Can I do it?

Today was a special day … primarily because I wasn’t at work!! Yay!!!

Instead I was out running on a beautiful fine summer day while all the other good people of our fair city were grimly fighting their way through Auckland’s nightmarish traffic to spend a day tied to a desk doing whatever it is that people do to keep the world of capitalism turning.

Its been horribly hot here lately, the temperature’s been nudging 30 degrees (Celsius), however with the humidity running at around 70% (apparently) the perceived temperature – whatever that means – has been closer to 41 degrees. So anyways I was hoping to get going as soon as possible to try and avoid the worst of the heat. In the end I was out the door by 8.30am (after getting the kids sorted for school and kindy).

The plan was to run 45k’s today if everything went well, but this was always going to depend at least partly on how hot it got. I was running laps of just under 14k’s so that I could stop at home to refuel at each lap (of course this would still mean only 2 “aid stations” for marathon, which on a hot day isn’t exactly ideal).

The purpose of today’s run was to (in this order):

- See if I still had the conditioning to potentially run an ultra (my training has been VERY minimal over Christmas / New Years).
- Test pacing
- Get some heart rate and calorie data
- Test some nutrition

In the end I ran 40k in just under 4 hours, unlike the ultra I didn’t take any walking breaks (my ultra plan is to run 25 minutes and walk 2 – 5 minutes, as well as walk EVERY hill, although there aren’t a lot of hills). It got too hot to push through for the last 5k. My pacing is still a little quick, although the walking will slow things down a bit. My average heart rate was 157 BPM (my heart rate picked up over the last 20k’s which I think is a reflection of the day getting hotter as much as anything, my aim is to get my pacing down so that my AHR is below 150 BPM.

I was going through approximately 1000 calories per 10k’s, so it doesn’t taken a genius to work out that over a 100k race I’m on track to use approximately 10,000 calories, the trick will be to work out how to get them in. One way or the other solid food is going to have to go in. I also tried out so new nutrition which seemed to work well (the flat Red Bull was sensational!). All of this raises another problem though …

I’m still lacking a support crew, things just aren’t working out on this front, as most people have used up their holiday’s and can’t make it, or have something else planned. Plan “B” (stashing supplies on the course) is less than ideal but I think workable (there are no aid stations!) – it may have to be!

Less than two weeks to go. The next few days I’ll be taking it easy to get in some good recovery, do a couple of swims etc. From then it will be a little bit of easy running then I’ll head on down to Taupo.

Wish me luck!