Training
It had been a good winter for training. I had joined the gym and been going there
regularly for swimming through October and November. November saw a long run once a week, but not
much else. Then December came and with holidays and festivities the training
took second place with only one week managing a couple of 20km runs. In January
the planned training started. It saw a build-up from 50km in week 1 to 113km in
week 4. One ‘rest’ week of 32km then February built up to a final week at 157km. The first week of March was a rest week with
only 27km on the clock. Then I did 2
weeks at 120km. That was my taper. The week
before the race I settled for 12km in 3 short runs just to keep the legs ticking
over but rested.
The Spartathlon
effect!
On the 12th of March I learnt that I had got a
place in the Spartathlon. Each country
is restricted to 25 athletes and with 40 applying from the UK I felt honoured
to get a place. This had an immediate effect
on my training. I felt good, happy and
strong. My usual 21km plod to work
became purposeful and consequently more enjoyable and slightly faster. I was able to put together more back to backs
than I had ever managed. At times I had to stop myself from running too much
and remember that the rest is when we get stronger.
The Plan
So on the back of this training I had some lofty goals. The main target was 217km. 216km is the automatic qualifying distance
for Spartathlon. I was already thinking
ahead to next year. The backup target
was 200km and the realistic one was 180km. 180km was enough to get me in the
draw again for next year’s Spartathlon.
The furthest I had run in a 24 hour race previously was 168km.
Next year’s Spartathlon is important to me, because it has
been my long term goal to run it in 2016 the year I will be 50 years of age.
The Preparation
The race started at 1pm on Saturday 28th
March. I flew from Heathrow at 10pm at
night. The flight is 4 hours and the
time difference 2. So I arrived in
Greece at 4 am. My wife picked me up and
drove me home. I was in bed at 5am. 10 am I woke up ate and we drove to the
venue. If that sounds rushed it actually
worked out well. Usually I don’t sleep
well before a race. But being this tired
I got 5 hours good sleep and had adjusted my body clock to be awake at night.
The race
So at 1pm exactly I started running around in circles again.
Like a dog chasing his tail. Except the circle’s a little bigger. In this case
1km big. To hit 217km I planned 6 minute kilometres or 10 km per hour. This allowed for some slowing, but generally I
wanted to try and even pace it as this worked better for me last year, than the
other method ultra runners use, which is go out fast and hang on.
Lap 1; 6 minutes exactly.
This is good. Lap 2; 5:28 oops that’s
wasn’t so good. Lap 3 back to 6 minutes.
And so it went for the first hour.
I completed 10 laps in 00:59:39
which included 2 toilet breaks to get rid of some nervous energy.
At 20 laps I was 3:30 up on pace. Which doesn’t seem too bad and didn’t at the
time, but those 3 minutes will cost a lot of time later on in a 24 hour race. At this point I started to put in some 5:30
laps, with my wife telling me to slow down as I had instructed her to do so
before we started. The rule was don’t
let me run faster than 6 minutes a lap for the first 20 hours. Consequently at
3 hours I was now 1km up on my target with 31km. This continued for the next 2 hours,
so I was at 53km at 5 hours still running sub 5:30 minute 1km laps. I then slowed a little and completed 9 laps
for hour 5 to 6. All the while feeling really
good and thinking I can actually get 240km here.
Then at hour 7 to 9 I started to
struggle and dropped to 7 km a lap. Completing only 14 km in those 2 hours and
dropping back to 85km at 9 hours. I had
passed 80km (50 miles) at 08:11:09 a new pb for me. In fact the race ended up a race of PB’s a
new 50mile, 100km, 100mile, 12 hour and 24 hour distance. At 9 pm, 8 hours into
the race we changed direction and I never got used to the course going
backwards. My left hip/groin ached in that direction, but was ok the other way
round.
From 9 hours to 10 hours I got back to
my 10 laps per hour followed by 2 hours of 9km per hour and started to feel
awesome again. I had one more low point
between 15 and 17 hours where at one point I dropped to 5km an hour, but I knew
it wouldn’t last and at 17 hours after they had turned us again and I was going
in my preferred anticlockwise direction, I settled into a good rhythm and was
able to run at 8km per hour for 6.5 hours.
This was due to having an excellent crew, my wife and daughter, who had
worked out we could still complete 200km. I tried not to do any calculations to
save my energy for running. The brain
uses it up to easily and still gets it wrong 20 hours into a race anyway.
I hit 200km with just over 30 minutes left
on the clock and as the last lap was so
hard to run I decided just to walk until the end. I did 2 more laps and a bit at 15minutes per
km. Finishing with 202km and 273 metres.
The course
The course was a 1km loop. It went 300 metres around the hockey pitch
from the 2004 Olympic stadium and then out the tunnel and around the carpark
for the other 700 metres. The only ‘hill’ was the tunnel from the pitch to the
carpark and was perfectly runnable for the whole race although I elected to
walk it from the first lap. I only ran it on laps 3 and 4, because I forgot to
walk it and 199 and 200, because at that point it hurt more to walk than run
and it was also hard to get running again if I stopped. The whole course was floodlit which I think
helped at night. I never felt tired once
and I have fallen asleep in races before.
Pacing
My pacing could have been better. Hours
2 to 5 felt good and I ran too fast, but I think had an effect as early as my
first low point at hour 7 and definitely at hour 17 when I put in my worst hour
of 5 km. It was interesting that at hour
2 with 20km I was in equal 10th place, but still finding it hard to
run my own race and slow down, because there were athletes running faster. 24 hours is about controlling your mind and
knowing you will go up the positions later in the race. I don’t think 24 hour races even start until
18 to 20 hours in. At 12 hours you can
be in 20th place, but you don’t know what the others are doing. Some go to bed, some get injured and some
blow up.
At 16 hours I had settled for 6th
place. Those above me too many laps to
catch up and I just had to keep going to stay ahead of those below me. Positon at this point became irrelevant as I couldn’t
podium, but I still had 200km to get and as it was a team effort I needed to do
that to reward my crew for their hard work.
Suddenly, well not suddenly but it seemed it was as I was no longer
looking at positions, I was up to 5th. The person above me had stopped! Then it happened again, with 5 hours to go I
was up to 4th and 3rd had also stopped, but he was on
215km, so probably not catchable. As it turned out he came back and walked
another 5km in 2 hours, putting 3rd out of reach.
Food
I ate little and often. My choice of food was small handfuls of mixed
jellybeans and salted peanuts. I also had cold boiled potatoes and lentils. My
wife reminded me to eat salty snacks when sometimes I just forgot and wanted to
carry on running. I also had chocolate
chip cookies, tuc, crisps and jelly babies. I was offered oranges from the crew
next to us, but declined as my stomach was behaving well so I wanted to stick
with what I was doing. I did get a
banana from the race feed station once as we didn’t have any. I drank green tea through the night and had
one black coffee. I’m not a believer in supplements for races, but I did have
some high 5 zeros from freebie bags from other races, so we mixed 2 of them and
I sipped small amounts every few laps. I’m still not convinced. If I need salt I eat crisps, peanuts and salty
biscuits. With 4 hours to go I started on a cola and water 50/50 mix.
PBs
Distance/Time
|
Previous
|
New
|
|
50k
|
05:21:09
|
04:36:23
|
|
50mile
|
|
08:11:09
|
|
100k
|
10:31:00
|
10:25:09
|
|
100mile
|
20:26:17
|
18:19:34
|
|
12 hour
|
111km
|
113km
|
|
24 hour
|
168.98km
|
202.273km
|
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