until the last 10 or 20 miles. I wouldn't bet on it though.