Testing the territory

Last Sunday, I decided to test the territory and go for a run on the trail on which the race I am targeting is run.

I enlisted the aid of a friend. He is much fitter than I am, having completed 4 iron man races and also being an orienteering champion, so I was fairly confident that if things did not go well, he'd be the one helping me through, rather than the other way around.

We targeted a half marathon distance and ended up covering about 22.5km. This is about as far as I have ever run, and the farthest I have ever run on trails by quite a wide margin.

Our route started off by running straight up quite a steep hill for about 1.5km. We had to walk a bit. If this is what trail running is all about, I thought, I might have to rethink my plan. Fortunately it leveled out after than, and although it was constantly up and down, it was all quite manageable.

I was struck by how beautiful it was to be out on a new trail. It followed a ridge for a while, with sweeping views across a wide valley of farmland. Then it disappeared into a beautiful and cool forest.

We chatted easily as we ran. This is a guy I've known most of my life but don't always get to see enough of, so we had a lot to catch up on. We weren't in a hurry (or running particularly quickly) but we're just enjoying being out.

I'd packed a camel pak with water and gels, drinking regularly whenever I felt like it, and taking a gel about every 5km throughout. I distinctly remember checking the distance at 15km and thinking I was still running comfortably and easily and generally enjoying myself. (Although a long uphill shortly thereafter temporarily muted my enthusiasm.)

We'd talked as we ran about the fact that I was contemplating running 50 miles of that trail. I'd even tried to talk him into joining me and not been completely rebuffed. As our feet hit the parking lot at the end of trail I remember saying "I just need to see myself being able to do that another 3 times on the trot and I will be ready".

I did learn two very important lessons on that run. Firstly, I need to get better at navigating. Either I have a poor sense of direction, or being tired reduces my judgement. On the return leg we approached a T-junction, and I was convinced that we should turn left in order to head back towards the car. Fortunately my friend was quite insisted that we should turn right. Had I not had the good sense to listen to him, we'd have set of in completely the opposite direction to what we were meant to. The trail is quite well marked, but especially where it approaches busy areas, the myriad of alternative paths is quite confusing. Looking back on the map of our run afterwards, I noticed we actually spent a fair amount of time running on trails other than the main trail.

Secondly, I need to find a better way to fuel. I had stashed my gels in my camel pak, but struggled to reach them while running. And so I had to stop running, unclip my pack and swing it round in front of me each time I wanted one. Possibly it is not a problem to walk for a minute every half hour when running an ultra, but I'd still like to be able to refuel without walking even if just for training runs. I also need to find somewhere to store the empty gel packs, as they can get a little sticky when used.

Clearly, I've got a long way to go before I am ready for my first ultra. But somehow, clocking up some miles on the trail I was planning to race seemed like a significant milestone. I'd run part of the course, pushed myself on distance, and enjoyed it. I'm ready to push harder.

Thunderstruck

I hit the trails yesterday afternoon. I deliberately choose the narrow paths, and the ones I was less familiar with. Sometimes, they petered out unexpectedly, and I had to hunt around for another. Other times, I was not entirely sure exactly where I was.

But it was a great afternoon to be out. The undergrowth was thick and lush. The clearings were carpeted in flowers. Whilst I was working hard, it felt like I was moving easily, enjoying the moment. It felt great to be outdoors and running.

Then, after about 11km, the heavens opened. A summer thunderstorm such as I had never experienced before. I found the nearest road and headed towards home. Fortunately, it was only another 2km. Within minutes I was drenched. At times, the run-off was over an inch deep on the road. It splashed up knee-high with every step. I pushed the pace with an energy I had no idea I still had left in me (which is a lesson in itself). I felt alive and free.

When I got home, my 8 year old daughter had been waiting by the window for me, watching the rain. She met me at the door with a towel. She told me she'd run me a bath because she thought I'd need warming up. (I am normally a shower person, but she told me that she couldn't really run me a shower...)

What a great way to end the weekend!

Gadget junky

I am a self confessed gadget junky. I've logged pretty much every run I've done since I started a few years ago using either my phone or my GPS watch.

Runkeeper (Runkeeper.com) on my iPhone was my training companion for many years until just recently. It's easy to use, and plots a map of where you run, together with graphs showing climb/descent and pace, as well as a table with your splits. It keeps a log of your runs and tells you when you've broken a new personal record based any on of a dozen metrics. It also allows you to create a Street Team of other runners you know using Runkeeper and to share and comment on each others' activities. There are a few other similar products out there - Strava is another popular one - that do more or less the same thing.

The main advantage of logging everything on Runkeeper was that it keeps a permanent record of everything. I usually run alone, so there is no one to keep me going. But I find the knowledge that my run will be recorded for posterity and visible to others to be hugely motivating. It's a personal challenge to keep my Runkeeper training log looking full and strong.

But I've also had a number of problems with Runkeeper on my iPhone. I don't know whether the problem is with Runkeeper or with my phone, but it can mis-read the GPS co-ordinates making it seem like I ran a lot further and faster than I did.

Feeling slightly frustrated by this I recently upgraded to a Garmin watch with a heart rate monitor. This adds heart rate, cadence, ground contact time and vertical movement measurements to my running log in addition to the measures I was getting from Runkeeper. (To be fair, Runkeeper would probably have done that if I'd hooked a heart rate monitor to that too.)

So now I am logging all my runs on GarminConnect.com. I am also experimenting with propagating the data from GarminConnect to Runkeeper and Strava, giving me a total of three web services to map, monitor and share my training.

I know not everyone is a gadget junky like I am, but for those of us who are, gadgets add an additional element of personal satisfaction to running.

Kill the hill

When I first started running, I used to really struggle up hills. Unfortunately, I live at the top of one, so whichever way I run from home, I always finish on an incline. I really disliked that hill for a long time.

Two things changed all that. Firstly, if started practicing tai chi. It's something I'd been curious about for years, and a friend finally talked me into trying it. It's a fantastic form of exercise and I'd recommend it to anyone within striking range of a good teacher. Although it is a fairly low intensity exercise, it is pretty much all done with a good bend in both knees. So your quads get a gentle but firm workout. It was after a few months of tai chi that I started to notice that hill back to my home started to feel just a little bit more like the rest of my run.

Secondly, I started to spend quite a lot of time on the road for work, traveling to a city which is built on several hills. Living out of a hotel made running seem an even more attractive diversion, but finding anywhere remotely flat was next to impossible. So I naturally ended up running more and running up more hills. One evening I recall feeling a particular need to burn off a little energy after a tough day in the office, so I though I'd have a go at a hill interval programme I'd read about. I ran to the steepest nearby hill and began. From the bottom to the first lamppost and back. Then to the second lamppost and back. And so on, for about half an hour. It took everything out of me. However, on the short run back to the hotel afterwards, I remember thinking how comparatively easy running on the flat felt. I was hooked.

I now enjoy hills. They're exhausting, for sure. But the satisfaction of reaching the top makes them worth the effort.

A partner in crime

Once again, I found myself at a low key social event standing with a beer in my hand. I was chatting to one of the other friends who'd walked the Caledonian Challenge with me a few years before.

"You still running?" I asked him. We'd swapped notes on running during a few of our training hikes. He nodded.

"Say, you remember you always said you thought we could have completed the Caledonian Challenge in about 17 hours instead of 22.5 hours if we'd pushed the pace a little harder and taken shorter breaks?" Of course, I knew he would remember as he'd mentioned it on several occaisions since then. He'd definitely been the fittest member of our hiking crew. He nodded again.

"Well, if you're keen, there's a 50 miler not too far from here. In fact, we did some of our hike training along the route." He looked interested so I continued: "it's got a 13 hour cut-off, though, so we'd have to be even quicker than you talked about. In fact, we'd pretty much have to run all the flats and downhills..." He paused, but it could see he was thinking.

We've swopped a few email since then and agreed we'd start a training regime and "see how far we can push our bodies". But we've not yet done or committed to do anything. Have I found a partner in crime, or have we both already learned that it is best not to commit to taking part in endurance events over a couple of pints?

The nudge

I received a nudge when I overheard that someone at the client site I was working at had just run an ultra. I engaged them, casually at first, but obviously not casually enough.

Once he read between my questions that I was considering having a go myself, he subtly started to convince me that it was perfectly possible. He pointed out that there was a 50 miler quite near to where I live in just over a years time. "That's more than enough time to train" he said."What's more,you've got the added advantage of being able to train on the course." He promptly provided me with the name of the race and of the organisers, leaving me no excuse not to Google it.

Over the space of a few short conversations, what had been a theoretical contemplation became a tangible possibility.

He also gave me some insight into the training I would need to put in in order or complete the challenge. Was I really ready to make that commitment?

Fertilising the seed

The seed was fertilized by Jim Lawless when I was fortunate enough to attend a talk by him about 7 or 8 months ago.

For those of you who have never heard of Jim, he is the author of the book "Taming Tigers". The book and he motivational talks that he delivers off the back of it are all about conquering the self-create psychological obstacles that ordinary people use to stop themselves from doing extraordinary things. Some years ago, Jim had been challenged by to prove that his methods worked when someone bet him 10 pounds that he couldn't ride in an official jockey club race within a year. As a 40-something overweight man who had never ridden a horse before, logic said that this would be impossible. But "Taming Tigers" chronicles how he applied his methods to achieve just that. To prove it was not a one-off, Jim then went on to become the first Brit to free-dive to a depth of 100m. It's a fantastic book, numerous, self-deprecating and inspiring, and is would highly recommend it to anyone. Better still if are lucky enough to be able to attend one of his talks.

As Jim spoke, I couldn't help thinking about my idea to run an ultra.

"Taming Tigers" is all about dealing with our internal excuses: I'm too old; I don't have the time; I am just not athletically gifted enough; people would think I was crazy. But how could I know if those were really sensible reasons for not trying, or just feeble excuses? Did I really want to run an ultra, or was it just an idle fantasy? These are the questions I am still asking myself.