Rest Recover Run

Slept well last night after yesterdays little work out, got up and ran in. It was freezing this morning and I felt crappy all the way in to town.   Ran home this evening and felt a million times better. I wasn't particularly up for heading back out into near freezing temperatures tonight but I popped a Gu caffeine gel and rocketed home. Have been looking at a lot of Leadville 100 videos recently. This one is my favourite. Not particularly great footage in the run up but from exactly 4:00 minutes in it's gold. Leadville's cut off is 30 hours and when they say cut off they do mean cut off. You'll see what I mean if you stick it out to the 6:00 marker. I love that about these kind of races. Some people would say that's unfair but I think it's great. Although if that guy turns out to be me in 9 months time I'll probably grab that shotgun off the Finish Line Marshall and shoot myself instead.

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Gatliff 50km

Ran the Gatliff 50km today and had a great day out. The sun shone from 9am through to the finish just after 2pm and made the freezing conditions more than bearable. My legs felt pretty good, I didn't push the pace but I was still feeling pretty flat energy wise from getting tanked at a stag do on Friday night. Finished it off with a Burger King on the way home. Thats pretty typical style for me. 85 mile week with some good sessions, speed, hills and a long run and probably all about totally undone with plenty of fast food and a massive boozing session which wrote Saturday off. Balance. It's all about balance.

Ryan Adams blows my mind. Not a day goes by that I don't listen to something this guy has written. This is up there in my top 5 of his stuff. His songwriting is beyond brilliant.


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Rocky Raccoon 100

Had a few good work outs already this week, I feel like slowly there is some form coming back. I have the Gatliff 50km this weekend and Luton Marathon the following so an opportunity to get a couple of longer work outs in. Gatliff will be very slow as an LDWA style event with no marked course and probably some snow on the ground. Luton I will take as it comes. Attempting 2 back to back 100 mile weeks so a good base before some more specific training for Rocky Raccoon 100. I just entered this again for 5th Feb 2011 and I'm pretty excited about finally getting it right at the 100 mile distance. This will be number 4 and I hope I can finally execute the last 40 miles like I've run the first 60 in each of the 3 preceeding this.

Becoming a Race Director Part 3

After 5 weeks of intensive work on the website, Al made some of the final touches last night and we launched it today. I'm still not 100% on a couple of the images and I need to go back in and add maps and fly-throughs of the course but all in all its pretty close to the finished article.

Its easy to underestimate just how much work it is building a page and making sure you've covered all areas. I've learned a lot in a month, especially about how complicated compiling pages can be.

I think it will be a while before we get people signing up officially but there's still plenty to do while thats all going on.

Great run tonight, loads of energy and ready to put in a couple of longer runs at the Gatliff 50km in a weeks time and at the Luton Marathon the week after. Early build up to Rocky Raccoon 100 miler again in Texas in early February.

Western States 2011

Lottery entry went in this morning for Western States next June. They are expecting over 2000 applicants for 300 places this year. The odds just keep getting worse and worse, the live draw for the race is in 4 weeks time. Had a scare when I opened the qualification page in that you needed to have, in the last calender year from now or October 2009 onwards either:

1. Run 50 miles in 11 hours or less. Haven't run a 50 this year.
2. Finished 100km in under 14 hours. Haven't run 100km this year.
3. Finished a 100 miler. ok but this I only actually did a few weeks ago!!!!

They might have taken Badwater but not for sure. As Frank e mailed me afterwards, you have to keep this ultra game up these days otherwise pretty quickly you'd find you can't enter the bigger races ie. UTMB, Hardrock, Western States etc etc.

Afterwards I went for a round of golf with the old man which was awesome and then ran the 9 miles back to the house down pitch black country lanes with a broken headtorch.

The website is almost finished now. All the info is present and correct, the background and layout is done, my good friend Al Black is working on the logos tomorrow and then we're off and ready to take registrations. Fingers crossed we get a good turn out for the marathon and 50 mile but the main interest for me is getting numbers in for the 100. Im expecting anywhere from 10 - 100 people based on different peoples opinions. I hope its the latter although the work involved with staging the race will go up exponentially with an increase in numbers. I hope what we end up putting on blows people away.

Leadville 2011

Got around to booking my place at the Leadville 100 for August 2011 this morning. 

Can't wait to have a go at a course I have read so much about. The rockies in the summer should be awesome. 

Becoming A Race Director Part 2

Well the down time has ended. I'm back in to training again now. The last few weeks have involved a few short week night runs and a longer one at the weekend, most of which have been on hangovers and pretty painful. I'm going to head to either Rocky Raccoon 100 in Texas (again) or Susitna 100 in Alaska during February to kick the year off in proper style. I wanted to go back to RR100 this year to avenge my poor finish. It turns out that 22:54 at my first 100 miler (and by a massive margin the easiest) remains my PB. I know I can quite easily knock 3 hours off of this and potentially more like 5 but I'd like to prove it. Three things need to go right for that to happen, race day nutrition, remaining injury free and keeping the 60 mile+ chaffing at bay. Susitna would be a very different type of race. 100 miles on marked frozen trails, you are required to pull a sled with a minimum of 15lbs of equipment at all times. Food, Fuel, Stove, Sleeping Bag, Bivvy Bag, Down Clothing and a lot of water are all necessities. From experience in Antarctica running on snow ain't that easy either. I'll decide over the weekend which one to go for. I'll also be chucking my name in the hat, once again, for the Western States 100 on Saturday. I hold out no hope. Over 2000 applicants for 360 slots in a straight lottery shoot out. You do the math.

I'm now about 95% of the way there to launching the website and taking applications for our first race. August 13th 2010. North Downs Way 100 mile, 50 mile and marathon. Take your pick. Basically I am striving to put on my perfect race to run, except I won't have the joy of running on the day which is sad. I've taken what I think works the best from Badwater, Western States, UTMB, Racing The Planet, the Marathon Des Sables, Old Dominion 100, Rocky Raccoon 100 etc etc. Based on but not limited too:

-  A decent start location with plenty of space and an uncrowded relaxed feel to the start of the day. 

-  Not ripping people off for entry fees. The cost of putting something like this on is WAY more than I expected and there is no way we will even get near break even in the first year but Im prepared to take that hit to build what I hope will become the best British Ultramarathon on the circuit and the first of many races across the country (all 100 miles of course). 

-  Responding to everything and everybody personally, on e mail and within hours of receiving correspondence, not leaving it 3 weeks to get back to someone. 

-  Marking the course because I hate map reading and frankly, getting lost during, let alone at the end of a 100 mile race, is probably the most depressing thing in the entire world.

-  Offering people the ability to use drop bags so that they can be self sufficient but not have to carry everything they need for 30 hours. 

-  Putting on proper aid stations with a decent spread of gels, salt, proper food etc.

-  Getting something for finishing that you want to keep forever (a buckle, a very nice piece of metal of some description, a medal and of course a t shirt that says I RAN 100 MILES IN ONE GO SO THERE

-  Allowing crews and pacers

-  Leniant cut offs but within reason. I nearly cried for the girl who DNFd at 90 miles a few weeks ago because of the cut off. 

There will be other races in this series that provide all of the above, on easier courses so that the challenge is purely running 100 miles. There will also be races that forbid pacers, crew and are frankly really really hard so that people and hopefully myself included can test themselves against fast, beautiful, brutal, horrifically hilly, mountainous, flat and stunning courses in the incredible corners of this country that deserve 100 mile races and don't have them. 

I've invested around 3 hours a day to it over the past 4 weeks alone and its starting to take its toll but of my tick list I've so far covered everything but actually posting the registration forms to the UK Athletics Association and making a half a dozen tweaks to the website. Im hoping we'll be there by Friday so watch this space. 

Becoming A Race Director

Its been kind of quiet for me since Caesars Camp. It was the end of my racing year to all intents and purposes and I always intended to have some down time and properly recover after it. I have to say though having laid off for a long period after Badwater and not training particularly consistently for Caesar's, I feel like I've got a renewed energy for running again which I didn't expect to have right now. The last two years I've come into November off of the back of Antarctica & the Sahara Race with months and months of racing and training before hand, which has meant that I've been ready for a proper break by the time winter sets in. But not, it appears, this year. I'm already thinking about getting stuck in to early 2011 with some late season training starting again maybe really soon indeed....

My efforts are 100% focused in a different way at the moment. After years and years of scouring the resources of the best races in the world, deciding which ones to do, longing for the 100 mile scene in the UK to grow a bit so I had to a little bit less of a journey to get to more start lines, I finally decided to take the initiative and put on some of my own races instead. About 3 weeks ago I had a kind of epiphany where I realised I knew quite simply what would really work in terms of a new race/ race series and where there is a gaping hole in UK running. That is 100 milers. So I am 90% there. A company has been set up, a website built and a race series divised. The first race course has been recce'd, a date set and all of the legals and permits arranged. It's down to a few finishing touches including nailing down a startline and we will have a brand new 100 mile race on August 13th 2011 over potentially the best marked and most underused trail this country has to offer. We will be putting on 100, 50 and 26.2 mile races all kicking off at the same point albeit at different times and I will finally get to see what being the other side of the fence is really like. I'm looking forward to it immensely. Keep the date free.