Random Questions

Just a quick post today to answer some random questions. Over the coming weeks I'll expand on these a fair bit, but for now here's the short answers.

Question Number One
Do you think the 24 hour race will mess you up as much as Ironman?

The short answer is "no". Slightly longer answer is that I suspect it will mess me up a whole lot more than Ironman did. In my experience of ultrarunning (being all of one race so far), running an ultra (or at least running 100k) is far, far, tougher than Ironman. After Ironman I was excited about doing another, whereas after my 100k ultra I was convinced that I would never want to run again, my feet hurt, my legs hurt, my back hurt, my stomach was messed up, my "weeing" (specifically the colour) was of concern, my shoulders hurt and my arms hurt. Things were a little fuzzy and after "only" 65k I was really not in a very happy place. By the time I had gone past my second marathon and still had another 16k's to go I had been right through Hurtsville and was in some strange land I'd never been to before.

Ironman is easy! (I should qualify that by saying that "finishing" Ironman is easy in comparison to finishing an ultra, "racing" is no doubt quite hard judging by the number of pro's who end up in the medical tent).

Question Number Two
Will you run all the time, or do you have a run / walk strategy?

I suspect that if I were to try to run for 24 hours there would be a big crater in the track after 12 hours or so. My plan at this point is to seriously stick to a very strict 25 min run / 5 minute walk strategy. Given that its on a flat track there will be no natural obstacles to break things up (like hills), and I think that a mix of run / walking gives me the best chance of actually lasting the full 24 hours. I think that a big issue for me will be based around the fact that its 24 hours on 400m track as opposed being a race of a set distance. As while I'm probably to stubborn to drop out of a 150k race (which by its nature has a definite finish line), I think it will be a lot tougher mentally to keep plodding around a track where the finish line is determined by a clock.

Regardless of how the run / walk plan works out, my main goal is to just keep moving forward. To keep me sane I'll be breaking the distance down into marathon, 50k, 50miles, 100k, 150k, and 100 miles (the ultimate goal!). At this stage I reckon that I could pull out 150k in 24 hours - which on last years results would be enough to get me 3rd place (that in itself may be an indication that its actually going to be tougher than I anticipate ...)

More musings later, I got to go run somewhere ...

And then I saw this

Yes this little event this looks very interesting to this budding Ultra Runner, which is kind of odd as just a few months ago I would have laughed at the suggestion of running around a track for several hours, now I'm thinking maybe its not such a bad idea!

The only question is, do I target 12 hours (given that I now know I can "run" (term used fairly loosely there) for 14 hours plus, or to I front up for 24 hours of running and see just how far I can go???

Decisions decisions, I'll ponder that one on my long run tomorrow morning

Getting lost ... and loving it!

As I've mentioned before I'm trying to freshen up my running by getting offroad as much as possible. The only problem is ... there's no sign posts offroad!

Todays long run was in Riverhead Forest, a local network of logging roads and tracks, with the tracks being largely built by a couple of the local mountain bike clubs. To give you an idea of just how extensive the track network is I was out for about 1 and a half hours and I saw one mountain biker, one lady on a horse, and one random guy walking along a remote logging access road tossing a rugby ball!!!! Given that the car park was full and I saw plenty of people both as I arrived and as I left this was a bit of a surprise - I thought I'd be spending all day dodging mountain bikers.

The run started with a steady 25 minute climb up an access road to a trig station with a pretty cool view (once I'd stopped panting and got a chance to look up and enjoy it).

Trig Station

View out to Auckland City, the loggers had thoughtful cut a few trees down to improve the view ...

After this it was just under an hour of getting lost on the network of single track which criss crosses the forest. Here's some pictures for those who need visuals.





In more general running news I've started some (kind of) structured training again, with a focus on picking up some speed once more. I surprised myself on Saturday night by running one of my regular 6.2k runs near my house a full 2 minutes faster than I'd ever run it before! Who ever said running ultra's makes you slow!

So after swearing off running at the 70k point in my 100k ultra, normality has now resumed and I'm eyeing up races again. There's a mid year half marathon that I've done for the last couple of years and I'd like to give that another nudge. I've also stumbled across a 50k off road ultra thats run around Riverhead somewhere in April that migt be worth checking out. Plus there's a (growing) chance that I'll run in the Wellington Marathon in June. So plenty to keep me interested!

Its Official!!

Today is a notable day. Today I received confirmation of my entry into the 100k race. As mentioned before its run in conjunction with the Great Lake Rely, so I was a little amused to see that I'm noted down as being the manager of a team of one!



This week also marks the start of some serious, more specific ultramarathon training. Over the coming weeks its my intention to use this blog to record my training and my thoughts around it. I've never taken on an ultra before so a lot of my idea's a just theory to me at the moment. Using this blog will help me track how things go.

This week is a bit of a transition week while I bed down my training schedule. From next week I'll be recording my intended training schedule and the thinking behind it, and then de-brief on the outcome at the end of the week. My idea is to repeat this week on week.

That's the idea anyway!

Its Done!

That's right, I've parted with my hard earned cash and have finally actually entered the 100k race! As I type this my entry form is in the post and winging its way to the race director (yes oddly enough no online entry - its done the old fashion way).

So now I really am committed to my first ULTRA, wish me luck (and no injuries!)

Speaking of injuries I had to cut a run short last Sunday as I had a steadily increasing pain on the front of my lower leg. I was terrified that it may have been the start of something serious (like a compound fracture etc - always jump to the worst possible conclusion). Happily it was only a strained muscle coming up the front of my shin (Extensior Digitorum Longus I think for those geeky nough to want to know). And is now feeling just about back to normal after four days with no running and lots of gentle stretching. That will teach me for wearing old shoes!

I'm going to try and go for a gentle run tomorrow, so hopefully that will go without a hitch!