Nil Desperandum - James Elson

Blog Permanently Moving Home

2011-12-17T08:33:00.000-08:00

Thanks to all of you that read this blog over the last few years.

The webmasters over at Centurion Running have moved this blog including all old posts over to a new location. Click here for the new blog. All new posts will go straight on there and that way I don't keep having to write everything twice. Thanks for watching and please check in now and again at the new address.

James

Weekly Summary: Dec 5-11

2011-12-13T12:55:00.000-08:00

Monday: zippo
Tuesday: 3.5 miles 0h33
Wednesday: 14.3 miles 2h27
Thursday: 14.3 miles 2h23
Friday: 14.3 miles 1h59
Saturday: zippo
Sunday: 13.1 miles 1h46
Total: 59 miles 9h09

Not sure what to make of that week really. I was convinced on Tuesday that I wasn't going to be able to run for another few days at least due to a chest infection lingering on for a couple of weeks. Then I went to see the doc and his diagnosis of asthma (??!!!) meant I could resume training straight away albeit with the aid of inhalers. I always intended for base training through December in time for the usual early season main event, Country to Capital 'if you're not there, you're nowhere'. So as per the last post, I selected my route and then put in three days of grafting. The incredible difficulty I had in breathing on Wednesday and Thursday scared me somewhat and I was left feeling like I was in trouble even running 10 minute miles on fairly moderate trails.

Anyway, Fridays effort was better and didn't feel too difficult. Saturday I rested up and Sunday I paced a friend at the Bedford Half Marathon. His aim was to run 8:20 miles for a 1h50 effort and stayed nicely on pace until the final three mile stretch where he stepped it up to 7:30s. I felt ok, easy enough to make conversation at that pace but any climb and I coughed and spluttered my way up the hill. I tried to pull him along a little bit quicker than 7s at the end and felt fine doing that. My legs were great, absolutely no grumbling whatsoever but my lungs are really a big issue. Whatever the case I am absolutely miles off where I need to be at this stage but I am ready for a lot of hard work and long slow miles on the trails over Christmas to get the base fitness I need going in to the new year and a bit more tempo/ hill stuff.

Staying fit and healthy is the number one priority and shaking this asthmatic chest is more than important.

This past week saw three of the four major US 100 mile lotteries drawn - and I was ofer three as they say over there. Hardrock had 720 applicants (some with up to 7 tickets each) for 100 places. Western States had 1960 applicants (some with up to 3 tickets each) for 273 slots. Massanutten had around 400 for 200 places. So I am on to plan B for the first 7 months of the year and I am equally excited about what I have lined up. For once I am not trying to over-reach and run a crazy early season race. The only time I built up slowly was in 2010 and I had my best season ever so that's exciting. My 'a' races are the Thames Trot 50 in Feb and then Comrades and the WHW race in June. What comes after will be down to the UTMB lottery. It will either be that or Sparta. Either way I am excited about the potential of all of those races.

Base Training

2011-12-09T10:07:00.000-08:00

I am trying to put together a string of consistent daily training runs. My chest infection has cleared but it has left a case of pretty bad asthma behind for which I am on prednisone and two inhalers. First time I've suffered with asthma since I was a kid and it is debilitating to say the least.

I really didn't expect to be back running this soon. I called our fatass 100 off just recently because almost all of our signees dropped out but also because I figured I wouldn't be able to even get out and mark out the circa 16 mile loop. So I am delighted that for now the worst of my problems is a coughing fit every time I crest a hill....

Anyway so the loop I have set out as a daily run is a 14.3 mile excursion which takes me in an almost perfect loop out from our house. 95% of it is on trail which is at times pretty muddy but it has enough of everything to keep me honest including some small rollers but no significant climbs unfortunately. The 14ish miles has about 1200 feet of climbing, not really enough but as good as I am going to get around northern Hertfordshire.

Having seen the doc on Tuesday afternoon, he gave me the go ahead to resume training, advising me to take an inhaler on route. On Wednesday I head out for the first time in almost 2 weeks and purposefully didn't look at my watch, walked every hill and just enjoyed being out in the fresh air. I have vowed to myself that this period of base training is about time on my feet, not as much about the watch, I am just grateful to be on my feet right now. I got back to the house in 2:27, the slowest I've done that route in by over 15 minutes in 10 plus goes. Yesterday I got around in 2:23 and felt totally out of puff on the hills, to me they were un-runnable. The good news was that my legs felt great, no sign of aches, pains of muscle stiffness. Tonight I did decide to got out and push a tempo effort. I took the ventolin before I went out and ran all but one of the climbs, with only minor bouts of coughing fits. I got back to the house in a somewhat forced 1:59:53 as I blasted the last bit of track to get in under 2 hours. It's not perfect but I'll take it.

So I am looking to continue this streak. Sure it's not going to be possible to get out of the house for 2 plus hours every day but whenever I can I plan to bank the same miles and build it in consistently. Most of the sessions will be at 10 minute mile pace, walking plenty and getting everything used to being out again, trying to avoid picking up injuries. If I can throw in the odd 2 hour tempo effort I will. Incidentally 14.3 miles x 7 happens to be.... insignificant really but intriguing nonetheless.

I have been listening to the ultrarunner podcasts while I've been out each time and they are fantastic. If you get the chance to download them and take them out, do it. In particular the interviews with Sunny Blende on nutrition are massively helpful for ultrarunners of all abilities and experience. My own personal favourite is the Frank Bozanich interview but I've been over that before.....

Happy running.

PS Good luck to everyone in the WS lottery tomorrow afternoon. I am in there too....

721

2011-12-04T03:07:00.000-08:00

That's the number of people in the Hardrock lottery today - for 104 slots. That represents (according to somebody else) a 9% of chance for those with one ticket, getting in. I need something to brighten my week as I have been totally wiped out by a chest infection which seems to be doing the rounds. It seems that when it rains it pours! When I shake it off it will be back to heavy base training until the end of the month.

The Thames Path aid station list is now up over on the website. There is also a special edition one for volunteers with more information that will go out a little nearer race date.It feels good to have the locations officially sanctioned and permitted, it is a lot of work finding the right spot at the right mileage on the course, then finding the contact details and asking them to let us use their land/ hall/ boat house all night one weekend in March - but we're just about there!

Week Ending 27th November

2011-11-27T13:53:00.000-08:00

On the way back, very very slowly. One day at a time, one run at a time. First week back with regular running for 6 weeks or so which is good. All on trails as usual, some hills. Nice slow run with Drew on Sunday to cap it off. If I can get rid of the chest infection I might speed up a bit.

Monday: 5 miles 0:45
Tuesday: 8 miles 1:10
Wednesday: 5 miles 0:42
Thursday: 14 miles 2:10
Friday: zippo
Saturday: 8 miles 1:05
Sunday: 11 miles 1:50

Total: 51 miles 7:42

Great resource on the relative difficulty of US ultras, something close to my heart. 40 miles at Barkley ranks as hard as finishing Western States.....?

Hardrock lottery is Sunday 4th and Western States the weekend after. We hear on West Highland Way Race soon as well, I think, so 2012 might start to look a little busier in a fortnights time. Either that or it's back to the drawing board....

http://www.RealEndurance.com/FinishTimeList.php

The Unbridled Joy of Running

2011-11-25T12:20:00.000-08:00

On Sunday I went out and jogged a few very slow miles and felt no pain at all in my shin or knee. On Monday I did the same, again nothing. I started to get excited that things were actually starting to look up after so many weeks and months of wishing away pain. Tuesday I hit the trails just as the light was fading and ran multiple mini loops on the trails immediately around the house, just in case I felt anything at all and needed to get back quickly. I covered about 8 miles and felt dreadfully out of breath but again no pain. Wednesday I ran a few miles in the evening later on and yesterday I went out on my regular 14 mile loop for the first time in ages. I've been carrying a chest infection so my lungs about fell apart and I am seriously out of shape but 2 hours and 10 minutes later I arrived back home in one piece, with no pain, not even a glimmer of tightness in my knee. There was a moment there about 12.5 miles in, running down the trail in the sunshine when I could almost physically feel the depression of not being able to run leaving my body. It will take a long time to get back to where I once was fitness wise and I might get injured again tomorrow, who knows, but for now - it's all good.

Patience

2011-11-21T14:16:00.000-08:00

Back in January Mark Wooley wrote an epilogue to being injured, sharing with everybody a little nugget of advice which I should have heeded a long time ago. Quite simply he said if you dedicate 100% of your energy into injury recovery, listen to the healthcare experts and wait until you are completely healed you will get better much more quickly and completely. Halfway measures just prolong the injury.

As I've mentioned numerous times, I have forced myself through month after month of painful training through debilitating injuries this year. The main reason I did so was because I had committed so much time and money to certain big 2011 ultras in late 2010 - letting them all pass me by was not an option I wanted to take financially and I didn't want to find myself waiting another 5 years to get a spot at Western States. Did this end up causing longer term problems? Yes. Was it worth all the pain in the lead up to and during the race, just to finish? Yes. Most people would say it was a pretty stupid decision to race three 100 milers on chronic fractures. I would do the same over again in a heartbeat. The races were too important to me and I knew upfront I was in for a long lay off period if I could get through them. To me that was worth it. It has if anything only served to make me a stronger person psychologically. Certainly the next time I run a 100 miler fit and healthy I will be thinking, hang on you got through a harder race than this on zero running for 2 months so guess what, you'll be ok.

Subsequent to the summer I had time to let my bones heal a little and my body and mind to get some respite from the constant nagging stress of being undertrained for upcoming races. Then I crashed my bike, ran 50 miles on a bad knee the following day and set myself out for another 4 weeks. Was this a stupid decision? Absolutely, I should have waited to find out what the knee damage was. I tried coming back to training/ racing prematurely so many times this year and it's taken until now to learn properly from that.

This past 2 weeks I did absolutely nothing. I have tried to shake out the knee, shin, hamstring and any other minor niggles and wait with patience until I was 100% ready to try again. Almost a month of no running means lost fitness which eats away at you each day.

Three things I've learned this year. If you don't let your injury heal 100%, you will just exacerbate the problem - maybe not straight away but certainly in the short to medium term and you will be out for much much longer than if you wait that extra week to make sure you are 100% ready. Two, you will get your previous fitness back much quicker than you think. Knowing what it is like to be in good shape is 80% of the battle. Three, don't take for granted your being able to step out of the door and on to the road or trails for that precious few miles. There are people out there who cannot train and some who will never run again. If you are sick or have a minor niggle, don't complain about it just wait and make sure you are ok before you take it up again. Treat it as an enforced rest period. It will help re-ignite your hunger for running and cost you almost nothing in overall fitness.

Tonight's 5 mile pain free run was maybe the sweetest 5 miles I have ever logged. 5 miles!!! Last year I would have considered that borderline pointless. Baby steps right now....

What a performance from Hal Koerner this past weekend at Javelina. He executes everything he does with a level of class you rarely see nowadays. Forget the results, you get the impression he would be the same guy if he were a mid to back of the packer. Inspirational stuff. His report is here. Take a chance to look at 102 mile by mile split times....

Streaking

2011-11-18T07:01:00.000-08:00

I always intended to have a race I went back to year after year. It is after all great to stick with an event and support it from the outset. The trouble with streaking is you never really know if that event might one year cease to exist, leaving you hanging...

Really long streaks of super hard events do exist. At the race briefing for Badwater, Chris Kostman the RD makes everybody who has finished the race stand up. He then asks who has finished twice and those with only one finish sit back down, and so on until there is only one man left standing - Marshall Ulrich with 17 official finishes since 1990, there are a couple of DNFs in there. Does that mean it doesn't count? Then there was the chap at Leadville this past year who stood up to be recognised in the pre race briefing, having started and finished the last 28 Leadville 100's missing just the first ever race. Feet in the Clouds, which if you haven't read, you should, is full of stories of people like Eddie Campbell with 40 - 50 year streaks in fell races like Ben Nevis.

I wonder what the greatest race streak of all time is. Meaningful race that is, not park runs etc.

Today I will head out of the door for a run for the first time in almost two weeks. My knee feels a lot stronger, I guess I'll find out how strong later tonight. It would be nice to be able to blog about running for a change rather than various other subjects.

Finally the trailer for this looks great, I can't wait to see the full thing. There are a lot more Brits in the WS100 lottery this year already. Hopefully we can have as good a showing as 2011 and an even better result at the front end of the field than Nick Clark's 3rd and Ian Sharman's 10th. I would expect we will see both of those super talented runners to go better at the very least.

Ultra Growth

2011-11-15T04:25:00.000-08:00

This is a subject that deserves looking in to in a lot more detail but this week a few things really started to ring through just how much our sport is growing.

When I started running in 2005, we entered the Marathon Des Sables for 2006 about 9 months before race day. Jim and I had plenty of time to make a decision, about 180 of the 200 UK places had been taken by the time we applied but there was no pressure to place the deposit down to secure the place. At that time Western States still operated a two time loser policy in the lottery and the UTMB had no lottery at all being only a few years old.

Bear in mind I talk about the above like it was a different era, this was only 6 years ago! On Saturday at about 7am UK time, the Western States lottery opened and currently, 1411 people are registered. That's an average of 18 people per hour so far and there are 11 days left to apply for a place. This doesn't sound like huge numbers compared with some of the big city marathon fields, but Western States is restricted to a 5 year average of 369 starters. About 70 of the places are taken by Montrail Ultra Cup winners, top 10 finishers for both sexes and sponsors. With one ticket in the lottery last year, the chances of getting a place were about 10%. This year, it is going to be way way down on that. They have got to do something about their qualification criteria ie. make it compulsory for someone to have finished another 100 before being eligible to apply. That way you boost the start up races plus you allow runners to gain experience at running 100 miles before they launch themselves into 41000 feet of elevation change and some extremes in temperatures all inside 30 hours. Western States is not the hardest run out there but it isn't toward the easy end of the spectrum either.

Hardrock, traditionally the hardest 100 out there had 427 people applied for 100ish places by November 5th. The projection is that they will have 800 applicants for those slots - and many of those will have more than one ticket. My chances of getting a spot? Way less than the 10% last year. And this is a race for which you may only apply if you have finished one of the 'mountain 100s' on their list!

UTMB are going to be forced into changing their policy next year because if they continue to allow all those who fail to get a place in the preceding year, a guaranteed slot the following year, they like Western States will find that in a years time, their field is full before the previous race is even run due to the number of lottery applicants. Their points system is sensible and they are lucky that they can cope with a massive starting field but the numbers wanting to and eligible to compete are growing exponentially. Selfishly I hope they don't change that policy until 2013 so that I can at least be sure of a place in the next 2 years to avenge 2010's abandonment at St Gervais following the avalanche.....

Lakeland 100/ 50 sold 850 places in under a month. This is a race which started in 2008 and had 12 100 mile finishers and about 40 50 miler finishers.

Dick Kearn who organises the Grand Union Canal Run which has become arguably the most prestigious UK ultra, had to turn as many people away as he let in through the lottery this year.

And finally our little old races. Brand new, no real heritage but I hope they appear reasonably well put together.... Astonishingly in the first 48 hours of the SDW100 being open, we had 31 applicants. Our Thames Path 100 which has never been staged before, sold out to 250 applicants 7 months before race day. I still can't get my head around that.

It is quite clear that there is heartbreak occurring all over the ultra world at the moment with people missing out year after year from gaining places in their dream races. I think more and more race directors are going to have to wake up to the necessity for more stringent qualification standards and staggered starts WITHOUT inflating the costs. The latter will only serve to form the beginning of the end of what ultra running is all about. Increases are acceptable but there is a limit. When I look at the entry costs for Ironman these days, it blows my mind and it quite obviously alienates those unable to afford the financial commitment that traveling to and from a race entails, let alone paying £400 for a one day race.

There is a poll on the website at the moment which I hope will give us some idea of how long those who stumble upon our page have been running ultras. I am expecting to find that the numbers have ballooned since 2009. A quick glance at the first 40 votes shows that this is likely to form the outcome.

Last but not least it's important to recognise that this is ALL POSITIVE!!!! More and more people are getting out on their feet and experiencing what it feels like to go long on the road or the trail. It is wonderful to see the races that began as small not for profit enterprises are starting to see some reward for their hard work and commitment. Who could possible begrudge them that? Too many great races died before this boom began: The Thames Meander, The SDW80, London to Brighton Road Race to name but a few. They all ended prematurely because they couldn't make ends meet financially or couldn't get the volunteer support needed to ensure safe running of the event. It is all of our duty as runners to give something back and so many more are now doing so. As a race director I know for sure we couldn't stage any of our races without that generosity of spirit.

SDW80

2011-11-13T09:28:00.000-08:00

After launching the SDW100 entries yesterday, we had the usual initial flurry of quick fire registrations. One of the pre-requisites on the entry forms is declaration of previous running experience. One of our earliest entrants yesterday listed SDW80 as one of his preceding ultra finishes.

It is a big goal of mine to create races with a real pedigree for quality and a real depth of history. What I mean by that is, I haven't set up these three races as one time opportunities. I would dearly love to be sitting here in 30/40/50 years time with each one still going strong. If we continue to put as much love and effort into them as we have for the past year (Centurion was born 12 months ago this month) then I think we can sustain and even grow from where we are.

The Thames Path and North Downs Way have had many races staged on them, past and present. The same is true of the South Downs Way with one major difference. The core of the race we have created is not our own.

I am deeply interested in the South Downs Way 80, a race organised for many years up until the late 1990s. I was made aware of it a good few months ago in conversation with Dick Kearn. Dick and I both sit on the trail running association committee and I used last night's post meeting dinner to pick his brains a little more about it. The race was organised by Harry Townsend and existed for 16 years attracting up to 600 runners, eventually coming to a close in the late 1990s due to lack of funding. The course itself travelled 80 miles from Queen Elizabeth Country Park to finish at Eastbourne Rugby Club.

Dick is too modest to talk about it in much detail but in 1993 he won the race and has fond memories of it, as do most of the people I talk to about it. The over-riding sentiment is that you could count on Harry to deliver a proper race day experience. Things that were raised were the depth of medical support, the regularity and size of some of the aid stations, particularly at the barn on Truleigh Hill and the care and attention of the volunteers. A lot of this, in fact arguably the framework of it has been picked up by Oxfam Trailwalker and there was conversation of Harry having passed on a lot of information relevant to the formation of that event which attracts massive numbers each year to the 100km course.

The similarities between our race and Harry's cannot yet be made. Certainly in terms of a course, ours is 20 miles longer and will take a slightly different route into the finish. The athletics track where we will end the SDW100 literally backs on to the rugby club which was the finish point of the SDW80 which is, I think, rather poignant.

I only hope we can build as successful, well executed and most importantly, much loved a race as Harry's. I have asked Dick to try to contact him and see if he would perhaps like to be a part of it in 2012. Whether that will happen or not I don't know but I sincerely hope we can continue the legacy of long distance trail running events on the South Downs Way.

SDW100 2012

2011-11-12T08:12:00.000-08:00

Entries are now live for the South Downs Way 100, 'the big dance'. 200 places for 200 lucky runners....

Here are the details. The course is the finest in the land (biased opinion). And you get to finish on the running track at Eastbourne....

Early Morning Lotto Application

2011-11-12T03:28:00.000-08:00

I wasn't going to do it, then I was, then I wasn't. In the end I threw my name in there. With such a slim hope of getting a place the worst that can happen is that I get an extra ticket for next year. The best that can happen is that I go back and come home with a shiny silver one this time....

50 names already in the hat and it's still nightime on the West Coast. People are predicting 2500 entries by the close of the 2 week window. For 250ish places.

HRH Lottery

2011-11-10T10:27:00.000-08:00

Lottery season is in full swing and the big ones are all filling up fast. It seems that the sport really is reaching peak levels now. AJW eulogises on the Hardrock lottery here. Hardrock is right at the top of my list but this will be my first time with a ticket in the hat so I have pretty much no shot.

I have my name in for West Highland Way too and will be doing the same for UTMB and Western States.

This is what I meant in my last post by having no idea how the year will pan out. The only dead cert so far is Comrades. I'd like to add Sparta to that but I'm not sure if the registration criteria will change. At the moment I think I can get in to that just by paying up (Badwater is my qualifier, the only race I've done over 220km's non-stop which is one of the three standards to achieve).

So many permutations from the set of races that all cloud my potentials calender at the moment. Perhaps the worst outcome will be if I get waitlisted for Hardrock and only find out I am in a few weeks before race day... I'd take it.

A New Leaf

2011-11-09T04:57:00.000-08:00

It is definitely time I turned over a new leaf. For a long time I've been wallowing in the depths of debilitating injuries, constantly assessing the level of severity of my shin, knee, achilles etc and worrying about trying to stay fit enough to simply make it through some of the big expensive events I signed myself up for towards the end of 2010.

The crash was just the latest in a long series of unfortunate events this past year, ultimately keeping me off of the trails for weeks and months at a time, in order to have a shot at hobbling around some of the great races I had yet to run.

Now that I'm through that period, it's time I took a step back to assess what it is I am trying to achieve.

There are still a number of unfulfilled goals on my bucket list but the real danger with having a list is that the items on it risk becoming boxes that need to be ticked rather than experiences to be enjoyed. The best example of this was the pressure I put on myself to start Western States this year, despite being chronically injured, unsure of whether I could even crest Emmigrant Pass successfully, let alone make it to Auburn. Of course I wouldn't take back my finish there for anything but my enjoyment of it was maybe 50% of what it should have been because of my state of physical disrepair. I guess we are all becoming victim a little to having to commit to races so far in advance and worse, to take the opportunities to race when we are presented them because that opportunity may not arise for a long time/ ever in the case of Western States.

I have always gotten the most out of my training by having one significant goal to aim for. There's nothing better than immersing yourself in a proper training routine and finding out what you're capable of as a runner. This past year I've forgotten a lot of what that is about.

So instead of rushing back on this latest knee injury I am going to sit it out a while and keep my head down. It's important now to relieve myself of the stress of fighting to get fit too fast and just let it happen. It's not about a few weeks good training or even a couple of months, I want to get back to a place where I can train for 18 months/ 2 years without significant issues arising. Racing is a part of that too for sure, I enjoy the races equally to great training sessions and I've missed out there too. There will always be another injury/ minor set back and maybe the next one isn't too far away but I intend to maximise my enjoyment of simply running in the meantime. One thing is for sure, I no longer take being able to step out of the door and on to the trails for granted.

So here's to an attempt at turning over a new leaf. Not being pressured into big mileage weeks and rushing back on injuries to make races that will always be there in the future.

Regards 2012 a lot of us are now sat around waiting for the big lotteries to open/ be drawn for 2012. I like many others have my name in a few, unlikely to get a place in some and almost certainly not in others. My year could take a very definite road slant, or mountain trail slant. I'm kind of intrigued to see how it pans out, highly likely a mixture of both I would guess....

'If you want to win, first you have to know how to lose' Frank Bozanich.

2011-11-06T07:11:00.000-08:00

I've had a lot of help and support this week from different people regards the latest injury. I mentioned at the beginning of the last post, that following the bike crash and severe pain at Caesars Camp 50, that I had moved from a self-diagnosis of inflamed itb and bruised soft tissue - to physio diagnosis of torn lateral meniscus. I'm pleased to say that I am now back at the former which is huge news for me. I am yet to have the scan as I wait to hear from the NHS, but the knee problems have improved daily and fingers crossed they will continue to do so.

I exchanged a few e mails with another experienced ultra runner who happens also to be a GP, Mark Fresch. He read that last post and has helped clarify a few things for me. It's acts of generosity like this that make the ultrarunning community what it is. Together with Mondays physio work and the improved movement, I am now fairly sure that it was/ is my itb that's causing problems.

On Thursday I had no issues locking my leg in a straight position and was able to move up and down the stairs without pain. I set out of the door for 2 miles alternate running and walking on flat trails on instruction from the physio. It didn't end well and I was in pain almost from the word go. On Friday I ran/ walked a mile. It was incredibly slow but I got it done without any discomfort whatsoever. On Saturday I ran 3 miles and today 5. Little progressions each day coupled with a bucket load of icing and stretching but it feels like I am inching my way slowly back. The knee still feels a little sore at times and there is a tingling sensation much of the time I am running but by dropping in walking breaks it immediately goes away. More physio in the morning, taking it one step at a time. I will feel extremely lucky despite everything this year, if I am able to avoid anything more than a few weeks off of running with bruised soft tissue out of all of this.

On a totally separate note I've got a new hero. Frank Bozanich. Quick Facts:

Out of 100 ultras, he's won 44
His 50 mile PB is 5:05
He's won races in his 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s
He says it like it is

There is an awesome podcast up now at www.ultrarunnerpodcast.com which is well worth a listen.

My favourite Frank Bozanich quotes:

'I don't use dropbags, I just put my shoes on and let's go!'
'I have to laugh at these people wanting to do forefoot running and stuff here today'
'I see these people with these backpacks all loaded up. Go back to being simple. Running is a very simple process, just put one foot in front of the other. Do your training and you'll be fine'
'I used to train 200 miles a week and most of that was sub 7, a lot of it 6 minute pace'
'I can remember running Old Dominion in 1980, 10 days after running the 100k in Biel, in 15:18. The whole race I ate nothing and drank de-fizzed coke and water'

He is right, there are an awful lot of people out there now offering advice and recommendations as to how you should run, what you should carry, how often you should race etc etc. If it ain't broke, don't try to fix it, unless you get yourself a coach. Somebody that can help you is this guy, he knows what he is doing.... link

New Injury?

2011-11-02T04:29:00.000-07:00

When I came off my bike 10 days ago potentially caused a much graver issue than my assumed 'inflamed ITB' self-diagnosis. I will say one thing for being injured, you learn an awful lot about parts of your body.

Obviously running 50 miles on a badly bruised knee wasn't the smart mans move, but I was convinced I was dealing with moderate bruising rather than something more serious. After Caesars Camp I was in a significant amount of pain, to the extent that I had real trouble getting down the stairs on Sunday. My right quad was sore where I'd over-compensated for the left knee but the rest of my muscles felt fine. My knee was inflamed and I couldn't lock it straight. Every time I put pressure on it, it felt like it was going to give way.

Anybody reading this who has had a lateral meniscus tear will know that these symptoms point straight to that problem. Basically the meniscus is a piece of cartilage within the knee, which comes in two parts, the medial on the inside of the knee and the lateral on the outside. The meniscus form a tissue that sits between the tibia and the femur and provides strength under torsion/ tension, dispersing friction and impact through the bones.

Either one of the meniscus' can be torn during trauma to the knee and or over-rotation. Obviously when I came off of my bike, I landed with the full force of my body and bike on the outside of the left knee, turned on to my back and slid along the ground with the frame of the bike getting caught over the leg and wrenching my knee way beyond it's usual angle of rotation. Needless to say everything adds up to the meniscus being torn.

I went to see my good friend Joe, the physio, on Wednesday in a lot of pain. The knee was still badly inflamed/ bruised but he did a number of tests on my leg to find out what was going on. After a few minutes he stated I was exhibting 3 of the 4 signs of a classic lateral meniscus tear.

This is pretty bad news. The meniscus has exceedingly poor blood supply and therefore depending on where it is torn, heals either incredible slowly or doesn't heal at all. The answer is to get a scan to determine the type of tear and have that tear either sewn or the trimmed off completely if unrepairable. The meniscus doesn't grow back which means if you have it trimmed you are effectively on a count down to longer term problems with osteo arthritis if you keep running, given that the bones end up pushing against one another rather than the meniscus, eroding the ends. I know this part because good friend Mark Cockbain has recently announced retirement from ultra running after a glittering career, on account of two meniscus trims and associated osteoarthritis.

Anyway I was pretty damn miserable when I found this out and I resigned to waiting to be referred for a scan. Each passing day the pain subsided just a bit, I found I could straighten my leg a little more each day until Monday when I discovered I could lock the leg straight although painfully. On Monday things had improved again as the swelling from the bruise caused by the crash subsided. I went for a sports massage and went through the leg rotations and movements again. This time I felt no pain. His diagnosis? No way is there a tear and if there is it certainly doesn't need operating on as it will appear to be minor only.

So here I am, waiting for a scan. It is 12 days after the crash and 11 after the race. I have no pain in my knee and can lock my leg straight with very little pain at all. Walking is now fine and putting pressure on the outside of the knee generates almost no pain at all.

Either I could be back running by this weekend, or I could require an op that would put me out for 3-4 months and potentially affect my running for life. I am loathed to get too carried away until I see the scans....

Caesars Camp 50 mile Report: Crash, Hobble, Crash

2011-10-24T13:21:00.000-07:00

Friday morning I got up with a spring in my step, anticipating a pretty exciting weekend. The schedule I had in mind included recce-ing the Windsor to Marlow section of the Thames Path 100 course on Friday, heading to Caesars Camp to help Henk set up on Saturday plus maybe run a few miles, then head down to the Greensands marathon on Sunday to catch up with a few friends and maybe run too. Things turned out very differently...

Things started to go wrong during the TP recce which, given the potential mileage that the weekend held, I attempted to do on a bike rather than on foot. The Thames Path is flat, but unfortunately there are still a lot of stiles/ gates to negotiate and plenty of stretches which ban bikes completely. It took me ages to get the 16 mile route done, particularly as LOCOG have shut off the Dorney Lake path whilst they make changes to the area in preparation for the Olympic rowing events which will be held there. It looks like they will be done before the race so hopefully no re-route will be necessary on the day.

Anyway by the time I got back to Windsor I was late so I stepped on the bike and gave it some to get back to the car parked a couple of miles away. As I crested a bump in the road I felt the front wheel slip right, underneath the bike and before I knew it had landed on the road with that sickening smack on the outside of my left knee and elbow, before flipping on to my back and sliding along the road with the grinding sound of metal on pavement. At some point during that slide my left leg got trapped inside the frame and with the bike traveling in the opposite direction, my left knee was wrenched out of place. I lay on the ground for about 3 or 4 minutes just trying to breathe. After I did a check I found nothing obviously broken but I was sweating profusely from the pain in my leg and was pretty sure I had done a fair amount of damage to the bike. Typically, people in cars just ignored the fact that a cyclist was laying flat on the ground with the bike in a mangled mess about 15 feet away, so eventually I got up, straightened out the handlebars, took off the brakes and pushed the bike the mile or so back to the car.

By the time I had got home my leg had seized pretty badly but wasn't too painful.

I woke up on Saturday and drove down to help Henk and the crew set up for the long weekend ahead. In this it's 6th year, Henk again had the 50, 100 and midnight 30 mile courses going and as usual had everything well in hand by the time I arrived with a few extra chairs and a box of food and gels. He even had time to stroll the car park with a coffee admiring the pre race rituals of the 120 odd starters. I had a chance to chat to Paul Navesey who I've helped at a couple of races with before and mentioned to him that the 50 mile record was well within reach if he could stay strong. He almost did....

Just before the 12 noon kick off Robbie Britton, winner of our inaugural NDW100 turned up wearing his finishers shirt (nice) so he and I set off together letting a dozen or so runners get ahead. I had no idea whether I'd be turning around inside a mile and hobbling back to the start but I thought I'd enjoy it while I could. Straight away the downhills hurt but there is enough short sharp elevation change at Caesars that I got away without battering it too long in any one stretch. We cruised around to Dicks aid station at mile 5ish said hi and pushed back on the start finish. Before we came in I saw Paul headed back out 2 miles up inside 11 miles and he looked like he was flying. I couldn't believe even at our benign pace that he'd got that much ground on us but he looked ok so I crossed my fingers for him. Lap 1: 1:33. Lap 2 was uneventful. We continued the pattern and came in around 3:16 so still under 10 mins per mile for the first 20 with around 1500 feet of gain per lap. Slow for a 50, very good for a 100 ie. Robbie. Lap 3 was still plain sailing but my knee began to play up and the ibuprofen from lap 1 had worn off. Rookie error. We got back in around 5:40 and bumped into Drew who had come down to support for a while. I grabbed my headlamp and chatted to him about 'the smart man dropping at this point' but to be honest with 20 miles left to go I figured if nothing else I'd just walk around chatting to people until the end.... which is pretty much what I did. I discovered here that Paul had dropped at 30 after falling earlier in the day. He will be back to take it next year. I let Robbie go after the second steep descent on the open heathland as my knee just couldn't take it any more. Whether the pain was detracting from my muscles, or I genuinely was fine, my legs didn't hurt and I had loads of energy (Gu's every 40 minutes - genius) so I did my bit encouraging other runners I came across to keep moving and stay strong as the light began to fade. I met one guy who was canning it at the next aid station but who eventually finished so good job. Final lap was dark so I sped up as much as I could to get back in half reasonable time and ended up coming across Keith Godden so we ran in the last 4 or 5 miles together which was great. 10:29, 27 minutes slower than the first 50 miles of my 100 there last year!!!

Needless to say by the time I'd hung around and helped and driven home (4am) I wasn't in the mood for Greensands. My knee was shot and actually since then it's been extremely inflamed making it painful to walk. I think the bruising should subside to leave just an inflamed ITB but fingers crossed that's what it is.....

Icing on the cake? I pulled my front tooth out again tearing the top off of a gel pack with my teetch at mile 22. Busted knee, busted bike, missing tooth. Loved every minute of it!!!!

Thames Path 100 Recces

2011-10-18T05:59:00.000-07:00

Yesterdays recce took me from Hampton Court Palace (mile 7.47) to Windsor Castle (mile 28.3). I've seen this part of the Thames quite a few times in the past, both in other races (albeit coming from the other direction) and in the previous recces and training runs which led to the creation of the race - but every time I go back the river looks different. It seems to be affected more by the seasons than other trails. It is also absolutely, incredibly pan flat.

I know that sounds pretty obvious, but to put it in perspective, here is yesterdays Garmin readout. You'd have to be on a track to get any flatter. The website lists 2500 feet of climb for the 100 miles, in actual fact it is considerably less than that.

Definitely becoming better at the recce routine - train in to one destination - set up with a front pack armed with camera, gels, water, pen all at the ready and map in hand - train out the other end. It takes a whole day to do a stage like yesterday because of traveling time and stopping so often to take pictures and record distances/ potential aid station locations, but intricate course knowledge is so important for those phone calls in the middle of the night during race weekend asking how to get back on course.

Walton on Thames

Chertsey

Laleham

Three Ducks and a Chicken

Week in Training 9th October

2011-10-09T13:57:00.000-07:00

Monday 5 miles 0:45: Slow local run after bigger week last week

Tuesday 14 miles 2:45: Recce of Hollingbourne to Wye - The last 14 miles of the 2012 NDW100 course before meeting with local parish to agree on a finishing point.

Wednesday off: Rested shin

Thursday 14 miles 1:54 : Felt no pain so pushed the pace a little more around my now regular 14 mile loop. Having a regular run where I can monitor my splits is really paying off. No significant pain and averaged just over 8 minute miles. Awful compared to a year ago but a significant improvement on where I'm coming from.

Friday 4 miles 0:32: Got my Hoka One One Bondi Bs from Ian Corless and tested them out a little with Lisa, who has entered her first half marathon for December. Excitement.

Saturday 4.5 miles 0:37: Short local loop as shin sore.

Sunday 21 miles 3:12: Easy warm up for a few miles with Lisa and then out on to the 14 mile loop again. Died after 7/ 8 miles of the loop (15 total) and had to put back three Gu Gels before I could resume running. Awful awful run, my first longer one in the Hokas which were great. Definitely cushioning my shin better although I hate the huge sole dragging on ground where I have been used to NB minimus with almost no drop recently. These things are going to take a long time to get used too, I can't see myself wearing them on shorter runs but anything 14 and up and the benefits of extra cushion on a sorry shin are going to pay dividends.

Total 62.5 miles 9:55(+5000ft)

Overall it was a pretty poor week of running apart from a good loop on Thursday. It felt pretty easy to keep an 8 minute pace despite hills and quite a few miles in my legs from increased mileage.

One stat that really stands out is how my running mileage for the year breaks down ignoring the only races I have done this year which all happened to be 100 milers. Scary reading....

1/1 - 1/2: 216 miles. Injured for much of it in the run up to RR100.
6/2 - 18/9: 160 miles (so in 7.5 months I ran 160 miles in training and 257 miles in 3 races)
Last 2 weeks: 145 miles

I might be tempting fate here, but I think I am turning a corner away from these persistent shin issues. The Hokas, running 99% of the time on trails and a more sensible approach with loads of icing and physio is going to come good. I have a ton of 'races' coming up but plan to 'race' precisely none of them. Each will be an exercise in getting a longer weekend run in, all are local between marathon and 50km and I am just looking forward to getting back out and socialising a little more. The only racing I've done since last July has been: Badwater, CC100, Gatliff 50km (which I ended up running alone), C2C45 (very good and enjoyable run with loads of great people), RR100, WS100, V100 and LT100. Too many crazy 100 milers and not enough trotting around having a good old chat. I love both but I'm looking forward to giving the former a break for a while.

NDW/ Volunteer/ TP links

2011-10-08T13:49:00.000-07:00

Lots of updates to the Centurion Site tonight:

2012 NDW50/100 mile races are now open for registrations, limited to first 150 entrants in each distance: Click here for link. These were a long time in the making as we have revised the 100 mile course for 2012, building it as a point to point as discussed in recent entries. No marathon for next year though as it just didn't work with timings and aid station set ups. There are already some great marathon distance events on the NDW, however so I don't think it will be too sorely missed.

I got around to updating the Location, Transport and Accommodation tabs as well as lots of FAQs on the Thames Path 100. Click here for links.

Finally we launched a volunteer area with a place to sign up officially to help out in the future which can be found if you click here.

It's been a long week what with work and doing all of the above plus a little running thrown in but it will hopefully pay off.

Final NDW100 2012 recce and conf. of course/ date

2011-10-04T11:18:00.000-07:00

It's official. In 2012 the NDW100 will run 100 miles point to point from Farnham in the West to the village of Wye in the East. The NDW50 course will remain the same as 2011 but there will be no marathon distance run in 2012. The date for the races is the 11th/ 12th August 2012. Once again the courses will be marked, aid stations fully stocked and medical support extremely prevalent.

In one other change the 50/ 100 mile will have one additional checkpoint in 2012, in Mersham between the 31.8 mile Reigate Hill aid and the 43 mile Botley Hill aid. This has been put in to break up the 11.2 mile stretch which is just a little too far in the August heat for a race designed with an emphasis on supporting runners.

The total number of aid stations will be 7 for the 50 including the finish and 14 for the 100 again including the finish, with both therefore averaging around 7 miles between each aid station. That is getting closer to my magic number of 16 aid stations for our 100s.

I ran the final stretch of the NDW100 course today, from Hollingbourne to Wye, before meeting with the parish clerk to go over our finish line details. At the moment we have two possible finish areas under discussion for the 100, both within 500 yards of one another in the centre of Wye and the exact location will be announced following the Ashford Borough Councils decision.

I was delighted to find the last 14 miles of the 100 mile, very much easier going than the preceeding 86. There are sections of single track trail, paths carving through open fields, through woods and even orchards/ strawberry fields plus a few short stretches of road. But the over-riding fact is that the majority of the climb and descent is over by the time you hit Hollingbourne at mile 86.

In my honest opinion? I think the 2012 course will be a little faster than the 2011 course. The difficult stretch from Otford to Hollingbourne, especially in the heat, will be a lot for some to take, but make it to the mid 80s and you are (relatively) home and dry.... Final stats on total climb will be published with registration.

There is one final permission we are awaiting from Knockholt Pound Parish Council tomorrow, to be able to use the Common once again for a 50 mile aid station and finish point, but otherwise registrations will go live by Friday 7th October.

My apologies to those marathon runners disappointed in that particular event being dropped, however logistically it tied my hands as a race director too tight this year. It also stretched our medical team and aid station crews who were static for a very long time during the race, indeed Henk and his crew at Puttenham were in situ for 31 hours in the end. It will mean we are able to focus our efforts entirely on the 50 and 100 mile runners and that has always been my main intention. That is not to say the marathon will not be back in the future, but for now it is taking a leave of absence. There are many other excellent marathon distance choices on the NDW at other times throughout the year for those hungry for more.

Questions about the course, timings etc can be sent to me but all should be answered on the new webpages that will go live with registrations this week. Hopefully see you on the NDW in 2012!

Some of todays shots:

Climb out of Detling Mile 82

A reminder of how far runners have come

Flat and Fast. A nice way to finish the last 14 miles

Typical English Countryside Views along the course

Week in Training 2nd October

2011-10-02T12:47:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I started running again for the first time after Leadville, breaking out with three 8 milers in the space of a week or so. A week later I increased a couple of those runs to 10 miles. My shin felt ok but my fitness, did not. It is amazing how quickly you can lose some of the hard work you have put in if you don't maintain it but there is definitely a balance to be struck between having a good rest period, allowing your body to fully recover and not letting your fitness drop too low. I feel like I have a figurative mountain to climb to get back to anywhere near my best.

I took four whole weeks off and then two bringing it back slowly. This past week I needed to get out and recce the North Downs Way 2012 100 mile course. My intention has always been to put on point to point races where possible and whilst the 2011 course made sense in our first year, out and back is going to inevitably become slightly less of an attraction than point to point in the long term. My plan is therefore to leave our starting point where it is, in Farnham at the western origin of the NDW trail, but send runners on to a finishing point another 50 miles further east. I needed to see for myself that the NDW continued to be as varied and scenic as that first 50 miles and I am happy to report that in every way, it is.

On Tuesday I ran the stretch from Knockholt to Cuxton and was amazed at a couple of the short sharp climbs back out of villages, where the trail drops in to say hello before exiting back into solid English countryside. The climb out of Oxted in particular lasts only a mile or so but will be enough to get runners breathing hard. The stretch around Holly Hill is simply beautiful. Thursday I went back and ran from Cuxton across the Medway Bridge and on to Hollingbourne. The stretch I had been most concerned about from Cuxton across the Medway Bridge turned out to be a relatively uninteresting but very fast and flat 2 mile stretch. It is somewhat offset by the 4 mile steady climb back up the other side however.

NDW100 2012 ridge miles 60 - 69 as seen from mile 73

The scenery and terrain around Detling and beyond is superb, the views out across to the South and West are truly stunning but in 30 degree heat, it was seriously hard work for someone lacking a little in the fitness department. I power hiked long stretches and took my time marking off the maps and taking photos.

Past Detling Village mile 83 NDW100 2012

My shin has felt shaky this last couple of days but the pain is from shin splints down around the ankle area which a physio session and sports massage will help with tomorrow. As long as the fracture area remains strong and the bone doesn't start with the dull ache again then I'll continue with the mileage.

Monday: 8 miles 1:05

Tuesday: 17.2 miles 3:17

Wednesday: 5 miles 0:45

Thursday: 18.3 miles 3:31

Friday: 15.9 miles 2:41

Saturday: 5 miles 0:55

Sunday: 14.2 miles 2:03

Total: 83.6 miles 14:18 +9000ft

I have entered a bunch of late season marathons and short ultras starting in late October to try to keep things ticking along but I doubt at any point my mileage will grow beyond that of this week. They are all very slow miles on trails but I can already feel the small benefits creeping in. I would like to think I have time now for a consistent 2 hour daily run exactly like tonight's, covering off about 14/ 15 miles. As winter sets in, some of the trails are going to get harder to negotiate but right now they are a joy to run.

Very excited about finally getting my hands on a pair of Hoka One One Bondi B's later this week. They should give my shin the break and the active recovery period it still needs.

Hope Pass Garmin Read Out

2011-09-23T05:09:00.000-07:00

Back out again for an hour last night and still no pain. Three days in a row now on my feet.

Starting to look at a few things in November as a gentle return to longer running, a few marathons and Gatliff 50km again. Trying to resist the temptation of entering anything before hand is hard.

I finally managed to get my Garmin working again and had a scroll through some of my logs from Leadville.

This is the climb from the bottom of Hope Pass inbound over the top of the pass and down into Hopeless Aid Station, miles 52 - 55.5. This was absolutely the hardest section of the course but I guess 30 minute miles tells the story http://connect.garmin.com/activity/116404274

Slowly but Surely

2011-09-21T16:53:00.000-07:00

Tonight I finally landed back on my feet. I am not going to get carried away and claim that I am 100% fit but it was awesome to be out the door and not in pain for the first time since February 5th.

I said I was going to enforce a lay off after Leadville and I did. Even after I had decided I was ok to resume running, I gave it another 10 days and fingers crossed it feels like it's helped.

Where we live now in Gustard Wood, North Hertfordshire, we are out of reach of shops, restaurants, people, even roads. There is a local pub but you need a headtorch to get there after dark (which I quite like).

All this plus we actually live ON a trail. It is almost too much to take in right now after living in London for 9 years, that I can turn right or left out of the front door and be on trails. Anyway I ran an hour tonight, just an easy tempo hour through fields, woodland trails and back country roads and in all that time saw 1 person and zero cars. I don't care what anybody says, that is pretty great. The trails aren't exactly going to scare mountain runners away but there are some lumps and bumps so all in all it blows running round Battersea Park out of the water (I still love you Battersea).

I decided to change it up a little on the gear front so I bought a pair of NB Minimus and some drymax socks and it feels great. I think road running in the Minimus is a disaster waiting to happen, but for shorter runs on springy grass and woodland trail man do they feel fast. They should do at 6oz.

I am going to go the other way too and buy a pair of Hoka's. With all my injury problems this year it makes sense to me to have a pair of shoes that offer the maximum protection from the kind of injuries I have sustained. That and the old faithful Asics GT's and I'm good to go.

Ready to launch the North Downs Way 2012 races this weekend which I am excited about. It's great having the experience of the first race under our belts, so much to improve upon with just a few tweaks here and there - nothing major. I am looking at point to point for the 100 mile runners though.... I think the journey makes a lot more sense that way.

The South Downs Way Race is a few weeks behind it, we still need to do some recce-ing down on the course before we can launch it but we'll be good to go inside October too for next years edition of the pre-existing race. Good times.

Videos

2011-09-20T09:51:00.000-07:00

A couple of things that have really got me excited recently.

Here is Jared Campbell previous Hardrock 100 winner running the most insane slope I think I've ever seen - the West Slabs of Olympus. Ryan Brown found this and sent it round after storming through Wasatch 100 with his wife Nicole who had a few weeks previous finished the NDW100. Awesome job from those guys.

This is a great video of this years UTMB in English, only the commentator manages to get pretty much everyone's name wrong. I think 'the Hornet' might catch on for Killian.

Anyway enjoy and happy running.

UTMB 2011 by Eurosport - in English by UltraTrailMontBlanc

Return to Running

2011-09-13T06:37:00.000-07:00

I haven't run a step yet since Leadville, I just wanted to give it a proper rest for a while and get some of the hunger back - and it's worked. That's 23 days without running which is the longest break I've ever taken (well since I gave up being fat anyway). My leg is pain free which is a good sign. I feel much stronger I have done for a long time. Having no massive races looming for which I am untrained and out of shape helps too.

Since returning from Colorado we have finally made our move out into the English countryside. It is a far cry from London, returning home each night via a 10 minute commute to total silence and most importantly, trails running right out of our front doorstep. That should make for some improved running, in time. I am going to just turn the legs over a little later tonight and see how my shin feels. If it all goes to plan I am still going to take the rest of the week off completely and start very slowly again from next week. My aim is to build up more slowly and steadily than I ever have done before and regain some strength for the start of 2012. I have entries left in races for this year which got mailed months and months ago (Round Rotherham 50, CCER 50, Luton Marathon) so I might pick one or two of them but otherwise I'm going to take a back seat until fatass.

The problem with having more time from less running is that I end up spending more and more time looking at races for next year. Im trying so hard to hold back but.....

Centurion Stuff is extremely time consuming right now as we go through trying to finalise the aid station positions for the Thames Path 100 in March, relaunch the North Downs Way 50/100 for August 2012 and decide on a final date for South Downs Way 100 2012. I've been lucky enough this past week to meet with Dick Kearn (GUCR/ Thames Ring/ Compton) and Henk Van Der Beek (Caesars Camp) to go over some plans for the future. There is no substitute for experience and it is a huge benefit to me to have their ear for our plans in 2012.

I had to shut the waitlist for the Thames Path yesterday when we had filled the available places and had a waiting list of 50 behind them. I can't quite get my head around it but it is so great to see. This sport is certainly growing fast....

Here is a pretty well shot video of Ryan Sandes' winning run at Leadville. Gives an idea of the terrain and just how strength sapping some of the climbs are, particularly when he nears the end

North Downs Way Report, Photos and Results

2011-09-07T10:50:00.000-07:00

All of the above are now live at on our website

It feels good to finally close a chapter on our first race and move on with the plans for the next.

I have (what I think) are some pretty cool ideas for all 3 races next year and I'm looking forward to seeing what is possible whilst keeping the core values the same at all of the races.

A final word for my friend Hully who was badly burned in the Kimberleys during an RTP event last Friday. The incident has been posted all over Australian news but I don't think we've heard the whole story as yet. Hully had recently finished the NDW100 and had flown with me the following week to Leadville where he crewed me to my own 100 mile finish. Just a fortnight later he was off and running the RTP100 event when disaster struck and he was trapped in a gorge with 3 other competitors and an advancing bush fire. Having tried to out run it, they ended up scaling the side of the gorge to get out of the thick spinifex grass that was burning so quickly. In the end they couldn't escape far enough and were forced to run back THROUGH the fire to safety on the other side. Obviously the horrific burns that Hully and particularly the two girls he was with sustained, came about as a result of that. I'm not going to say any more for now other than that I am relieved that Hully is relatively ok. With burns to 20% of his body he will be in compression burn bandages for weeks if not months. The two girls were not so lucky and remain in a critical condition. All thoughts are with them and hoping that they pull through it.

Year to Date: Some lessons learned

2011-09-05T06:46:00.000-07:00

I have learned a lot this year. I always expected that it would take me a long time to understand the fundamentals of ultrarunning and the way the body reacts to it, but I am always surprised at how much more there is to get to grips with. My biggest learnings this year revolved around injury and illness pre/ during and post race. I hope anything I can share will help someone somewhere to avoid venturing down the same path.

I should add before I start that a lot of people have told me during and subsequent to events unfolding that I set myself up for a fall this year by entering too much in too short a space of time. I still disagree with this assessment. My race schedule was full but achievable on a healthy body - if 2011 were taken on 2010's training, I have no doubt I would be sitting here with 5 successful 100s and Comrades under my belt rather than a very mixed set of race results and 2 x DNS's.

I can see now that this year was a write off from even before Rocky Raccoon in Feb. During Badwater last year I pushed my body beyond it's natural limits for such an extended period of time that I didn't recover for a couple of months. Things just didn't feel right. Apart from the usual night sweats and general lack of sleep in the immediate aftermath of a massive race where your body is pushing the crap generated during it back out of you, I felt totally out of whack with my usual self. General symptoms included lethargy, lack of motivation to run, loss of appetite. The elation at finishing was tainted with a feeling of heavy fatigue. We went on holiday, came back and, as what now appears to me to be a blessing in disguise, UTMB got cancelled just a few hours in to the run. I didn't feel myself until late September and very quickly after on very little training, ran Caesars Camp 100 which is a pretty hard race. Once again I had a very bad time of it there with similar issues to Badwater (chaffing) and finished in a lengthy 27 hours.

What I realise now is that during Badwater I had stressed my muscles to the max but also my endocrine system. The endocrine system is the body's mechanism for producing hormones that help maintain normal bodily function. Recently a bit more has come to light about ultrarunning causing stress on the endocrine system and depletion of it is a by-product of massive training mileage or over stressing it during very long races. Reading the list of symptoms in articles like this and problems resulting from such stresses it has become obvious to me that I have been suffering the longer lasting after effects of over stressing my body over long periods of time. 18 - 20 marathons/ ultras in the first 6 months of 2010 left me feeling as strong and as fit as ever. Badwater totally wiped me out, Caesars Camp came at a time when I was just pulling myself back out of the hole I'd dug and I started training properly for Rocky Raccoon shortly after. Osteoperosis is one of the longer term symptoms of endocrine depletion. The diagnosis we finally reached regarding my two stress fractures pointed clearly to the fact that my body has not been generating bone properly for a long period of time. In short I have been putting little in for the level of output I am demanding of it - particularly in races.

So almost 14 months after Badwater 2010 I am only now able to properly rebuild. If I had stopped racing and training hard for a decent period of time I could have rebuilt a successful year in 2011, but I over shot my bodies ability to recover. As each year of my running career has passed I have taken on more racing and many of those are longer in both distance and duration. It is easy to look at somebody like Mike Wardian who races a large amount, never tapers, never heeds recovery too greatly and yet wins almost everything he enters from 5k to 135 miles - and think that it is normal to be able to achieve that. It isn't. My good friend David Snipes is another example. This year 'Sniper' will go on to complete 10 x 100 milers including the Last Great Race when he finishes at Wasatch next weekend. In between times he has raced a bunch of other ultras. The difference between the above 2 examples and somebody relatively new to ultras like me is purely and simply - experience. By experience I refer to two factors - knowing how your body responds during races and being able to manage it to finish as you started. More importantly your body's experience with handling physical stress, these guys having developed running over decades, not years and thereby equipping their systems with the ability to function better on the run.

None of this is scientific, in fact it's almost all my own personal conjecture and therefore could be deemed irrelevant but when you look at a lot of the fall out from UTMB this past weekend, arguably the last major race of the summer, some of my own experiences begin to crop up in others, be it elite or back of the pack runners. Many of the lead guys have spent the spring racing hard over 50 miles/ 100k, followed by mountain 100s (at least 1 or more), before taking on UTMB, a 100 miler which ended up having a total accumulated elevation change of 70,000 feet (source: Scott Jaime's altimeter). However good you feel coming in to a race and however well your training has gone, you cannot underestimate the longer term effects that the previous race/ races have had on your body. It isn't to say that everytime you back 100 or even 50 milers into one another you will find things starting to unravel as the race drags on, but eventually it is extremely likely it will catch up with you and a race like UTMB will take no prisoners.

Some of my advice following a hard year is this:

- Rest and recover for longer than you think you may need. When you have finished a long race (100 miles) and have experienced heavy training in the lead up to it, take it easy for at least 3 - 4 weeks post run. It is tempting to jump back on the horse and use the extra fitness to drive on harder and faster. There is no need to be sedate for that period of time but it is important to let, not just your muscles, but your endocrine and immune systems to recover properly.

- Give your injury every chance to heal. If you are injured in the lead up to the race, particularly with a stress fracture, and cannot run train, don't panic. If you are able to ride a bike and protect the injury whilst keeping your CV up you CAN get through the race in question. It will be a very long day and a tough one at that but if you can stay strong mentally then should your injury hold up, you will get there.

- Be realistic. If you are injured going in to a long day then don't schedule anything else for a while afterwards. The major problem you are going to have is that your muscles will not be used to running and your muscles which are out of practice will take a battering. You need to manage your hydration and nutrition even more carefully than normal during a race or you are likely to end up with muscle breakdown quickly, which can lead to rhabdomyolisis and in extreme cases - kidney failure. My own experience at Vermont was a steep learning curve. The breakdown of my muscles at Western States was severe leaving me largely immobile. Three weeks was not enough time for things to repair, meaning that as soon as I started running my muscular-skeleto system began collapsing even faster, releasing myoglobin into my blood stream and clogging up my kidneys. Dark urine and lower back pain (plus passing out if you really do it properly) are all symptoms to be aware of and however much a DNF hurt, with 43 additional miles to go in that condition it was highly likely I was headed for the ER. The race will be there next year, and the year after. There is no need to put yourself in hospital, however much others would encourage you to believe that it's unacceptable to drop unless you are hauled off the course in an ambulance (as a race director please heed this advice).

Some runners more experienced than I will rubbish some of what has been said here but if you train big miles, hard miles and race often, it is highly likely at some stage that you will fall off the horse. The only thing I can say is take it easy, pick and choose the races you want to do well at and focus on them 100% and you WILL get through them. This is a great sport and sometimes it is hard to look on but you KNOW when you should and shouldn't be joining in the fun yourself. Take your time and you will benefit in the long term.

2012 Plans

2011-09-04T13:47:00.000-07:00

Albeit I'm at the start of a long road to recovery, the 2012 season begins here really, with the opening up of entry and lotteries to next years races.

After the experiences of this year I am headed into less travelling and less racing in an attempt to put myself in with a chance of finishing those that I enter in better shape and staying injury free.

I had a bucket list a long time ago that I have slowly been working my way through. My intention was always to do as much traveling as I could early on in my 'career' so that I could focus on some of the great races we have on home soil in later years when it might perhaps not be as easy or fair to make long and expensive international trips.

Having worked through the desert/ multi stage races, I stumbled into trail racing and have been lucky enough to run a few good trail 100s now. This year was the first time I tried my hand at mountain 100s and thankfully I got through Western States and Leadville despite being injured all year and running very little.

I saw those two as a right of passage really. I have always considered Hardrock to be the ultimate 100 and their entry criteria is very selective. I applied last year but felt I was doing so too soon in my running lifetime and knew that I should take more experience in before I committed to it, so I withdrew my entry.

Having finished 2 mountain 100s, albeit 'easier' ones, this year I think I am ready to at least put my name in the hat and see what happens. The chances of coming out with a place through the lottery is slim to none, about 11% based on last years figures and therefore similar to Western States. Crazy but what can you do.

I will go back to Comrades again, this time to run and I can't wait to line up on that startline. I will set myself some pretty hard targets there and try to stick to them. I am still hopeful a good group of Brits will travel out for that one.

Having been cut off at St Gervais in the 2010 UTMB when we were all pulled due to a landslide, that is again on the list but lottery dependent.

So with the North Pole, Comrades, Hardrock and UTMB - I am in danger of going over board once again. The reality is though that they are well spaced out and the chances of getting in to both Hardrock and UTMB are so slim that I'm not really worried about that.

If Hardrock falls through then I will go back to Vermont. If UTMB falls through well then I may just slip a late entry in to the one bucket list race that would be left for now, a little 153 miler in Greece.

Exciting times ahead and hopefully a bit more success than this year....

North Downs Way Race Report

2011-08-31T03:19:00.000-07:00

The inaugural North Downs Way Races took place over the weekend of the 13th/ 14th August 2011. As with other Centurion Running events, the series was designed to offer runners the opportunity of racing full supported, marked courses on some of the UK's most scenic and beautiful trails.

A full report will be up on the website this weekend and a link posted here.

UTMB

2011-08-30T08:55:00.000-07:00

A very hectic week since we returned from Leadville. I landed Tuesday lunch time and then moved house that afternoon, with a family wedding at the weekend it has been non-stop.

I have had time today to reflect a little more on the North Downs Way and begin writing a race report chronicling some of the outstanding stories amongst many that we had over race weekend. I look forward to posting that, as well as the full results and the photos later this week.

On another note I was a little saddened to see the response some of the US/ UK elite runners received in the aftermath of a whole raft of DNFs at the UTMB over the weekend.

The race was clearly as epic as ever with storms and course changes causing more havoc after the destruction of last years abandoned race. From my point of view the communication from the race management was lacking last year, but it is extremely hard to react efficiently and quickly to the volume of runners they have competing. People say 'well have less runners then' but then there would be a Western States style backlog of people desperate, but not able to run.

This year I have got to see ultras from a very different perspective, that of a true back of the packer. Let me tell you that in a head to head of racing to a fast finish and having the stress of position and splits preying on you throughout Vs fighting to make the cut at the back and being out for 150% to 200% of the leaders time, being at the back sucks way harder than being at the front. To grind out Western in a time close to the final cut, was one of the hardest things I've ever done, whereas to compete for a podium spot in one of the desert races felt psychologically much easier because you know what, if you fail to achieve your very best, you can always slow it up and bring it in for a finish.

I have received a few e mails from experience ultra runners in the last few days expressing disappointment at the failure of the top guys to finish. I have to agree with them but with a few caveats. When someone with Nick Clarks skill drops after 20 hours of running and with relatively so little of the race to eek out for a finish (let alone being in 9th position at the time) it is kind of perplexing. Surely finishing farther down the field is better than not finishing at all? Mike Woolfe fell off of the pace considerably but pushed on to the finish line. Hal Koerner went 'one better' and blew up much earlier and took what should have been a top 10 spot at the very least for a runner of his calibre, out to a 38 hour finish!!!! I have a lot of respect for him for doing that as well as for Jorge Pacheco one of the finest ultra runners in the US who will always grind out an appalling (for him) finish time rather than drop out if he can possibly avoid it. Having said all of that, I also cannot understand people who go on to the blogs of runners like Nick Clark and start ranting at him. Nicks decisions during his races are none of their business. Criticising a runner of that ilk for dropping, when he backed a sub 16 hour Western States into a podium finish at Hardrock inside of 12 days, is so pointless it defies belief. It wouldn't even be worth commenting on, except that there are quite a few people who have decided to take a pop at him following the outcome of the UTMB. Secondly and most importantly, general public/ ultrarunners have to remember that the top guys are competing at the very top in a handful of races. Winning one of them is enough to secure a sponsorship deal and we are not talking about people sitting on amassed fortunes here, most elite runners have families to look after and bills to pay just like the rest of us. If they can save it for a day when they can fly at their best again rather than taking a 2 - 3 month recovery period after a 12 hours slog just to finish then they will. Most of us aren't aware of having that decision to make. Still for me, it does make me smile thinking that it isn't just us slower guys who have bad days....

Let's be honest, UTMB is not the hardest race out there, but it is very close to it. With the international depth of field and calibre of finisher once again this year, it is obvious that no US or other European race is able to keep pace with it as a 'World Cup' of trail running. It will be interesting to see how many of the top guys make the trip again next year but I sincerely hope they all continue to do so and that their sponsors back them in to it. Killian and Lizzy as winners together are world class in all respects. However so are all of the other top guys and the Europeans creating things like this http://i.imgur.com/umsH2.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/umsH2.jpgshould really hold back because as with every other sport, it will only be a matter of time before someone from across the pond comes over and wins it just like Jez did last year!!!!!!

It's great to finally be back in the UK for a while and looking forward to seeing other people battle their demons out on UK ultra courses over the next few months.

Leadville 100 Race Report

2011-08-26T00:57:00.000-07:00

Leadville had always been high up on my list of dream races. As it was we flew out to the mountains, the Tuesday before the race and I was beaten up from a weekend of high stress and almost no sleep at our NDW races. I had finished sweeping the course in darkness on the Monday night having run the last 17 miles with a pack and a pair of scissors clearing everything from the trail, but I was ready to lay it on the line again for another buckle!!!

A good friend of mine, Hully, who had come over to London from Sydney to run the NDW, was flying out also to crew for me through Leadville After a 10 hour flight, we touched down in Denver and he drove us the 4 hours up in to the mountains. Our accommodation for this one was a huge house situated just off of the main street, which we were sharing with Drew Sheffield and Tim Adams, two British ultra runners with bags of experience. When we arrived we hit the sack almost immediately in our designated room, a huge children’s bedroom up in the loft space complete with 4 separate single beds, some kids desks, a VHS player and an 80s TV.

Leadville, Colorado, prides itself as being the highest incorporated city in America at 10,152 feet above sea level - to be honest there isn't a lot more to say about it other than that. I’d been to the Rockies twice before and struggled both times to breath during sleep the first couple of nights. This time was no different and I woke up a few times gasping for breath. It sounds dramatic but it is pretty disconcerting waking up and having to think about breathing… Hully drove Tim, Drew and I over to Twin Lakes the following day and we spent some time messing about on the stretch that serves as mile 40 – 43 and 57 – 60 on the out and back route. This section is the lowest point on the course at 9000 feet above sea level, but in the midday heat it felt very hard to get moving. Running at altitude was clearly going to be a major issue and we hadn't really left time to acclimatise properly so it was all about just going for it with everything we had. All of the pre race literature suggested coming out to Leadville for 3 weeks prior to the race but that just isn't feasible for normal humans. Out on the trails we took it really easy, made our way over and back through the knee high river crossing, as we would do on race day, and aborted the climb up Hope Pass after all of 200 yards. Thank god we didn’t go any higher as if I’d gone back to Leadville knowing what was actually in store for us on race day I would maybe have had a panic attack. After an hour or so messing about on the trails we drove up to 12,000 feet and lazed about (Drew didn’t – he hiked up to 13,000 feet) to try and help speed up the acclimatisation process.

Thursday we hit registration and weighed in, then attended a pasta dinner at which the legend that is Marshall Ulrich gave us a quick talk through some of his Leadville experiences and his book 'Running on Empty'. Marshall's most outstandingly insane feat was having completed Leadville in 21 hours, before driving to Pike's Peak to run the Marathon there the same day. Drew managed to get him to give James Adams, a friend of ours currently just 4 days from completing the LA to NY footrace, a call on his mobile. That left only the pre race briefing for Friday which was, as usual with US 100s, way too long and overblown but gave me a chance to catch up with a few people from the Grand Slam.

It was awesome to finally be traveling to a big race with a good group of guys once again. It’s been a couple of years since we finished the 4Deserts as a team of 5 and in the interim I have travelled to the States 7 times to run 100s, mostly on my own. At each race I meet up with US runners whom I’ve got to know over the years, but sharing a big house made the whole pre race preamble that much more enjoyable.

Race morning came around and we got up at 3am. I like to leave the house at the last possible minute and was delighted to find that Tim and Drew were happy to do the same. I’m not overexagerrating when I say that we locked the front door ar 3:57am, 3 minutes before race start. We jogged to the back of the crowd, the shot gun blast came and off we went without pause. No time to get cold!

Tim shot off pretty much straight away, I don’t mind admitting that I did fear he would go too hard too early in his first 100 but he went on to totally blitz the course in an incredible debut. I knew that Drew and I would be there or there abouts all day and although we hadn’t spoken about running together we started off at a similar pace. With the help of some early bathroom breaks, we got split up within that first 13.5 mile section and cruised in to Aid Station 1: Mayqueen, just a minute or so apart. The three of us wouldn’t be more than an hour apart for the next 25 – quite incredible in a race of this length.

Those who read my Western States blog will know that I found it incredibly tough because I thrashed my quads to pieces inside the first 20 miles. On a 100 mile course with a net downhill of 23000 feet in total, that isn’t good planning. The first 13 miles of Leadville were downhill and flat but on a low grade, making time disappear. I left Mayqueen at 13.5 in about 2:25 and made my way up Sugarloaf mountain with Micah True, otherwise known as Caballo Blanco from the book ‘Born to Run’. He had a steady gait, running the hills but pacing only as fast as I could power hike. For a guy who is pushing the years now he is in great shape but man he did not smell good and after an hour or so of running with him I had to push on. A lot of people ran past me at the bottom of Sugarloaf giving me the ‘Jeez dude you’re walking NOW, there is NO WAY you will finish if you are walking here!!!!’ kind of look. Well I’m finally becoming a bit more experienced at 100 mile races (this was my 8^th) and I trusted my judgement.

Sure enough in the 4 mile climb I ate back the crowd that came past me lower down who were forced into a walk by the later stages. The descent down powerline the other side is a steep and rocky/ rutted trail but I flew down it. The confidence in my downhill running was slowly returning, it’s always been the best part of my game and is the reason I have managed my better results in steeper trail races. I cruised down into the Fish Hatchery aid station at mile 23.5 in good shape and hully met me there with some more gels and a bag of cheese cubes - pure gold. I was still eating and drinking well out on to the 4 mile stretch of road to Half Pipe Aid Station and cruised all the way into Twin Lakes at mile 39.5 after a long grinding climb and an awesome quick 3 mile descent.

Down the Hill into Twin Lakes

The first 40 miles of the course had been forgiving, straight forward running in reasonable temperatures and with the help of Hully crewing me at each place, I had kept on top of nutrition and hydration. I realised I was finally starting to have a good 100 mile race, I had never had one before and I couldn’t help but smile from ear to ear.

I came down the iconic little bit of rocky trail into Twin Lakes outbound, had a quick pitstop to eat a bagel, some bananas, coke and crammed my pockets full of gels, crisps and sandwiches for the climb up Hope Pass. I also grabbed my poles. I wasn’t sure that I’d need them but in the end they were a big help in the section before I ditched them again at mile 60. On route to Hope Pass there are three water crossings and once significant river pass which soaked sore feet and left debris in our shoes. I pushed on and began the ascent of Hope which runs from 9000 – 12,600 feet in the space of 4 miles or so. Up and down is where I do best and I was immediately disappointed to find that on a stretch that everyone was forced to power hike, I lost ground to the dozen or so people around me. I couldn’t work out what was going wrong but I think on reflection that the altitude was finally starting to bite me a bit. The climb up Hope begins in the woods before breaking out into Mountain meadows at the top as you creep above the treeline and I knew I was nearing the aid station ‘Hopeless’ just shy of the summit, when I saw a runaway llama, used for fast packing the aid equipment up to the summit being chased by a volunteer. I came into the aid station and grabbed the same level of food as I had at Twin Lakes and moved straight on up the grinding last 600 feet to the top of the pass. Up here were just scree slopes and falling grass. Everything looked exactly as the photos of Hardrock do and it made me realise how much I want to run that race. The altitude really came in to play up here though and it was noticeably even harder to breath up there than down at the Lakes.

Just before I crested the mountain Ryan Sandes the men’s leader and eventual winner cruised back down the hill, paced by Anna Frost and we made way for them as they streamed away from us. Roughly 9 very hilly miles up on me by then it was actually a much better situation than I’d expected on no training. The descent into Winfield was totally unexpected and brutal. The pitch of the slope that side of Hope is something people don’t warn you about. It drops hard and fast and is pretty technical in places. At the bottom we were spat out on to the road for a 2 mile dusty run into Winfield Aid Station at mile 50, which I reached in around 11 hours. A great foundation to build on.

Winfield Mile 50: More Cheese

To think as I weighed in at that point, that I had to travel back to the point at which I’d started wasn’t anywhere near as horrendous as I’d anticipated and preapared for. I felt shitty for sure but I had a good feed, visited the gents, ate two more bananas, headed out onto the road and began the run back down to where we came off of the mountain. Leadville’s sting in the tail is the fact that it is an out and back and the climb back up the near side of Hope was twice as severe as the front side, made worse by the fact that it had begun to rain and I was getting cold. I was passing a lot of people still headed towards Winfield at this stage. The cut off to get there was 14 hours and some were cutting it fine.

The climb broke me twice on the way back up the mountain. I pushed as hard as I could without red lining but it was almost impossible to stay under the threshold and keep moving at any kind of pace. I wasn’t in a hurry but I didn’t want to labour up something that would slow burn my reserves. I did reach a balance but whether psychological or otherwise, I was struggling to get my breathing rate down by the top of the pass. Down the other side once again I pushed straight through Hopeless and ran most of the way down the back side of Hope towards the rivers and Twin Lakes once again, this time at Mile 60.

I came in to Twin Lakes in significantly worse shape than when I’d left it earlier but was still eating and drinking well and felt like I had gas in the tank for the last 40 miles. My one issue was that I was without a pacer and ideally wanted one for the long night ahead. As soon as I began climbing the short rocky ascent out of Twin Lakes, a huge bearded runner in a chequered shirt stormed up behind me with a pacer bib on. I asked him where his runner was and he mentioned he didn’t have one so was just headed off on his own accord. I asked him if he’d perhaps want to stick with me and to my utter delight he responded yes. The guys name was Brian Ricketts and he’d just come off a finish at Tahoe Rim Trail 100 and wanted a long training run before Wasatch in 3 weeks time. I’d struck gold much as I did with my pacer Jeff at Western States in that Brian had paced here before. We climbed up out of Twin Lakes and burned at a great pace all the way down to Half Pipe and Mile 70. I had to take a pit stop on route but other than that we ran pretty much the whole thing and I felt great.

Things only started to unravel once we hit Half Pipe, I quite quickly fell nauseous and just as we pulled in to the mile long stretch of people parked up watching runners come through, I started hurling. I puked most of the stretch whilst continuing to walk, silencing a lot of the clapping and cheering, but once I’d finished I said sorry to everyone and got a huge cheer which was pretty nice.

Brian and I ground out the 4 mile road section into Fish Hatchery Mile 76.5 and dropped the mile or so to the base of Power Line, the final climb in the story. Power Line is a brute of a hill, it is steep, rutted, uneven and worst of all has 4 false summits pushing you on higher every time you think you’ve finished the climbing. At the top I felt ropey and it was with a grimace that we shuffled down the other side. I noticed at this point that Brian was easily able to keep up with my running pace by walking but I stuck it out, tried not to look across at him and kept up the ultra shuffle. We then hit the single track and dropped down to May queen with just 13.5 left to go. I was very cold by this stage and knew that I had to get my core temperature up otherwise I may just manage to mess all the hard work up in the final throws. I grabbed some blankets and a chair and hully got me massive plate of pancakes and syrup and some hot coffee. I knew I had no hope of busting 25 hours at that point but also that I’d finish in good time so I spent about 20 minutes there getting back on track. I don’t think I’ve ever been at an aid station for as long (without being held back medically) so it felt weird and wrong but so good at the same time.

Pancakes at May Queen. The stuff of dreams.

Brian and I pushed on around Turqouise Lake which seemed to be neverending in the dark. When we finally came back out on to the road we could see a trail of headlamps back 6 miles behind us. We hit a steep descent where inexplicably the organisers had a photographer out at 5am in the pitch black shooting us coming through, and then began the slow climb from the 95 mile marker up to the finish, ascending all the way on dirt roads that we’d left town on 26 hours ago. We crested the final summit and could see the finish line back on the main street of the town ahead. I was trying to look out for Hully at that point so that we could finish the three of us together, but he was nowhere to be seen. It turns out we ran straight past him and he waited an hour and a half after I’d finished before coming back to the house to find us there. Whoops. Brian and I crossed the line in 26 hours 29 minutes to a small crowd and a very loud speaker. Finally done and a good race in the bag.

I loved this race – but primarily because I felt so good for 71% of it ( I can be precise because the nausea and vomiting came on very suddenly and undid everything as usual!). Much like Western it is a runners course and the 30 hour cut is a tough one to meet. In the end I finished 114^th out of about 627 starters. Only 50 finished for a 56% finisher rate and 100 of them were in the final hour. Drew and Tim both squeezed in under the 25 hour barrier for a three from three.

I owe this one to Hully, Brian and Tim and Drew, a great trip and thoroughly recommended. One word of warning though, we had blue skies almost throughout. If it had rained, this race would have gone from very hard to almost impossible. This isn’t Western States or Vermont, this is a mountain race and the weather can turn fast. All through the night preceeding the race we were in a huge thunderstorm with driving rain and freezing temps. Thank the lord we raced Saturday instead of Friday….

In case anyone is wondering, I would say on edge that Western States is slightly harder than Leadville, but there is very little to choose.....

For now that's it for my racing season. I have been injured for 8 months and need to give my body a decent recovery period so that I can get back on track for 2012. I would like to say it has been a total disaster of a year, but being able to finish both WS and Leadville in one summer is as much as I could have hoped for given two stress fractures and almost zero run training. It has been a year to remember in as much as I have learned a lot once again but am very grateful for being able to do what I have this year despite everything.

Webcast During The Race

2011-08-10T14:56:00.000-07:00

The front page of the Centurion Running website has now been changed to show the webcast we will have over race weekend. Lots of cool stuff on there to follow runners/ the day in general so stay tuned over 13th/ 14th August!!

www.centurionrunning.com

Final week to the NDW

2011-08-07T02:48:00.000-07:00

This weekend is the calm before the storm. This time next week we will have had 100 Marathon runners and 100 50 milers cross the finish line of our inaugural races and will be awaiting the arrival of the final few returning 100 mile warriors, 28 hours deep in to their adventure across the North Downs....

We've done everything we can do in advance of Thursday. I feel extremely well prepared, that which we can't prepare for - one can never prepare for. As with every event there will be issues over the course of race weekend but we will roll with them and i'm confident we have got enough of a framework in place to be able to handle most any eventuality.

We have run into a few speedbumps on the path to this coming weekend. When I touched base with Box Hill again a couple of months ago, the initial permission for runners to use the NDW path over that area had all of a sudden been rescinded. Many competitors have been aware that the weekend of our race is also the date for LOCOGs Olympic Road Cycling Test Event in preparation for London 2012. The route for the cycle race heads from central London down to the Surrey Hills and sends the riders on a multi lap circuit around and over Box Hill. As such LOCOG intervened with our race and made it clear that we would not be able use the NDW path at all due to road restrictions and spectator numbers and asked us to change the date. Needless to say I wasn't keen on that idea and after much haggling and explanation as to the simplicity of our circumstances - not least that all of our runners will be off of Box Hill by 6am on the morning of the cycling event, LOCOG finally agreed to give us the go ahead. Having to re-route runners around the base of Box Hill would have meant missing out on one of the more iconic points on the route and certainly the steepest and longest single ascent/ descent (some might be wishing now that we hadn't got clearance after all!) - for me it would have literally and figuratively removed the heart of the race. Nevertheless we are good to go as long as we are clear of the area by 6am. As such, the 5:50am cut off for 100 milers to reach the 76 mile point at the base of Box Hill having negotiated the descent and the bridge/ stepping stones will be strictly enforced. If a runner is close to the cut off at Reigate Hill they will be encouraged somewhat strongly to pick up the pace over the next 7.5 miles....

We've also had plenty of comments on the thick swathes of stinging nettles blocking the NDW by Clarks Lane just after the point where we'll have our final aid station on route to the 50 mile point. I spent Friday afternoon out on the course with Allan Rumbles (NDW 100 miler) armed with an axe, a scythe and some shears ready to clear Downs which had been impassable for a half a mile. Thank goodness we found the council had been down maybe only a few days before we got there as the way was remarkably clear leaving only a few ends for us to tidy up. If we'd had to do it ourselves we'd have been there for hours to make it passable. Not quite the level of trail work that goes in to making Western States happen each year but some nevertheless!!!!

Logistically everything is now in place. The team of volunteers has grown almost daily. We had our core of volunteers in place for a long time, the numbers I felt we needed to get things running smoothly on race day but I feel much happier about the overall level of support we have now. I don't think there's ever a time when you can have too much aid station support as a runner.

Rucky Chucky Near Aid Station at Western States: Photo c/o Joe Mcladdie

Food, water, Coke and both Electrolyte Replacement Drinks and Gels from our nutritional sponsor GU have been stocked and instructions mailed out to our aid station teams. Runners will find over 60 people on the course during race weekend including:

- 2 fully equipped medical response units covering all 3 finish lines with a further roving response unit to get to runners in need out on the course.
- An 8 strong course marking team who will lay additional markers and directional arrows through Friday 12th, glow sticks during the day/ night of Saturday 13th before finally sweeping the course across Sunday and Monday 14th and 15th.

The majority of our volunteer team, some of which will be out on the course assisting runners for 36 hours or more are experienced marathon and ultra runners and those that aren't, have friends or family who are. We are deeply indebted to them for their help and support and as always, without them there would be no race.

Some of international runners arrive through Wednesday onwards so things will really start to become real around then. Hopefully I'll be able to sleep again at night come next week, just in time to fly on to Leadville for my own 100 mile assault the following weekend out in Colorado....

3 weeks until race day!

2011-07-23T05:12:00.000-07:00

Well pretty much everything is in place now for our inaugural races on the 13th/ 14th August.

This morning I opened up the online registration back end and saw that we had finally reached our limit of 100 x 50 milers, that being on top of the 100 x runners for the marathon which filled a few weeks ago and the 55 x 100 mile runners we have. The registrations opened in November and really only took off in February but we have had an amazing amount of support thus far.

I have found that the logistics and time spent in organisation of an event like this are beyond extensive. Whilst a lot of it is enjoyable there is a vast amount of process with it too.

It remains to be seen if anything is missing come race day but the basics behind this event and the major reasons why I decided to put this and the other Centurion races together are stronger than ever and we will deliver on them.

I went out in the week on the mountain bike with our chief course marker and was shocked at how slow our progress was. It would have been far quicker to run, due to the numerous albeit short sections of stairs and steep up and downs on slippery clay trails that make the 50/ 100 mile races the tricky proposition that they are. The elevation changes in terms of other 100s that are out there, are relatively modest at 5500ft/ 10400 ft and there are plenty of very runnable soft and well groomed trail, but the core of the race, the section from Box Hill to Reigate Hill (and vice versa) is by no means easy.

In trying to predict the winning times of both events I have drifted from one extreme to the other, but I am sure of one thing, that our last 50 mile and 100 mile finishers will need every minute of the 15/ 32 hours we have put aside for them.

Very exicted for race day and to finally get this thing off of the ground.

Vermont 100 Race Report

2011-07-19T15:55:00.000-07:00

Two warnings on this blog report, graphic description of poorly performing bodily functions and a pretty downbeat spin on things. It won't last, don't worry....

The second race in the Grand Slam did not pan out as I had hoped. As regular readers of this blog well know, I have been injured for most of the year with two stress fractures and almost no run training to speak of in the run up to Western States which I managed to get through on cycling training on a stationary bike, mental stubborness and good luck that my shin held up.

When I returned I thought long and hard about going to Vermont to run. Between the two races I managed a total of 3 miles, had a lot of trouble sleeping and was mentally and physically fatigued as a result of pushing an out of shape body through 100 hot mountain miles in 28 hours. But to not have tried would have been a sin. I was thankful I got through WS but knew if I could knock off Vermont, the 'easiest' 100 in the Slam, then I would have enough time to recover better for Leadville in August.

We left it late to fly out and for the third time in succession, BA had oversold the flight and made us wait until an hour before the plane was due to leave before confirming we had a seat! In the end we landed in Boston around 8pm (1am UK time) and drove the 2 hours out to White River Junction. Thursday night we got about 5 hrs of sleep and then hit registration at Silver Hill Meadow, hidden in the green hills and rolling dirt roads of Vermont alongside around 300 other runners and some horses who were also running the race (not joking). Below is a picture of two of the 100 mile horses wearing blinkers, except the blinkers are actually total headwrap blindfolds? This is the best thing that I have ever seen at an ultra

At registration there was a weigh in and I came in 4 lbs lighter than WS starting weight. It kind of told me what I already knew, that I wasn't over the race 3 weeks prior but I felt ok. We got back to the hotel around 7pm that evening and got off to sleep around 9 but with a 2am start, again, left short of sleep for the 30 minute drive to race HQ. I felt awful in the car before the race start and maybe should have read it as a sign of things to come but once you get started at these things all the previous issues tend to fade away.

We started at 4am and ran down some dirt roads and up some more. I have no idea why now, but I had assumed vermont was a trail race. Well don't be fooled, almost the entire thing is on roads and that was a shock to me. The going was very straight forward and the hills were short and not too steep which made hiking them at a good pace easy to do. My quads felt good on the downs too so I began to feel quietly confident that I could have a good day. Runners came and went with the ebb and flow of the early aid stations as usual and it was great catching up with other Grand Slammers and new runners alike. I got to a little stake in the trail at 26.2 miles in around 5 hours in great shape and about 5 minutes later smashed head first into a brick wall of fatigue. It is hard to put my finger on what caused it, i had been eating and drinking regularly but all of a sudden I just started projectile puking everything that went in - food and water. I knew from experience that it would likely pass so I pushed on a little slower with plenty of time to play with already and tried to bring my stomach back. The heat kicked up a bit here and on some of the exposed sections it was pretty hot and humid, I'm guessing somewhere around 85 degrees as reported. Each aid station started to feel like it was taking an eternity to get to and I was sick so many times that I stopped bothering to lean over and just hurled the bile up as i walked along. At this point my pee also started to dip from clear to dark brown/ coffee coloured and it was extremely painful to pass. The puking distressed a few runners and a couple admitted they were concerned for me that when asking how I was doing I said I felt totally out of it. I started to get a ringing sensation in my head and lost track of the mileage as I continued to hurl everything for the next 5 hours straight.

I stumbled in to Camp 10 Bear at mile 47.2 and weighed in trying to look like I wasn't in trouble. I was down 6lbs there, so now 10 lbs off of my WS weight and 14 lbs off of my WS weight at the equivalent point in the race but Im not sure about the accuracy of those scales as other people reported even more ridiculous numbers. I ushered myself through to the grass behind the aid station and a friend of mine from Virginia who had been running with me for much of the day at WS was volunteering and tried to help bring my core temperature down. It had got to the point where I was overheating so much I had started to shiver and it took an hour and a half of ice on my head and neck and a lot of fluid to get back on track. I really didn't see how I could continue but I knew that I was at a point where if I didn't push it all the way I would regret it big time. I ambled out of the aid station and crested the small hill before puking everything back up in front of a car full of people. I turned back to start walking back in to the aid and started laughing at how bad things had got. I spun on my heels and literally grit my teeth and carried on walking in the right direction. It took everything i had not to just pull it there and then. I think I knew at that point i was past the point of no return but I am not one to give up without a fight. At some point in the next stretch I got lost for over 40 minutes in some woods which did nothing to help me focus but with no food and water reaching my system I was on a big and unstoppable downhill spiral.

At about 52 miles I passed out cold and woke up with my face in some gravel in the road. I had just conked out on the move and woke up when i hit the floor so got back up steadied myself and walked on to the next aid station. I had a tiny revival here like my adrenaline had got going and I actually started running pretty fast but that didn't last and after running down the hill with another grand slammer, I pulled in to mile 57 aid station and sat with the medic. I could feel the blood had run out of my face and they looked genuinely concerned for my health. He told me I could get an IV but that he would have to take me to hospital as part of race rules. Had he been able to give me an IV there and not done that, I would have been ok and Im pretty sure I could have finished. Without it and with literally nothing in my stomach for the past 8 hrs I was totally and utterly done, there was nothing left in the tank. To say I had no energy and nothing on which to continue would be an understatement. It was an effort to stay awake. I hadn't peed in as long as i could remember and my kidneys were aching in my back. Passing out was the final straw really, I think it was at that point that I realised I was actually putting myself at risk of being in serious trouble between aid stations. Life threatening? Probably not. Potentially causing long term damage? Maybe but if the answer there is maybe you need to start asking serious questions as to whether continuing on is really that smart.

I have to analyse my DNF here as mentally it is one of the hardest things to deal with and sometimes it can be hard to look yourself in the mirror if you feel you could have gone even one more step.

Sometimes you have a bad day on the trails, sometimes you can turn a bad day around and go from feeling like you can't go on, to running 8 minute miles within the space of thirty minutes. And some days you just can't turn it around at all. Saturday was one of those days for me. For 9 hours I tried to get food and water to stay down and to get my core temperature somewhere approaching normal but to no avail. Even after an hour and a half at the aid station Camp 10 Bear, I still managed to throw everything I had consumed up less than 400 yards up the road.

A lot of people state that they have either never DNF'd or would do so only on a stretcher. The reality is at some point in their career every regular ultra runner will DNF a race. Find an ultra runner who has done 50 races or more and not DNF'd and you have found one lucky individual. It happens. There is a difference between being in pain for 10s of hours on end and actually being concerned that you are causing yourself pretty serious internal damage. In that situation your body doesn't hold back and if faced with the physical signs ie. dark brown pee, painful kidneys and failing consciousness, the ability to push through the usual pain of an ultra washes away.

Every race is different and over 100 miles a lot can go wrong and it takes kahunas to line up at the startline. There is, however, always another race. Not finishing a race because it is too hard and you are tired and the distance is too much is one thing but I know that I didn't do that here. If I did ever do that I think I would give up trying.

So being at home now without a finish sucks but it's just one more race in so many past and future. VT100 will be there in the future and if I turn up fit and rested Im pretty sure I could do alright on that course.

My hope as a Race Director is that if runners get themselves into a similar situation to mine at VT, at our Centurion races in the future, that they make similar calls to the one I made before they get into real trouble. There is a line between gruelling extreme periods of self doubt and muscle pain which are par for the course in an ultra, and signs that your body is warning you that things have gone too far.

Doesn't mean it doesn't still suck though!!!!

So the Slam is over. By not finishing Vermont I lost my conditional place at Wasatch which just leaves Leadville. 'Just' Leadville. That doesn't sound right....!!!! Having been injured or recovering from February 5th to this point, I need a break to get fit and healthy again. Whilst never achieving elite status, I have always been able to compete at races and usually finish in the top 10%. I have lost that this past year as my body has rebelled and my fitness nosedived. I want to get back to training hard and enjoying my running again and build it back up slowly before getting back in to longer harder stuff next year.

Leadville is a major race for me, it will be a slogfest because once again i'll have done little between races and with no running base to build on but I am going to give it 100% and hope to return home with the haul of WS100 and LT100 double in one summer which won't be too bad given the year behind me.

Thanks to those medics who sat with me for hours after the race feeding me fluids. My pee finally returned to normal colour on the plane home, over 48 hours after the race. For those interested in a little further reading from a much more experienced runner about why urine turns brown and what it can mean, try this from AJW. It is food for thought at future races and I would be lying if I said that having had it plus kidney pain at the past two races I didn't have concerns for future 100s. Interesting that the docs advise harder training to prevent muscle damage. Something I have been sorely lacking in the run up to this summer and would go part way to explaining why I am having such issues for the first time....

Finally congratulations to all the Slammers still going. There are some sersiously tough athletes out there doing it one race at a time, particularly Sniper (David Snipes) who is running 100 at Angeles Crest this coming weekend just 7 days after VT. Congratulations also to Pete Goldring who travelled with me for this one and who finished in an impressive 20 hours 50. Another great effort at only his second 100.

South Downs Way Race 2011 & 2012

2011-07-12T09:39:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I had a blast managing the 3rd Checkpoint on the South Downs Way 103 mile trail race from Eastbourne to Winchester. I have helped out at a few races over the years but never at a 100 mile (++) event and I have to say I was pretty humbled. I like to think that as a runner I am pretty gracious to the volunteers when I come in to an aid station, taking the time to thank them for spending 2/ 12/ 24+ hours standing out in all conditions with really one simple aim, of helping runners to reach their goal of finishing. Paul, another volunteer and I, set up in Washington Car Park, mile 49 on the course, at 3pm in the sunshine and awaited our first runners to come through. We had quite a simple arrangement as there were 45 starters to worry about and not a marauding mass of 100s of 10k runners, so we put up a gazebo, a half a dozen chairs in the shade underneath and a long table across the front which we adorned with standard ultra fayre, 50 odd cups of coke and our aid station speciality cheese and ham wraps. At around 4pm Jen Jackson, the race director, arrived in the car and Paul and I went to get some extra water from the other side of the A24 where there is a tap right on the SDW trail. Then we sat around chatting and eating the aid station food waiting for our first runners.

At about 5:35pm Nicola Golunska rolled in, so a little over 8 and a half hours to around half way. It isn't exactly par for the course for a female to be leading a 100 mile race at the half way mark but clearly Nicola was on a mission and had pretty much killed her pacer in getting to us so quickly. Just as she left to carry on to Amberley, 7 miles up the track another runner Mark Collinson came through stopped and chatted for a minute whilst we filled his bottles, grabbed some food and went on his way also. And so the pattern continued. I hope and think that for our part we were pretty good at getting the runners what they needed, filling bottles, packs, grabbing food and drop bags and generally just trying to offer some encouragement but the response we got back from all 42 runners who came through Washington was fantastic. People seemed to respond well to the set up despite the fact that they had faced 49 miles of hilly terrain into a 20mph headwind and a blazing sun. In the end, 40 of the 42 made it out of the aid station and an incredible 37 of 45 starters finished the race. It made it a thoroughly rewarding experience and exemplified exactly why I got involved with ultras in the first place.

The race was only its second year and managed by Jen Jackson whom I have come to know from various trail events and from my recent appointment to the Trail Running Association Committee, which Jen also sits on. For some time, Jen has mentioned that she would like to move on from managing the SDW race in the future as it is simply too time consuming amongst the hundreds of other commitments in life. When I first decided to put on our first 100 back in August of last year, I looked at the South Downs Way as my logical first choice. It is the trail on which I have done most of my running and racing and quite frankly I just love the whole track although particularly the heart of it from Amberley up to Ditchling Beacon in daylight as well as at night. There was no way I was going to double up with Jens race however, one 100 miler on a national trail is enough after all, so I moved on to other locations and struck upon the North Downs Way and the Thames Path which we have up and running and we look forward to our first event in exactly a months time.

When Jen mentioned she wanted to hand the race over to somebody a few months ago I messaged her and explained how much I would love to take the South Downs Way Race on from 2012. To my delight, Jen has decided to hand it on to us to manage in the future.

Not much will really change as quite frankly, I didn't hear a single bad word said about the race this year and from end to end it was a resounding success. There are things that I like in 100s that I will probably look to add for 2012 but I will take nothing away. So, in short, in a few weeks time we will go live with entries for the continuation of the South Downs Way Race: 2012 Edition. I am overwhelmingly enthusiastic about this trail and I have little doubt that will end up rubbing off on the event and the communication for which I make no apologies! In the meantime, any questions can always be directed to me at racedirector@centurionrunning.com and I will post a little more when we have done a proper hand over with Jen and are ready to go.

So I guess really it's just left to say thanks to Jen for setting this race up and for throwing an unbelievable amount of time, energy and love into the race. Hopefully we will be able to continue to build on her hard work and turn this in to a long standing, well organised and significant UK 100 mile trail race.

For our part that will be 3 x 100 milers and I am not underestimating the amount of work that will be for our small team. I have a plan in my mind for a 4th 100 but not for some time yet and that will very definitely be all that we take on. As with limiting the number of runners for each event, we also want to make sure we limit the number of events themselves so that everything remains well organised, well executed and with runners safety and enjoyment at the top of the list of priorities.

Exciting times ahead but we have a very tough act to follow.

Oh and we just had our buckles for NDW100 mile finishers delivered. Pretty awesome I hope you'll agree....

100 miles one day (sub 24 hour) and Finisher (sub 32 hour) Buckles

5 Days to the next 100....

2011-07-11T14:47:00.000-07:00

That is quite a scary thought, yet I am by no means the only one in that boat. I am always amazed by the feats of others in the ultrarunning world. I know that I am looking up from a point on the path to truly understanding ultras and how far you really can go if the mind and body are willing. Four years ago the thought of running 100 miles just once was totally alien to me. On the verge of attempting to complete a second 100, this time at Vermont, in the space of 3 weeks, I need only look at two other individuals in particular who put that effort to shame.

Firstly, Nick Clark a Brit exiled in the US has this past weekend finished in 3rd place at the Hardrock 100 in a total time of just under 28 hours. 13 days prior to that Nick finished 3rd at Western States in sub 16 hours. Hardrock makes Western States look like an afternoon stroll. With 34000 feet of climb and descent at an average altitude of around 10000ft it is easily the hardest 100 out there (Im not counting the Barkley). My quads still hurt from WS. That is an absolutely phenomenal effort and it is scary to think what Nick might have been able to do if he hadn't already stacked 100 miles in to his legs two weeks earlier!

Second, Shannon Farrar-Griefer is currently en route to Stovepipe Wells part way through Badwater, 135 miles through Death Valley. Badwater is bad enough on it's own but Shannon also finished at Western States and even more incredibly, is also attempting the Grand Slam and will therefore need to be on the startline for Vermont just 72 hours after finishing Badwater on the other side of the country. That, to me, right now, is absolutely insane.

Mentally, going in to race 2 of the Grand Slam I am in a good place and I can't wait to get started. I feel calm and relaxed and ready to take it on. I'm excited to see Vermont. I had a blast at Old Dominion a few years ago, running through the rolling Virginia countryside in a humid fog and I feel like Vermont could yield some similar scenery - pretty much the best part about racing in different locations.

Physically it's hard to know what kind of condition I am really in but I feel pretty good. I haven't slept well during the two intervening weeks but my legs have been pretty well rested so my energy reserves feel reasonable. My feet aren't healed but the blisters have gone so although I've got some weak spots where the skin is a few layers short of recovered, there shouldn't be any extra issues there. My shin and quads are the two things that are playing with me a little. The shin feels good but I still get the odd pang of pain and as for my quads, well they are still a ways from recovered. I absolutely smashed them to pieces a fortnight ago and last week playing golf, hiking around for maybe 4- 5 miles, crouching down to line up putts became almost impossible. So it's a few more ice baths another sports massage and some intensive stretching and off we go to the race on Thursday evening!!!

I am a little bit concerned about the number of people who have messaged me saying that now Western is out of the way, just enjoy Vermont it's way easier and you'll be fine!!!! Complacency isn't a particularly good thing to take into a 100 miler, I've been there once before at a 100 and come unstuck so I will go in to Saturday with respect for the distance and the not insignificant 29000 feet of elevation change and take it one aid station at a time.

I don't think there is a way to follow this one online so I'll report back from the finish (I hope). We have a 30 hour cut off here so once again I will be shooting for somewhere between 24 and 30 hours depending on how the legs hold up!!!!

Aid Station Fayre?

WS100 + 8 days, VT100 - 13 days

2011-07-03T07:35:00.000-07:00

I have had a rough week!!!! I am starting to recognise that the 5th major factor in my Grand Slam attempt beyond each of the 4 races is in fact going to be the traveling, mainly for the loss of resting time during the immediate post race period. Once I got back to the hotel on Sunday afternoon, having been up for 40+ hours, I spent the next 12 alternating between sleeping, eating and watching real high quality fishing programming on cable tv before taking on the journey home which was a 22 hour slog. As is the usual pattern with these things, the endorphins were still rushing around in my system as I drove back to Reno and I felt good, albeit my legs and feet were still trashed. Three flights and a lot of trekking around airports later and I felt like I'd been hit round the head with a frying pan PLUS my feet had swelled so badly that my ankles had disappeared. I spent the car ride home from the airport laid out on the back seat and keeping one eye on my vitals to make sure I wasn't suffering anything more than the after effects of a long journey and longer run.

Fast forward to Sunday and my energy is starting to return, the swelling has disappeared and my blisters have started to dry out. I lost three toe nails this morning (which is good news!) but my quads are the lingering issue with a lot of tightness and lack of strength due to the pounding of last weekend.

So with less than 2 weeks to Vermont I am planning on continuing to rest as much as possible, bring my feet back to a runnable condition and get plenty of sports massages on my legs to try and re-habilitate them in time.

Each day that goes past I get a little more confident in my returning energy reserves and in my shin which seems, unbelievably, to be ok. I am not yet 100% set on starting at Vermont. If I damage myself further I will be furious if I am not able to start at Leadville. With 14000ft of climb, no altitude to contend with and not a lot of single track it certainly represents the most straight forward proposition of the 4 Grand Slam races and whilst 100 miles is a massive deal any time, any where, this won't be anywhere near as difficult as WS or Badwater for example so I don't have a lot to prove to myself in terms of simply finishing as a one off race. The challenge is of course to finish just 3 weeks after Western States and keep the Grand Slam torch alight. Keith Kniplings altitude comparisons of the 4 races shows the differences between them

Whatever happens I am going to make the journey to Boston and continue to take each day as it comes.

This weekend is a huge one on the US ultra running calender with Hardrock taking place on Saturday and Badwater on the Monday. Hardrock is always fascinating to watch and having now properly qualified by finishing WS, my name will very definitely be in the hat for it in 2012. Good friend and double world record holder Mimi Anderson is headed to her 2nd Badwater, this time to attempt the double and break the female record in the process. The double involves a continuation beyond the finish line at Whitney Portals, to the summit of Mt Whitney before returning via the same route to the start line back at Badwater itself, a round trip of 292 miles and a true feat of human endurance. At the sharp end, it will be fascinating to see what Mike Wardian can achieve in his first attempt at the race. Mike is a phenomenal athlete recently finishing 11th at Comrades in a time of 5:51, before finishing 3rd at the NF50 miler the following Saturday and winning the associated half marathon the following day. Just 2 weeks later he ran a 2:17 marathon. Clearly recovery is not an issue for him.... He also has Ian Sharman pacing him so it will be fascinating to see how things unfold. Two other good friends are also running this year, Eberhard Frixe who crewed there for me in 2010 is going for finish number 7 and Lisa Smith Batchen my coach through this last 3 months for finish number 10. Like me, Lisa has been injured for a long time and comes in to this race with a longest run of about 20 miles. It will be a case of mind over matter for her but if anyone has the mental strength to get to the finish despite all adversity, it is Lisa.

I will be managing the Washington Aid Station at mile 49 of the SDW100 this coming Saturday and looking forward to seeing some good friends finishing a great 100 this side of the atlantic, a race that I hope to have a lot more involvement with in the future.

What a great sport this game of ultrarunning is and man have I missed it..................

(I found a couple of videos of the snow fields from last weekend as below. I am at 7:07 and gone in the blink of an eye in the first one. The second gives a better idea of how difficult it was to negotiate the terrain, particularly in ROAD SHOES!!!!!)

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Western States 100 Mile Race Report

2011-06-29T09:52:00.000-07:00

In the race manual it gives 'Trashed Quads' as one of the main reasons for not finishing Western States 100. I had never really had trashed quads before but let me tell you it hurts bad. I recommend doing some running before doing WS and particularly, doing long downhills to get your legs used to being battered by descending.... sadly I hadn't run downhill since early February. I guess this was really an experiment in whether I could finish a tough 100 on just cross training and some mental stones.

I spent the Friday morning before race day going through runner registration involving signing the usual liability waivers, picking up a medical card, having a photo and short video clip taken for the webcast and then picking up the free race swag (Mountain Hardwear Pack, calf and arm sleeves, 2 race t shirts, fleece etc - all in all $$$s of free stuff). Then followed the medical check where they took our blood pressure, pulse and weight. The weight thing is good but annoying, they check us regularly throughout the race and if our weight differed by more than 3% up or down of registration weight, we may be asked to wait at an aid station to drink/ eat/ pee until our weight normalised before we can go on. If our weights differ from that at registration by 7% or more we would be pulled from the course on medical grounds (either dehydration or hyponatraemia).

I was one of the few people there without designated crew or pacers but I didn't mind, given that there were 24 aid stations over the 100 miles plus 10 places you could leave drop bags. Unfortunately I realised I had forgotten the gels GU had sent me for the race, plus my headlamps and cap so I went outside and found the GU rep who I kind of begged to help me out by giving me replacement gels (thank you GU rep) and then bought the other stuff. I spent the rest of the day chilling out with Ian Sharman, discussing his race strategy for at the least, breaking the top 10 again and then later with David Snipes (Sniper) a friend of mine from VA going for the Last Great Race this year (Old Dominion, Western States, Vermont, Angeles Crest, Leadville and Wasatch Front all in one summer).

I got up the following morning at 3am, drove the car back up to Squaw Valley and climbed out into the freezing morning air. When I got back to the check in it was packed with runners and their crews mostly eating and forcing that second morning movement pre race. At 0455, I lined up with 400 other runners and watched the clock click down the last few minutes to 5am and race start.

Obviously I had no idea how things were going to go. My one goal was to cross the finish line in Auburn. To have presumed I was capable of achieving anything more than that on a stress fracture and a total of 11 running miles in the preceeding 6 weeks would have been naive to say the least. Whilst I am by no means an elite runner I do usually make the top 10% of the field at most races so I made sure I forced myself to wait back of the bulk of the field at the start and to try to stay there as much as possible to make sure i didn't get swept up in racing anybody.

The first 4.5 miles of WS climbs from the base of Squaw Valley and winds up gravel paths under the ski lifts all the way to the escarpment and over the top of the mountain. There is no downhill or flat in this section, just a slope which varies in pitch from runnable to a steep hike. When the gun went I could see the front runners streaming away up the path, I ran maybe 300 - 400 yards and then settled in to a power walk up the hill. The first 3 miles went by quickly as the sun started to come up and from there we turned left to go directly up the ski slope which was still covered in thick snow.

It was here that I first realised how bad my road shoes were going to be at gripping on snow with an icy crust on top. I slid around a lot but made it up and over the top of the climb in around an hour. The views across Lake Tahoe behind were incredible as everyone told me they would be.

(language warning in almost all videos....)

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Once over the summit, we hit a smooth downhill trail which led us straight into a forest where the snow was at its thickest. The going for the next 9 miles through that stuff varied between runnable snow and sliding on hands and arse down steep icy slopes ie. between 0.5 and 7 miles per hour. I went over hard over a dozen times and by the time we had descended far enough to get out of the snow, my arms were killing me from arresting so many falls.

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I went through Talbot aid at Mile 13 in 3 hours exactly, had a couple of gels and refilled my water before making quick work of the next 7 mile section down to Poppy at mile 20, hitting that in 4 hours dead. By this time my quads were already sore. Anybody who has run Western States before will know that if your quads are sore by mile 20 you are in serious trouble, because you have about 20000 feet of downhill to contend with after that point. I knew I was in pain because I had done no running, I was asking my legs to do work that they were just not used to. The fact that I knew this would happen coming in to the race made me better equipped just to block it out and get on with it.

The short section between here and Duncan Canyon at mile 23 was stunning, all single track winding through trees around the edge of a lake and crossing small streams. From Duncan Canyon followed a long downhill descent on trail and then road, before a steep climb in the now building heat back up to Mosquito Ridge at Mile 31. This was the first time in the day I felt like I'd gone too hard. People had started to pass me on the down hills where I was already in pain but on the ascents I made all that time back and more with pretty strong climbing legs. At Mosquito Ridge I caught up with Sniper and we ran the 4 mile loop at the top together, grabbing snow from the trail to dump under my hat which helped cool me back down from overheating temporarily. I let Sniper go once we went through Millers Defeat at 35 and the next 3 miles were on what should have been a lovely winding, easily runnable descent. Unfortunately I was getting overtaken again by everyone I'd just cruised past because my quads felt like they were being jarred out of my legs. If I'd know what was to come I would have started to panic, luckily I was blissfully unaware.

The next section of WS, the canyons, should be reasonably straight forward but cause many to come unstuck. Over the next 20ish miles (38 - 56) you descend deep down into a canyon and climb back up the other side, repeat 3 times. It is this section that most runners do in the heat of the day and there is no air down there. Luckily we only had 90 ish degree temps rather than the usual 110 to 120. The first canyon drops steeply from Last Chance at mile 43 all the way down to a creek at the bottom before climbing back up the fabled Devils Thumb at mile 47. If you had gone on a nice trail run and your legs weren't trashed already, the descent would be one of the most enjoyable running experiences imaginable with lots of sweeping switchbacks. My quads were so battered however that I was forced to walk most of the descent and every step was causing more and more pain. At the bottom, I spent some time stretching my legs out and had already lost a lot of the flex and bend. The climb up Devils Thumb is intense. 1500 feet in a mile or so with 36 switchbacks. It is the kind of climb where you look up above you and the runners ahead look like they are perched on a cliff directly above you. When I got to the top at mile 43 I felt totally spaced out and my weight was down 4 lbs which was right on the limit. I had again passed everyone that had cruised past me on the descent but I'd overdone it and let my HR climb too high for too long. I forced some food down at this point and just kept moving so as not to let my legs seize up. Into the next canyon was a repeat performance, although less steep the descent was again horrific and the climb back out to Michigan Bluff at mile 55.7 was long and hard too.

I realised I had a chance of making Forest Hill at Mile 62 before dark and wanted to do so to give myself a boost psycologically. Apart from my quads everything else was pretty ok, no chaffing, blisters bad but manageable and i'd been eating and drinking well. I head out of the aid there and went on my way with two of the medic sweepers that are out running sections of the course throughout the day. I got chatting to those guys and one of them really kindly offered to go ahead the last mile into Forest Hill and find me a pacer. I made good time on this section and got to Forest Hill at mile 62 before it got dark in 15:22. Slow by any normal standards but good going for me all things considered.

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Everyone tells you pre race to 'save some running in your legs for after Forest Hill - it gets much easier'. Well that's all well and good but if your quads are shot to pieces there is nothing you can do to recover them. I tried everything, snatching sticks out of the bushes to push down my legs and try and run the lactic acid out, stretching. Nothing worked.

At Forest Hill I picked up my pacer, Jeff which the medic had kindly sorted out for me (i offered him a free spot in the TP100 for helping me out). Jeff was amazing. He had been waiting for a friend to come through Forest Hill from where he would pace him to the finish. Unfortunately his friend had dropped earlier in the race and that was to my benefit. Jeff just got it straight away. I told him my expectations at that point were just to finish and not kill myself doing it given that Vermont was three weeks away. Was it possible to go sub 24 still? Probably, but to find out might put me so far into the red that it could take months to get back out again like Badwater last year. I said 25 - 26 hours seemed reasonable and that I just wanted my shin to hold up and he agreed. Jeff lives for these trails. God knows how many hours he has spent on the Western States trail over the years but he knew every nook and cranny. He had also paced somebody last year from the same point. To have someone in a race when it's getting dark and you've been on your feet for 16 hours already, telling you exactly how long the next climb is or how far to the next runnable section is invaluable. Not only that but his help at the aid stations was out of this world. As we approached I would let him know what i needed ie. how much powder to put in to the water bladder, what i needed from the bag, food etc etc and he just did it allowing me to either stretch, puke or just stand at the food table eating everything I could.

I say puke because over the next 10 - 15 miles I started to get pretty nauseous. We ran down the Cal Street trail until it got dark and made ok time through the aid station at 65, then on to Peachstone at mile 70. At this point though I tried to put a cup of coke, a quesadilla and 2 ibuprofen in my mouth at the same time, starting chewing and blew everything all over the side of the aid station. It came hard and fast and I missed Jeff by inches. What followed was a total evacuation of everything I had in my system. Retching really hard made me pull my stomach muscles but once it was all out I felt tons better. We proceeded on through the dark trails and got to the river crossing at mile 78 around 1am.

The American River is usually crossed on foot at this point but it was almost in flood this year with all the meltwater. At Rucky Chucky - Mile 78, Jeff and I donned life jackets and climbed into a raft for a quick journey across to the other side. It would have been spectacular had I not been freezing cold and in pain but despite that it was still an experience I'll never forget.

When we got to the other side I changed socks for the first time and found all the skin had come away from the bottom of my feet. There was a foot guy there but I just placed the socks over the flaps of skin and pressed down into my shoes to get it to all stay put. We began the 2 mile climb up to Green Gate at mile 80 and the going was slow but steady. The next 10 miles or so we tried to keep a pace of between 3 and 4 mph over all terrain, the trail just winding through the woods was great and again any other time would have been incredible running but with quads this sore it was hard to enjoy that much. The light started to come up just as we hit Browns Bar at Mile 90 which was an experience....

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Once through Browns Bar we had roughly 3 x 3.5 mile sections to go and plenty of time in the bag. I had gone a little quiet but Jeff knew it was just the pain in my legs causing that. He kept pushing me to eat salt and drink a little as my hands were pretty swollen and my weight still up 3 or 4 pounds at the previous weigh in. We got down to Highway 49 crossing and went straight on through the aid station. They don't tell you that this last 10 miles is almost all straight up or straight down but it is. Nothing severe but pretty rough going actually. It was getting to the point where I was having real trouble negotiating the descents now at any speed. I felt pretty sick with the pain and didn't want to puke again so just gutted it out as best I could but we were really crawling along. From mile 93.5 we made the climb up and then the steep descent down to No Hands Bridge at 96.5. This should have been really enjoyable again but it was a death march. This being the last downhill however, I started to lighten up a little. Across No Hands, we then made the climb up to Robie Pt at mile 98.9 out of the trail and the heat and on to the last mile to the track at Auburn. Tim Twietmeyer came past at this point the other way down the trail and said well done which was flattering considering he's run WS 25 times, all in under 24 hours.

The last mile to the track was a gentle stroll. I couldn't have cared less about the overall time at that point, I had 2 hours to do a mile so we just ambled in with Jeff trying to get me to 'loosen up my quads' to run round the track at the end. When we got there the reception was fantastic, people cheering all the way round the 300 yards. Sniper, who'd finished a couple of hours before, got up and jogged the last 200 with us across the finish line as John Medinger the announcer read out my name. It felt good to cross the line, total time 28:25.

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I was elated that I'd got it done. Mentally it was my strongest ever performance. Not once did I even come close to contemplating taking extended time at an aid station, let alone sleeping/ stopping or just dropping out. Ordinarily I would be disappointed with a crappy death march to the finish but to have expected anything else would have been insane. As a result I did what I could and I was lucky enough to be allowed to make a 100 mile journey last weekend. And what's more my shin lasted the distance. Western States lived up to everything it is pertained to be. Yes the organisation is fantastic albeit a little fanatical but mostly it is the trail itself that holds this race up there at the top. It is simply an awesome track.

As soon as I crossed the line a medic took my pulse and told me it was 121 so high. I had just covered 100 miles and run the last 300 yard section in to the finish. No shit my pulse was high. Then I made my way over and got a sports massage. Two people clamping me to the table basically pushed as much crap out of my quads as possible and it was excruciating. I lasted about 10 minutes under their care and it was deeply painful but ultimately beneficial. Sniper, John his pacer and I took a long drive back to Truckee after and grabbed some lunch but we were all falling asleep at the table having been up for 38+ hours so hit the sack shortly after.

I have to say thanks to Lisa Smith-batchen who coached me through the worst period in my running career. In short, Lisa got me through this race by training almost entirely on a stationary bike, stepper and strider. Not too many people could have got me to a place where i could even start on that basis, let alone finish with time to spare. Joe and Mike at the EIS who were able to finally diagnose my bone issues and set me on the straight and narrow deserve the reward of this finish also. Jeff Egolf, I am deeply indebted to you my friend you are one hell of a pacer.

So what's next? Well that was race 1 of the 4 in the Grand Slam. Vermont is next in just 3 weeks time (16th July) which is not a lot of time to recover. Of 32 who stared the slam at Western States, 8 DNF'd there so we are down to 24 already. On the way home my feet swelled up to horrendous proportions and my blisters and quads are going to take time to heal but with the right preparation and lots of rest I should yet be ok for Vermont. The only blocker will be if my shin shows any residual damage when the swelling in my legs goes down. I have made no secret of the fact that in order of priority, Western States and then Leadville came top for me so if Vermont will force me from Leadville I won't start there. It's one day and one race at a time this summer. Who knows what could happen, I got through that one ok!

Western States Done

2011-06-26T17:25:00.000-07:00

Obviously a full and overblown race report will follow but I wanted to say thanks to all the people that sent messages and e mails wishing me luck and congratulations on finishing. I know I went on and on about my total lack of preparedness for this event but today was by far my strongest ever performance mentally. My body was not capable of giving an ounce more than I dragged out of it and consequently it was an extremely painful race at times but not once did I think I wouldn't finish.

The Western States course is everything and more that has been written of it. To think as we rounded the track at Placer High School in Auburn, that climbing up and over a mountain to kick off was part of the same race is incredible. It is worth the time and expense to make it out here for this one if you get the chance....

The day before the day before WS100

2011-06-23T14:06:00.000-07:00

I arrived in Reno last night after a 22 hour journey yesterday and drove up to Truckee from there. Truckee is 8 miles down the hill from Squaw Valley resort which is the start point of Western States.

This morning I parked near the start line and hiked the first 4 miles of the course. I have to say I am in awe of the surroundings. It is 80 degrees here without a cloud in the sky and it almost feels like I'm on holiday. The lingering snow pack that everyone keeps talking about and that has forced the re-route away from the traditional course this year, is clearly an issue. The slope begins 5 yards in front of the start line as the course winds its way up the mountain following a gravel road. There are plenty of twists and turns under chair lifts not unlike UTMB but just before the 3 mile point the course turns into thick snow. Making progress is hard going in that stuff, it's slippery so powering uphill is pretty hard. Apparently we will be on the snow from 3 - 13 miles but I'm not that worried about it, if anything it might be slightly less impactful on my shin.

The views from the top are awesome back over Squaw Valley and Lake Tahoe in the distance. I walked back down the hill from the summit to the top of the escarpment where about 60 people had gathered for the flag raising and a couple of the WSER board members gave us some goo advice and history from the course.

View from just below the top of the first 4 mile climb

Back tonight for the Grand Slam meeting then again tomorrow for registration, medical check in and a bunch of other stuff. It is GREAT to finally be here.

Western States 100 2011

2011-06-21T06:16:00.000-07:00

Well my training is done, taper well under way and I'm pretty sure I have my nutrition and hydration strategy really 'dialed in' for Saturdays race.

Here's what my run training schedule has looked like in the 6 week lead up to this years WS100:

May 14th: 4.6 miles - 42 minutes
June 3rd: 5 miles - 1 hour
June 21st: 2.12 miles - 19 minutes

So pretty consistent as you can see. This mornings run was the icing on the cake really where it all just came together in that first 2 miles and then a hard push the last 0.12 back to the car.

I may as well joke about it because there's pretty much nothing I can do about it now. I have done some basic cycling and swimming but not loads.

Last night I had one of those 'this is total stupidity' moments where after 2 weeks of talking myself into starting the race, I decided it was pointless. My 'coin flip' was the 2 miles this morning. If I was pain free through the night, during the 'run' and all day today with no residual effects and felt ok then I would start. It's 2pm and so far I am pain free so I am about to pack some stuff in a bag. I have to look at this as a very long training run for the other Grand Slam races. Job 1 is to finish, Job 2 is to finish and not cause further injury. If I can achieve those goals it will be a minor miracle but perhaps being forced to go slow will allow me to save more in the tank for Vermont? Anything could happen....

I fly tomorrow morning to Dallas and then on to Reno from where I drive up to Truckee where I am staying for the week (end). Finally it's on to Squaw Valley on Thursday morning. I am supposed to be meeting the other Grand Slammers there (the others doing all 4 x 100s this summer) but I don't really feel like I can legitimately turn up to that meet. I will go along however to catch up with my buddy David Snipes who has already run 3 x 100s in the past 2 months and is adding the Grand Slam plus Angeles Crest in the same 11 weeks.

The RD announced the course change due it being a 'snow year' and it turns out that between miles 3 and 15 and again between 31 and 35, we can expect 'thick snow'. They have re-routed and re-planned the first 3rd of the race and the distance between aid stations has been strung out. All of that is pretty much irrelevant to me, I've done no training so the best I can hope for is to slog it out at the back and scrape through the cut offs one by one in an attempt to make the 30 hour time limit. It will likely slow everyone else down however and therefore I will have more company at the back as a result I would guess....

Going in to a race with zero expectations is kind of refreshing. I am just excited to see the mechanics of the race and gain some further useful insights into race management/ logistics etc for our own Centurion Races. The only other remaining question is how much stuff I buy at the pre race expo because as everyone knows you can't wear race logo gear of races you haven't finished. I have some comrades stuff in a box which i got free even though i didn't start so I guess if the worst comes to the worst I can just fill it up with Western States stuff too and then get it out sometime in the next 2 decades when I might be able to turn in another chance to run and perhaps even a semi - decent finishing time....

'Don't the best of them bleed it out whilst the rest of them peter out'

Western States Odds

2011-06-16T09:14:00.000-07:00

Plenty of guys out there offering odds on Western States right. Try irunfar's outstanding site with a prediction table to be launched here.

From a British perspective it is going to be the first time that arguably the three fastest Brits over the 100 mile distance are going to go head to head. Nick Clark has had another fantastic season and continues to go from strength to strength each year that passes. Ian Sharman ran top 10 in his first ever Western States last year and followed that with a 12:44 over 100 miles at Rocky Raccoon in February setting a North American Trail 100 record which I was lucky enough to witness. Finally Jez Bragg has just crushed the course at the Fellsman and is a previous podium finisher at the race in 2009. Nick and Ian went head to head at American River 50 just a couple of months ago and Nick won out by under a minute passing Ian on the final stretches of the course.

I think the battle for the win is going to be played out by 4 of the same 5 as last year, Geoff Roes, Killian Jornet, Hal Koerner and Nick Clark. Anton Krupicka the ultra running worlds favourite minimalist runner has broken his leg just this week so won't start. You can look for Ian to fill that 5th spot somewhere and Dave Mackey who has won everything he has entered pretty much this year, in front of very strong fields to be there too. Here is my prediction for Mens Top 10:

1. Jornet
2. Roes
3. Clark
4. Mackey
5. Wolfe
6. Sharman
7. Koerner
8. Bragg
9. Redpath
10. Braje

This is the most closely followed ultra race pretty much anywhere and each year that goes by the coverage improves. This year the webcast is already live and there is now a mobile phone app for following every step of the race. http://www.ultralive.net/ws100/webcast.php

Finally, the snow remains at the higher altitude and the pre race e mail this week stated that as runners we can expect snow to cover the first 20 - 30 miles of the course, that it will likely slow everyones anticipated times down by an additional hour. That is why I am pipping Roes and Jornet for the top spots. Both are the fastest proven guys but also train hundreds of hours a year in and out of snow.

It remains to be seen how far I'll get on the course but at this stage with the pain abating in my shin finally, it looks like I'll line up. No guarantees and feel free to follow me Bib No. 84 (type number into top right box on above webcast link to pull up results). If I make it to Red Star Ridge at Mile 16 it will be longest run since Rocky Raccoon on February 5th.

Results of the Poll

2011-06-14T12:28:00.000-07:00

We set up a poll on the website to see which races the people coming across Centurion Running wanted to run the most. The objective was to find out which existing races people aspire towards doing. It is that kind of information that will best help us put on the right kind of events in the future. I can only hypothesise why people chose the race that they did and I have done so below. This is a bit of a rambling post but maybe there's a couple of snippets of information in there which might help aspiring runners. From a personal point of view, I like to see what races really excite other people.

Out of the 207 votes from a limited pool of answers over a period of a couple of months, the results were as follows (note this did not include information about whether the respondent had previously run any of the races on the list):

Question: Which of the following races is it your dream to run?

Answers fixed as below, number of votes on the right (click on any race to link to the webpage)

UTMB 41

Western States 40

Badwater 25

Comrades 19

Spartathlon 17

Marathon Des Sables 17

Grand Union Canal Run 13

Leadville 12

Jungle Marathon 12

North Pole Marathon 9

4Deserts Series 2

London Marathon 0

Obviously this is an extremely simplistic testing method but the answers are nevertheless very interesting.

Starting from the top, UTMB and Western States are now the two biggest 100 milers in the world and by a massive margin so it either makes sense that given we are focusing a good amount of our efforts on trail 100s that these would come out on top ie. we are attracting that kind of runner to our website or trail 100s in awesome places are a really desirable races to do right now. Probably a bit of both.

Western States as the original 100 miler has attracted large fields for a long time (over 400 starters since the early 1990s). It is the most prestigious trail race in the US as the grandfather of the other 90 existing 100 milers in the US and with a rich history. UTMB has only been in existence for 8 years but quickly grew in to the superbowl of trail running. Both races offer spectacular scenery, extremely tough courses and deep fields, drawing the top trail runners from across the globe. Whereas Western States has remained more US focused, UTMB has more of a multi-national field, appealing to the very strong trail and mountain running scene across Western Europe. The level of local support and spectator numbers for UTMB are overwhelming. The explosion in the last few years of running blogs and consumption of online information about ultra races has no doubt also helped swing these two to the top of runners' bucket lists. Whereas Western States has had its heroes for many years, recording streaks of back to back wins, shattering preconceptions about what can be achieved on the course, UTMB has only recently started to see the same kind of pattern emerge as each passing race allows it to forge out its own history.

UTMB now as an entry limit of 2300. In 2009 everyone who applied, got a spot. This year, 4500 people applied for the 2300 places. The reaction from UTMB has been to tighten the qualification criteria somewhat and in my opinion they have responded in the right way to the increase in demand. There has been a massive DNF rate at UTMB over the years, rarely do 50% of the field make the finish. It is an extremely difficult race, without doubt in the top 10 hardest non stop trail races in the world, therefore it would seem crazy to allow those unqualified, to start. Races are being given less qualifying points than before (our own North Downs 100 is worth only 3 points out of the 5 you need from a maximum of two races) whereas before you required only 4 points from an unlimited number of races. So I guess their hope is that more people will work harder and gain more experience in order to qualify for the lottery. Of course the benefit for races like ours that don't yet have the prestige, history or big name attraction, grow, as people support more local events in order to have a crack at the most prestigious. Western States has only just begun to move with the demand. A few years ago Western still employed a two time loser strategy. That was if you had entered the lottery for a place and been unlucky twice, you were guaranteed a spot the following year. This year Western had 2500 applicants for around 300 open places (100 more going to previous top 10ers, benefactors, sponsors and Montrail Ultra Cup Winners), with half of those being 2 time applicants. Western States' problem is that they are restricted to 400 each year by the Granite Chief Wilderness Permit they require to stage the race. UTMB can allow 6 times that number and potentially even more. For the first time in 2012 Western States has a list of qualifying races, of which you must have completed one in order to enter the lottery. With the way this is set up, it will again attract majority US entrants as the included International races are extremely limited. Although I requested our events go on as qualifiers, the RD of Western has decreed first time races are not accepted, which is fair enough, although in the UK you are restricted to running one of only two events to earn a spot.

So as these two grow in popularity, which they undoubtedly will, the entry criteria will no doubt continue to get harder in order to shrink down the number of people actually making the hat each year. There really is no other way around it in my opinion and it is entirely fair that if you want to try your hand at a race at the very top of the difficulty spectrum, you should have had to battle your way through other tough races to earn a spot.

The next two races in the list, Badwater and Comrades, are road runs but are again two of the biggest names on the ultra calender. Badwater has the reputation of being the hardest ultra out there. Part of the reason for that is its entry policy, where would be runners are required to fill out an athletic CV alongside a bank of lengthy questions in order to be elegible for selection by the race committee. Letting only 90 people start the run each year is a restriction imposed on the race organisers adventurecorps, by Death Valley National Park but has caused a knock on effect in that demand has ballooned because so few people get to try their hand at the course. Each year they allow just 45 vets and 45 rookies to take the start line. In 2003 my good friend Frank entered the race with a CV which included some mountaineering experience and a couple of 50 milers. In 2006 when I first looked at it, the criteria was that you must have completed one 100km race within the time limits of the course. This year the time limit for reaching the finish has been reduced from 60 hours to 48 for the first time and as a bare minimum you must have completed 3 x 100 milers to enter. Not easy. I've never seen any figures published on how many entries they receive each year but it wouldn't suprise me to find out if was in the mid to high 100s. With that in mind and only 90 spots available, a race that captures the imagination of so many people will only get more and more popular and potentially also continue to raise it's entry criteria.

Comrades I had the pleasure of seeing first hand a couple of weeks ago, albeit I wasn't able to run because of injury. It is a spectacular event with huge numbers of runners and an open door policy to anyone who can complete a marathon. As an experience, those that have run it put it right at the very top and as ultra running grows, so will the number of international entrants to an event already in its 87th year and rooted at the heart of the South African national psyche.

The biggest surprises on the poll list for me are the next two, Spartathlon and the Marathon Des Sables. I didn't expect Sparta to feature so highly as it is so incredibly difficult and less publicised than many of the others. It perhaps is somewhat of a 'dream' for many to even think about being in a position to cross the finish line of a 153 mile race involving many different obstacles (heat/ a mountain climb) within a 36 hour time limit. There is no doubt that the handful of Brits that take part each year will grow in number as those before them return with stories of just how epic a race it is. Perhaps the growth in the number of Brits running the GUCR each year and thus qualifying for sparta in the process is helping to blossom that number. The Marathon Des Sables seems to have fallen from its position as 'the race at the top of everyones list' ever so slightly. The scenery is incredible and it remains one of the toughest challenges out there, but with so many other more sociably organised, less military, more affordable multi day races out there (desert or otherwise), it isn't necessarily top of the pile any longer in anything other than name. Still at 1000 runners this year it is clearly the premier desert stage race on the ultra calender.

In 7th place was the GUCR. A classic British Ultramarathon and one, again, that is growing in size and reputation which is wonderful to see. It isn't suprising that it got a good few votes.

Leadville followed GUCR and is again, a race that has absolutely blown up in size in the US. This year the race will be staged by Lifetime Fitness who bought out the incumbent race directors. Potentially a sign of things to come, the 2011 race has gone on to sell out all 700 places. This again is a record. Books like Born To Run and Dean Karnazes' ultramarathonman have spread the word about Leadville to a much wider audience.

The Jungle Marathon came next and I confess to knowing very little about it. I know a few people who have had a crack at it and whom have also raced the MdS/ 4Deserts etc and who rate this as extremely difficult due to the humidity and heat as a combination.

The North Pole Marathon is astronomically expensive to get too but clearly is, as this poll asks, 'a dream race'.

Finally the 4 Deserts Series only got 2 votes, perhaps I sold it short by not naming one of the deserts out and bundling them together so hard to tell if that would have changed anything.

Last but not least 'the marathon' got 0 votes. I guess that's maybe as everyone has already done it. It's still on my list though, 6 years and counting....

How much anybody can take away from the above is marginal but it will be interesting to see if we repeat the process in a years time if we get similar results. All in all, the biggest races get bigger as our sport grows exponentially. Hopefully the races that rush to fill this rise in level of interest will continue to add to the incredible pedigree displayed in most of the above listed races. I hope one day in the not too distant future people will talk about Centurion Races in the same way but we must earn that right through hard work just as each of the others has had to.

Any other poll suggestions gladly accepted. The current one sucks. Scroll down to bottom right on here

North Downs Way 26.2, 50 & 100 mile

2011-06-13T14:40:00.000-07:00

Just a message to anybody reading this who has signed up for the NDW races. Thank you. When we set up the Mara, 50 and 100 in November 2010, we were told we could expect around 50 runners to participate across all 3 distances in our first year. Registrations started trickling in slowly to begin with but have increased exponentially in the last two months in particular, so much so, that we have had to put limits on the entry numbers because I am acutely aware that we need to make sure we manage a lower number of runners exceptionally well rather than a higher number, averagely.

I made it clear at the beginning that I wanted to put on the kind of races that I personally wanted to run, taking learnings from some of the best organised ultras I have been able to run myself. We are getting there now and as each day passes another thing drops in to place. I think it helps that I can visualise exactly how I want the race to play out, but there is a massive amount of pressure now to deliver. The humbling thing is that so many people obviously think we can because so many have entered!! That and the fact that many have run on the North Downs Way and love the trail. Needless to say we continue to work harder than ever to make this first event as great as it can be.

I have mentioned the info packs a couple of times but they are now all finished and will be mailed out on Friday. The only thing missing is the detail on our nutritional sponsor which I am hoping we can announce at the same time.

There is a mammoth blog to follow this on the results of the poll on 'dream races' but I may cut it down a bit yet.....

On a personal level I have 11 days to go to Western States and still I haven't run barely a step (well since early May anyway). 2.5 miles up Lions head and 2.5 back down again isn't quite the level of training I'd hoped to have going in to a mountain 100. It seems prudent now to start to ease up on the cycling and swimming and give the shin every chance at repairing itself in time to make it through my 'dream race'....

17 days to Western States

2011-06-08T11:39:00.000-07:00

Last night I got e mail confirmation from Greg Soderlund the RD of Western States that the race is definitely on. Rumours had been circulating for some time that the lingering snow pack in the Californian High Country would force the abandonment of the 2011 race. The only previous occasion WS as been cancelled was 2008 and as a result of fires. On that occasion, the 2008 field became the 2009 field and everyone else had to wait another 2 years to try their hand in the lottery (including me).

So with a persistent shin problem, that news is pretty mixed in my book. If they had postponed it I could have waited until next year and hopefully been in better shape to tackle it, but on the other hand the whole grand slam would have been out of the window. Now it's on, I intend to start it, see how I go and then take each of the following 3 races as they come.

I ran up and down Lions Head in Cape Town last Friday, which felt like a breeze. It is about a 1800 foot climb in the space of 2.5 miles from sea level which is a similar pitch to the 4 mile 2500 foot climb at the start of Western States. Going uphill my leg is fine. I ran every step and was breathing hard in places but not blowing up (there is no way I would dream of starting Western States that hard). Coming down felt a bit shaky but I'd been pain free in the days preceeding it so it was time to test it out.

Lions Head overlooking Cape Town. My run ended in the clouds

Profile of the first 3 miles of Western States

A couple of days later and both of the previous stress fracture areas on the outside of the bone feel solid and pain free. I still have some sensation in the central cortex of the tibia however which is where the stress reaction resides.

The small strand structure in the centre of my bone has tiny cracks in it

So it isn't quite ready yet, nearly but not quite. The docs view is that I shouldn't have trouble getting it pain free and the reaction cleared up in time for the race. The problem is that whilst it isn't 100% I can't run on it. It is therefore likely that I will start the race on zero running miles for over a month.

That sounds insane but actually the massive amount of biking and added swimming i have been doing has clearly helped me maintain good fitness. It has been achingly dull but the little sojourn up the side of Lions Head showed me exactly what coach Lisa has been saying, keep up the cross training and you will start as fit as you have for all of the other races I have done. The problem is purely that the running muscles are going to be stale as anything.

So between now and the race, it is head down, bike and swim each day as usual, work hard on Centurion and be patient as the pain continues to ease. If we get to race week and i'm in pain then Western States will go on ice....

Comrades

2011-06-05T10:40:00.000-07:00

Just returned from a great trip to South Africa, sadly it didn't involve me doing pretty much any running but I'm starting to make my peace with my busted shin.

We flew out to Durban on Friday night, the day after I finally said goodbye to my job and the rat race altogether, landing Saturday morning to blazing sunshine and 25 degree temps.

View out over Durban Beach

We hooked up with the boys at the hotel, had a couple of beers and then hit the Comrades expo to get them registered. The expo is a behemoth of running paraphernalia. As with all of the big city marathons you can get pretty much any running equipment you want plus a whole lot more but this was different.

I am not going to harp on about the event now, I'd rather leave that to people who've actually run it but you hear people talking about the spirit of Comrades and what makes it an extra special event. Up until last year I'd never considered it due to the cost of travelling to and from South Africa. It was predominantly Ian Sharman who convinced me it was absolutely worth the effort of getting out there and that it truly is the greatest race going. From what I witnessed it is more than just a race but rather a whole experience. 19000 people signed up this year and 5000 others like myself didn't make the start-line yet of those 14000 starters, only 4000 were first time runners.

Comrades is a road run between the cities of Durban and Pietmaritzburg. Each year the direction of the race changes. The down run comes from Pietmaritzburg back to Durban, this year was an up year with the course headed in the opposite direction. The distance was approx 87km with 5 major climbs and a total elevation gain of around 2000m. Bearing all that in mind there were some tremendous performances as always. Most notable for me:

Seeing Stephen Muzhingi finish in 5:32 an change for a hat trick of victories

Mike Wardian the US ultra and marathon runner, winner of the DC marathon the year I ran it, finish in 11th place in 5:51

Ian Sharman picking up his 5th Silver Medal in 6:25 despite feeling badly overtrained the day before and during the race

Ellie Greenwood finishing in 4th on her Comrades debut. With Lizzy Hawker not far behind the UK really are blessed with some of the top ultra runners in the world right now.

Almost as notable was seeing the Comrades final cut off gun go in real time. I've posted something similar before but it is a cut off like no other I have seen. To the second, the mayor turns his back and at 12:00:00 hours into the race, there is an absolute line between those who finish and those who quite literally finish a yard or second too late.

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We flew to Cape Town the following morning and spent 5 days down at Cape Point and in the Winelands, getting up Table Mountain in the sunshine on the final day.

Above the clouds at table mountain

I can thoroughly recommend it to anyone. The landscape down at the cape is phenomenal and the wildlife is incredible. Particularly stand out was the baboon who ran into the restaurant we were in at the Cape, jumped on the table and snatched a bread roll before heading back out of the door.

I'll be back to run Comrades and I hope to be lucky enough to finish both the up and the down courses. My frustration at not being able to take part this year was tempered greatly by the thought of Western States which is now just 3 weeks away. More to follow on that subject soon....

Diagnosis

2011-05-22T10:01:00.000-07:00

I finally have some clarity on why I've been injured for so long and keep failing to get well enough to sustain running for more than just a few days. I had a CT scan on Monday which showed that rather than having a stress fracture of the hard bone on the outside of the tibia/ shinbone, I have a stress reaction in the centre of the bone. From the doctors diagram basically the central section of the bone is made up of a honeycomb/ scaffold - esque structure and is surrounded by the hard bone which forms a ring around it. The honeycomb in the centre of my tibia is cracked in multiple places. These tiny cracks are what cause the pain I'm getting from within the bone whether I'm stationary, lying down or on the move.

Red Section - hard outer bone, blue section - where mine is cracked

So the good news is that I now know what the problem is and the root cause of it which is basically deficiencies in my diet. I've had some blood tests to distinguish exactly what it is I'm lacking in but the doc is expecting it to be vitamin D and Calcium. My bone density is through the floor which means the hard ring of bone around the cracked centre is much thinner and weaker than normal. If I continue to run on it, the cracks will move through the honeycomb centre and straight through the hard outer bone causing a fracture which will take months to heal. So at least it hasn't reached that stage yet.

The bad news is I'm out of Comrades. There is no way to turn the weak bone and stress reaction around in time to guarantee I won't suffer a fracture by running on it. I could try, but it would be naive to go against the doc's advice and hope that it'll be ok. I can't risk damaging my chances of starting Western States and The Grand Slam.

So from here I get to spend more time on the stationary bike and in the pool and make sure I start eating a lot better. I have a 6 day course of 50,000 (thousand) mg of Vitamin D per day which is apparently enormous and should redress any issues with deficiency and speed the healing of the bone. I am aware that I'm lacking protein in my diet and so I'm making a conscious effort to take in more.

Travelling to South Africa to watch and not run Comrades is going to be extremely hard to bare but we'll try and enjoy a holiday out of it with 5 days in Cape Town after the race. When I come back it will be time to try the leg out.

So Western States and the start of the Slam is just 5 weeks away. I'm already aware that race is going to be a mental battle rather than a physical one. With 4 months completely off running I'll be in no shape to take it on, but it's a race I've always wanted to run. On the plus side, being forced to slow down because of a lack of fitness may mean that I pace myself better and keep more in the tank for Vermont, Leadville and Wasatch Front which come so quickly afterwards.

This last 4 months has been really difficult to get through, I've missed running and racing and there isn't really anything to replace that with. Staying motivated to keep going to the gym which happens to be right by the office, 7 days a week including the weekends has been pretty tough but it will be worth it when the strength in my leg returns to a level where I can run on it safely again.

4 days of work left before I leave for good and then it's focus 100% on getting to the WS start line ready to go....

An Injury By the Numbers

2011-05-12T06:48:00.000-07:00

I fractured my shin on 7th February. I resumed training after the fracture was diagnosed, in a cast. Since then 10 weeks have passed and I have had the cast on for just over 6 weeks of that time. There have been a couple of 2 day gaps where the will to continue dropped significantly because of worsening of the injury (too much too soon). No real reason for posting this other than for my own records if this ever happens again. Also, if god willing I start and finish Comrades with almost a total absence of running, just what an effect that has had on my fitness/ time/ pace/ subsequent muscle soreness/ ability to run:

Time frame: 10 weeks/ 70 Days
Cycling time: 52 hours 50 minutes / 973 miles
Running time: 8 hours 30 / 58 miles (43 miles in a 1 wk come back which caused the 2nd round of problems)
Cross training time: 16 hours (Spinning/ Stair Machine/ Swimming)

Total: 77:20 hours
Average Daily Training time: 1:06 hours

18 Days to Go

2011-05-11T12:12:00.000-07:00

18 Days until I'm supposed to line up on the startline of Comrades. I don't want to say too much right now as I'm so disillusioned with this whole process of injury and recovery. Really not sure where I stand right now. I finally commenced walking again last week and ran for the first time a couple of days ago. I've clocked 5 miles each of the past 2 days in a very easy pace, my fitness feels ok, my legs are a little tight after each run because they're not used to that movement too. I don't have any specific pain in the left shin but it doesn't feel right. The calf is withered away and whilst much stronger than a month ago when I attempted comeback number 1, it still pales into insignifance against the strength of my right leg.

There is an interesting feature on the new spinning bikes at the gym, allowing you to monitor over the course of a ride how much of the overall effort is being transmitted through either pedal. On average at the moment after about an hour the right leg is performing 53% of the work and the left 47%. That isn't intentional it's just a case of the left dragging as it is weaker.

I have all my fingers and toes crossed that if I am sensible and stick to 5 miles a day or less I might be able to start in South Africa. The question then is whether I am going to injure myself further and put myself out of Western States and the Slam. I'll have to make that call as I go, but 55 miles of road running is probably the last thing my leg needs right now. Ian Sharman messaged me this week (4 time Comrades finisher). His note read 'even if you run 1 mile and get in the sweeper bus you'll still get a chance to experience the race'. I may just have to do that. I won't jeopardise Western States for Comrades. It was and is the Goal/ A race of this year.

On the Centurion front, the entries are flying in. We are up to 125 for the NDW races and over 50 for the Thames Path. A phenomenal response for races in their first year. Logistically we are ironing out the final details of the aid station locations and I've been lucky enough to enlist the help of Henk Van Der Beek the RD of Caesar's Camp Endurance Runs in ensuring I've thought of everything going in to race day. Nothing substitutes experience and Henk has bucket loads of it having been through all of this before. For that I'd like to thank him.

Happy running out there. I'll blog once more before Comrades and then it's prayer time!!!!

Three Forts Marathon A Year On

2011-05-01T10:40:00.000-07:00

Just a little gauge of how I'm currently faring vs this time 2010, today last year was the Three Forts Marathon which I ran in a time of 3 hours 13 minutes, not too bad for a 27 mile trail race with 3500ft of climbing. Today, I managed a 4.2 mile walk in just over an hour.

BUT the pain in my shin is improving. I still can't run and I'm not sure when I'll be able too but you know what as long as it keeps improving I might just yet be able to scrape in with a start at Comrades.

Training partners are extremely important and mine is in a filthy mood this weekend as his shingles came back at the end of last week. I am lucky enough to get to train with Webbo 3 or 4 times a week. A typical training session will be stair machine for 30 minutes where he gets annoyed because I'm a better climber than him and then 30 - 45 minutes on the bike where the competition is always to go as far as possible in that time. Sometimes I let him win so that he doesn't give up but I've got 10 years on him. On a serious note he does put up with an inordinate amount of moaning on my part, particularly during the last 3 months (3 MONTHS!!!!!) that I have been unable to run because of this stress fracture. If you don't have anyone to train with, find someone, find a club, find a team. It doesn't really matter who but at the end of the day you'll end up pushing each other far harder than if you go it alone. It helps if you're pretty evenly matched. Webbo is the most competitive person I've ever met when it comes to sport. Works out pretty well. When we race together 'as a team' it does not because it becomes a competition to see who can be in front whenever there is a camera. Below picture South Downs Way last year sprinting down a hill half way through our second 35 mile day. Children (I am in front though).

The Centurion Entries keep on rolling in. Places for the North Downs Way races are up over the 100 mark across all three distances. I don't think we'll reach our limit, imposed so as to keep logistics manageable in our first event but we're at a level now where all three distances have a good number of entries. I am delighted and we'll continue to work as hard as ever to make things as good as possible on the day.

Hardrock

2011-04-29T02:14:00.000-07:00

Having a think again last night about next July. I am sorely tempted to have another crack at Badwater but that will depend on whether I get in to Hardrock through the lottery (they span the same weekend). I stumbled upon this video which shows just how incredible a course this is. Also how incredibly hard it is. And therein lies the twin appeal. I think everyone accepts that this is the hardest 'traditional' 100 out there with the possible exception of Barkley.

This dude is quite obviously a hero.

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Want to run vs Want to race

2011-04-28T03:29:00.000-07:00

When I first started out in this game called running I didn't really have any specific goals other than to train for and complete the Marathon Des Sables. Jim and I entered the MdS back in early 2005 and before hand I had run a total of zero miles in the preceeding 3 or 4 years. Literally nothing. The sole aim was simply to get to the finish line. It was and is for many, enough to get to the finish line of one major league race like the MdS and then sit back and reflect on it for a long time.

For me the period of reflection lasted about 4 months, after which time I was beginning to suffer the same feeling of emptiness that many experience after committing such a huge part of your life to one event for 12 months or more. I didn't run a single race of any distance between the MdS in March 2006 and the Gobi March in late June 2007. The aim for the Gobi was once again, simply to get to the finish line.

I am a competitive person by nature, something that I'm not ashamed of as it has certainly driven me to succeed at things I otherwise wouldn't have bothered with. It isn't a streak which comes through very often in day to day life but during a race it does rear it's head. I find it very difficult to throttle back and watch others disappear into the distance, no matter how great a runner they are. Of course there are always runners who are better, stronger, faster on the day or in general and in those cases as long as I've gone as hard as I can that's fine.

During the MdS in 2006, I raced off ahead of Jim on both the first and second days, unneccesarily and actually I owe a huge amount to Jim's patience and incredible good naturedness not to have got annoyed with me in those circumstances. We hadn't always trained together but we had entered together and intended to finish together and I made the mistake of getting carried away in the 'race' and burying myself to the point where I was almost unable to start the third day due to all kinds of heat related problems from going too hard. We finished every other stage together. The Gobi was a little different, we were together for 2 days but Jim hadn't had the chance to train as much as he'd have liked, traveling around the world during the lead up and I once again felt good so pushed on ahead for the final 3 stages. I think I knew when I came back from China that things had changed for me and that actually I wanted to 1. go on and complete the 4Deserts Series but 2. to try and be competitive and actually race the others.

The injury I picked up at Rocky Raccoon back in the first week of February is as painful now as it was then. It is most probably a stress fracture which largely healed before I put too much pressure on it too soon and exacerbated the problem. I'm going to have other tests to prove or disprove this theory but as far as the cycle of events has played out, that is what it is.

I keep an eye out on the blogs of the top ultramarathon runners particularly in the States as that is where I have focused a lot of my time and effort in the past 2 years (Badwater, Rocky Raccoon, Old Dominion) and about the only time I can actually draw upon a parallel between myself and Anton Krupicka is right now. He seems to have picked up the exact same injury in the same race and been out of action for the same amount of time as I have. He had one or two bigger training weeks (small for him, big for me) as I did before the diagnosis was firmly presented. He is back to running 5 miles a day, I am not yet but I hope I'm not too far behind him.

He has made it clear that until he is fit and ready to race and compete at his highest level, that is to say winning and breaking course records, he won't toe any start line.

Aside from the 4Deserts series up to this point, I haven't been able to/ attempted to be competitive in ultras. I would call competitive top 10 only and in deep fields ie. 100 plus. I have had various issues during each one of the 100 milers I've run and Badwater was an all out slog to the finish. I look back on each of them with great satisfaction at finishing. That was my sole aim going to each one. Finish Rocky as my first 100, finish Old Dominion a much harder race so that I qualified for Badwater, finish Badwater because it is hard enough on it's own the first time and finish at Caesars Camp to avenge my 50 mile DNF there in 2007.

I am now faced with starting all of my A races this year with a major injury. The best I can hope for is that my shin heals that my cross training gets me to the startline of each, able to get through them and battle out for a finish one by one. It is highly likely that the only running I'll have done between February and Comrades is a week of stunted mileage in the middle when my leg briefly healed enough to let me do 4 x 1:30 runs.

If I was Anton right now I'd be cashing in my flights for vouchers and trying to roll my entires to 2012. The thing is I am still early enough in my running life that I can at least try to finish these events and particularly as it won't be easy for me to get in to some of them again. Anton can always qualify for Western States in the future or get a sponsors slot if that fails. I will have to go through that unbearable lottery again and maybe wait another 1/5/10 years to get a chance to race there.

So come what may I'll be at Comrades and I'll be at Western States. They will be ugly, difficult struggles but ultimately the basic goal whenever I get to the startline of an ultra is to finish. I consider them to be enough of a challenge to take satisfaction from simply finishing. I will look back on them, much as I do on Badwater and the other 100s and think, I could have done so much better.... Ultimately though who really knows or cares what the difference is between running a race like that in 29 hours, 39 hours or 59 hours? A handful of people can relate to what that means.

Hopefully in the future I will get the chance to go back and actually race these events and see just how well I can do. I am nowhere near my potential yet in ultras, I'm quite sure of that. For me, right now though, it is about having the chance to experience each of these incredible races once and chose which I go back and do again in the future. Would I go back and do Rocky Raccoon again? Maybe. Old Dominion? Maybe. Badwater? Definitely.

Buying Kit

2011-04-27T08:48:00.000-07:00

Well my shin is still as sore as ever. It's fast approaching the point where I'm just not going to be able to get any training in for Comrades at all. The question then becomes should I not run a hilly 54 mile road race and save myself for Western States and the Grand Slam or just give it a crack and see what happens. I'm not making that decision yet but I'm preparing myself for having to do so. Man this year really has SUCKED so far for me. I am trying to stay positive after all what doesn't kill you just makes you stronger and in this case it has really just amped up my desire to go out there and run everything going.

On the Centurion front we've been extremely busy designing the buckle/ t shirt/ start & finish banners and this week finally purchasing all of the equipment we'll need for the NDW events in August. I can tell you that 19 full size (including 10 double steel framed) gazebos weigh a considerable amount and won't fit in one car. Buying that many awnings plus countless collapsable chairs led most of the staff at our local retailer asking the question of where our street party was being held as it's the Royal Wedding this Friday in the UK.

We're approaching 50% full in the marathon now and entries continue to trickle along for the NDW100 and 50, the 50 is lagging a little behind and it's hard to say why but I have a feeling we will see a few more entries coming through between now and race day in all distances. The TP100 entries continue to rise way ahead of my best estimates reaching 40 today. Considering we have a 200 runner limit if things carry on I can see us having to turn disappointed runners away. Nevertheless it's fantastic to receive such great support so early on in the life of these events so thanks again to everyone who has thrown their hat in the ring. Everything that it is possible to do to make the weekend as enjoyable as possible for you is being done.

Back to the stationary bike trainer for me. 2 and half hours on it last night was about all I could handle in one sitting.

Weekend of Successes

2011-04-17T13:51:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to everyone who ran the London Marathon or Oner today. As usual my friend Martin Gaunt put in the best time of anyone I know, 2:43, at London a little off his PB of 2:35 a couple of years ago but he is so consistent with these incredible performances. First time marathoning friends all finished in times ranging from 3:50 to 6:02. Very proud of them all (particularly the ones I coached through it!!!!).

My own personal woes are back. The shin pain is worse than ever this evening after another 1:30 jog around the Thames Path and Battersea Park. As a result I am signing off for a while, there is very little point in continuing to hope that things will be ok, I need to get my head down plug away at it and take stock of the situation. I don't know yet whether I'm back to square one or just set back a couple of weeks. For now I'll keep things going on here with reference to ultra news and Centurion races and pray that I'm back in time to put some of my thoughts down before Comrades.

Big love to all of you reveling in post race pride tonight, thoroughly deserved from all quarters!!!!

Working Hard

2011-04-16T14:23:00.000-07:00

It's been a long week and I'm coming out of it with mixed emotions. Running wise my shin is painful when I apply pressure to it, feels exactly the same way in that respect as the stress fracture did before the 6 weeks out. The crucial thing is, though, that it doesn't hurt when I run. Whilst that situation continues I will continue to train. On the home front we had a very stressful and scary time this week when Lisa, my fiance, was caught up in some riots in the Ugandan city of Gulu where she was doing a teaching exchange with a local school. Hearing gun shots going off (rubber bullets and tear gas canisters) in the background when you're on the phone to your loved one who is trapped in a hotel bathroom 1000s of miles away and being totally helpless is not the greatest feeling in the world. Thankfully she is on her way home in the morning in one piece and with some stories to tell.

April 14th riots in Kampala and Gulu, Uganda (c/o of www.theresolve.org)

As mentioned a few posts ago I decided in the wake of Rocky Raccoon 100, (or rather 76 for me) to enlist some professional help. The person I turned to was Lisa Smith-Batchen. She has been mentoring me through what has been undoubtedly the hardest time I've gone through in my years of running, keeping my fitness up through creative and varied non-impact training progams. Lisa diagnosed my injury from the other side of the atlantic where she is based, before my physio could with me on the table in front of him. It was Lisa who told me that I needed to get an MRI, what to do with regards getting a cast and just how much training I could continue to do despite being immobile in terms of time on my feet.

My best racing results have come from sticking religiously to a training program. The best example was my 5th place finish in the Atacama Desert where I felt great almost the entire time. Lisa sends me a daily regimen to follow for up to 14 days in advance. I like to think of it as putting up a whole raft of little challenges and then knocking them down one by one. My training before Lisa was all running. Literally nothing else. Running as obviously been off the agenda for our first 2 months together, but Lisa is now re-introducing it very gradually, first through walk/ run sessions and today for the first time in 10 days since the cast came off, a solid 1:30 run.

I am putting myself entirely in Lisa's hands and so far it's been the best decision I've made in a long time. The sessions pop up and I attack them all way way harder than I would have before. I've come to realise that I wasn't actually pushing myself that hard when training in the past. I mean that's relative, I pushed very hard occasionally but rarely right to my limit and there were way too many sessions that were just junk miles.

This past month I have really pushed myself regularly. Whether it's on the stair machine, a spinning class (which I'd never been too before Lisa), on the bike or the elliptical, I'm hitting them all hard. I'm not really doing sessions where I am going less than 80% and regularly I am getting my HR up into the mid 180s which is toward the upper end of my range.

When I got the all clear to try a run on Thursday night, I did so a bit too hard. I couldn't resist finding out where my fitness lay after all that time on the bike with no running. Lisa asked me to walk 1 minute in every 15, so a total of 4 minutes in the first hour. I hit the hour hard and tried to keep a tempo up at my marathon pace of last year, 6:45 miling, and managed it without really being in that much difficulty. I covered just under 9 miles in the hour and did so including those walking breaks. Could I have held it for 3 hours/ 26.2 miles? Probably not but at least I know I have some pace. The next day I was able to train just as hard on alternative machines in the gym so my endurance is ok too.

My running style is erratic and uncomfortable. It isn't coming back to me very quickly. I feel like I haven't found my stride yet and that if I push too hard like Thursday nights session, I could land myself back in trouble. So I'll stick to the advice and keep plugging away one day at a time.

I would be lying if I said I felt confident this summer and particularly Comrades which is first up, but I put my total faith in Lisa to get me there in one piece and in the best shape possible. Will it be the best shape of my life? Probably not but the fact that I think there is even a chance of that is testament only to Lisa's knowledge, expertise and management of my own expectations.

Comrades Marathon

Every week I e mail her another stupid question about when I can at least do a marathon just as training, or what time should I be trying to run at Western States or can I do this event or that. The answers come back quick and tell me what deep down I already know. Be patient and it will be ok.

So tentatively I take my first steps back to full recovery. If the pain in my shin when I touch it would just go away I would probably be about the happiest person in the world right now.

I've decided to put this one on the list for 2013 - the 350 mile version with a view to having a crack at the 1000 in 2014. Nothing like a bit of long term planning. These videos have totally inspired me. Mike Curiak has done an incredible job here. I love the idea of returning to life's basic elements out on the trail, on my own, on the way to Nome. I saw a few days ago that Geoff Roes signed up for the 350 mile in 2012 (he hails from Alaska) and that will no doubt cause the popularity of the event to soar. It is great to see our sport grow but it is somewhat frustrating not to necessarily be able to do the races you want. I would be happier if this one stayed away from lotteries and other potential reasons for exclusion. The more choice there is in events out there, the more options people will get away from the one or two signature races. I like that our sport keeps growing outwards in range of events as well as upwards in terms of number of entrants. I guess Centurion Running is just another small part of that process.

Major Changes

2011-04-09T13:09:00.000-07:00

This week I quit my day job to go and live the dream. I plan to invest the summer making the first Centurion Event on the North Downs Way all it can be and making sure I get proper rest between each race in the Grand Slam. 7 weeks from now all I'll have to worry about is running 456 miles over 5 races and 15 weeks. We're moving out of London and all I can say is thank GOD. I am sick of it and I always used to love this city so I hope a part of that comes back.

Today I ran for the first time in 6 weeks. On Monday morning I went in to see my old friend Joe who works at the English Institute for Sport treating English Olympic Athletes. The guys ran some tests on my fracture, first with ultra sound and then with X Rays. The news came back positive, the break looks to have healed. From Thursday on I commenced walking without the aircast. This afternoon I was cleared to do an hour and a half on my feet alternating three minutes walking with two minutes running.

I can start to look forward now, albeit the recovery process is not finished yet. My training at the moment is an equal rotation of cycling, spinning, elliptical, stair master, swimming and walking. As the weeks roll by the blend will stat to include more running but I won't be putting any distance back for at least another week. Having been through a few rounds already this year I won't be rushing back.

I feel pretty fit, though not dangerous. I've packed in as much training time with the cast on as I would have done with it off. Some of the sessions have been much harder than I would usually have made them and I think that's just vented frustration but I have enjoyed trying to MAX OUT on the HR.

Badwater Redux

2011-04-09T12:56:00.000-07:00

The best thing about finishing races is being able to look back on them and wince. I hadn't ever seen these shots form Badwater before, they were on a camera in the car which my buddy Rich used to shoot some extra shots as and when the mood struck. Looking over them now it's obvious he managed to capture just how painful a journey that 39 hours was because I wasn't aware of the camera being there. I haven't forgotten it and I don't expect I ever will. WHAT a race this is, I will go back one day and make it right, albeit I am very proud of finishing that monster.

Early Pit Stop

On the road to Furnace Creek Mile 17

Stovepipe Mile 42: 8 hours 28 to this point, totally ruined my race
by starting too quick.

I spent most of the Darwin to Lone Pine section (mile 90 - 122)
going less than 2mph. The chaffing I suffered was horrific and

turned the race into an almight slog. When I stopped to meet the crew

was the only respite I could get from the burning blistered skin. I sat down

twice for less than 5 minutes for fear of not getting going again.

Lone Pine. 13 miles and 5000 feet to climb. Head down, one foot in front of
the other.

The Grand Slam of Ultrarunning

2011-04-02T04:20:00.000-07:00

Most of the comments regarding my attempt at the slam are along the lines of 'you're injured so how are you going to run.' It's ok I'm almost ready with the greatest comeback since Lazarus.

The Grand Slam of Ultrarunning Award is handed to any runner who finishes all 4 of the oldest 100 mile trail races in the USA in any one year. The races are spread out over an 11 week period from the last weekend in June to the second weekend in September. The 4 races that comprise the slam are Western States 100 mile Endurance Run, Vermont 100, Leadville Trail 100 and Wasatch Front 100. All 4 races are 100 miles in length and as those familiar with them will know are all 'mountain races' each involving varying significant degrees of climb and descent.

Keith Kniplings altitude comparison of the 4 Grand Slam 100s

25th June - Western States begins at Squaw Valley Ski Resort, previous host of the winter olympic games. The course goes immediately 4 miles directly up a mountain and over emigrant pass before spitting runners out on on to a roller coaster ride of snow covered ski slopes and hot canyons, arriving in Auburn and finishing on Placer High School athletics track there after 100 miles of running and 18000 feet of climbing. The race day temps regularly exceed 100 degrees in the canyons but start off below freezing in the resort early in the morning. 30 hour cut off.

16th July - Vermont is the 'easiest' boasting 'only' 14150 feet of gain over the course of the 100 miles. This race is unique in that it runs concurrently with a horse race. I will try not to get kicked or trampled. 30 hour cut off.

20th August - Leadville. 100 miles at serious altitude this one is on the extreme end of the spectrum. The entire race is conducted at altitudes of between 9200 and 12600 feet. This year they are welcoming 700 runners to the start line on and out and back course which takes in 15000 feet of climb and travels up and down Handies Peak in the Colorado Rockies twice. 30 hour cut off.

9th September - Wasatch Front. The best is saved till last. On the scale of 100s this is right up there at the very top with over 26900 feet of climb. The climbs are severe and regular. If I get to this point I will try not to use all of the 36 hours on offer to complete it but figure I may need them. This race place just outside of Salt Lake City Utah.

Afterwards I get to go to Las Vegas for a stag do. Stan Jensen manages a little page on the Grand Slam here and the list of those running all 4 in 2011 is here (19 so far!).

I really can't wait to get this journey started but obviously I have a LONG way to go before my fracture allows me to get back to running shape (my fitness is still good after 15 hours in the gym this week).

I have Comrades before the Slam plus a few smaller local marathons which will be used as training runs.

The biggest issue with the Slam is going to be recovery and handling the flying to and from the US repeatedly. It will be an incredible adventure and I look forward to every minute of it.

Which one am I most scared of? Not Western States. I am going in to that one with all the excitement and energy of Badwater last year. It is a race I have always wanted to run and means so much to the ultra running community especially in the States that it is without doubt tight at the top of my list of races to run. Vermont I am looking forward to but being the most moderate in terms of average altitude and climb I will try to simply get through this one within the cut offs and save as much as possible for the next two. Leadville scares me the most because of the altitude. The level of climb is pretty big at 15000+feet it is the equivalent of Caesars Camp 100 which I ran in October so I know what to expect but I have only 5 days to acclimatise which isn't enough. I've heard plenty of advice that says either get there 3 weeks early or get there the day before. We'll just see how it works out I guess. Lastly Wasatch Front comes only 19 days after Leadville so I will need to recover as quickly and as fully as possible. I have no doubt I will be feeling this one in the legs before I even start and with 27000 feet of gain will be the hardest 100 I'll have ever done. Nothing like saving the best till last.

There are other factors which could prevent this dream from becoming a reality. Obviously I could get injured or suffer from hydration/ stomach problems/ blisters whatever else that usually stop a runner in his or her tracks but I am also conscious of other things much further from my control. 4 years ago Grand Slammers were prevented from completing the set by forest fires in California (Western States was cancelled). With the fact that I am making 4 return journeys there could be any one of a number of international issues which could lead to problems, I'm thinking more specifically about the Icelandic Volcano incident of 2009. All things considered there is a very high chance I won't be able to complete all 4, I have to go in to each race as it comes, take the rough with the smooth, keep putting one foot in front of the other and just get it done. Simple.

I will have a rest afterwards. Hopefully I can look back on it all with a glowing appreciation of having seen first hand some of America's most incredible mountain scenery from fully west to east coast and having had the chance to experience 4 of the greatest running races currently on offer. I plan to take my time, take a lot of photos and treat it with the level of gratitude that being able to experience something like this, deserves.

My withered leg

2011-03-21T14:51:00.000-07:00

There was a significant shock tonight. I took my cast off and half of my lower left leg has disappeared. A bit scary, but I've looked at the Western States course and it snakes slightly from right to left therefore it should suit my lopsidedness.

Coming back to the post yesterday, I have neglected to get involved with triathlon since my little birthday sojourn at the Cowman half Iron distance tri a few years ago. I have actually entered 2 Ironman races in the interim but been unable to race both times. The tri world is such a different beast to ultra running. It's expensive, it requires a shed load of equipment, the equipment makes a tangible difference to your performance, it's EVEN harder to get into the big races than the world of ultras primarily because it is a recognised televised sport with full time paid professionals. I'm not going to go on about it in any more but I actually own a half decent trek road bike, albeit it is probably now considered an antique or at least retro with its discovery channel logos from the 2006 UCI racing season. I also have a wetsuit which I've raced in the once. I can't breath in it but at least I float. And I have some pretty nice trainers with only a few hundred miles on them....

Riding the circumference of Puerto Rico in 2008 in BVI national colours

So it's just a question of when. Obviously I'm not entering anything less than a half IM distance as I can't be bothered to get wet and cold for less than that. I'll probably leave it until after the Grand Slam but to be honest the major problem is more finding a race I can get in to at this 'late stage' without incurring a massive flight and entry fee cost. Ironman UK is slap bang in the middle of the slam and Ironman Wales is the same weekend as Wasatch so both off the cards. On the Half Ironman IM70.3 front I'm actually IN Vegas for the 70.3 World Champs so will be there to watch. Ireland 70.3 I am away for. I see two options, Italy 70.3 or France 70.3. Neither are great timing wise. I've looked at some of the other races, double, triple, quintuple and deca Iron events (I'm not joking) but they all clash and I think I should maybe try a normal Ironman before I try and pull out 10 back to back.

So will it be another year of no swimming? I am determined not to get in the pool until I next have to swim at a triathlon. Certainly I have hated every minute of cycling in the gym but my quads are now enormous (ly average sized)

Weekly Summary March 14th - 21st

2011-03-20T14:17:00.000-07:00

We've had an incredible reaction to the Thames Path 100. In our first week of opening for registrations we've had 16 sign ups, which, bearing in mind the race is a just under a year away, is a phenomenal response. Finally we've also managed to get some traction with the UTMB organisers to get the races listed as official qualifiers. Fingers crossed we will get our answers next week.

Injury wise I feel like I'm mending. My fracture is pain free and the pain i've had in my shin bone under pressure has abated. I'm still at least 3 weeks from being able to resume light running but I'm staying sane and positive. This week I've cycled exactly 240 miles over 8 different sessions, between 45 minutes and just under 3 hours in length. Average pace has been good, just over 21mph for the lot. So I'm getting some decent exercise time in despite wearing having the cast on throughout.

Makes me think I should sign up to a full length one of these and take the opportunity to put this enforced riding to good use....

Coach & the Slam

2011-03-15T14:44:00.000-07:00

Every day I get up and cycle to work. I work all day, then I go to the gym and sit on an exercise bike for between 90 and 120 minutes and push at a minimum of 20mph and a maximum of about 22mph. I get my HR up to between 140 and 155 during that time depending on how hot it is in the gym that day. Then I get on my bike and cycle home. Every day. At the weekend I get up and go the gym, then I cycle for between 90 and 120 minutes and then cycle home again. The only real difference between me and a cyclist is that through necessity I do all of this with a cast on my leg. It is fair to say the attention I've drawn falls mostly into the 'are you kidding me do you not want to get better you have a broken leg' category. I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't trust in the person telling me that this is what I should and can be doing.

Very recently I decided that I had taken my own running career as far as I could on my own. I had a pretty good run of things. I managed to navigate my way through some hard races without too many major difficulties. I broke 3 hours for a marathon and actually won a couple of awards in desert races for finishing in the top 5 plus a bona fide hard trail ultra win with a field of 200 people so I guess I reached a pretty good standard. By no means spectacular but still I was pretty pleased.

Ever since Badwater it has felt like the wheels have come off. I was a wreck of a human being for 2 months afterwards. I started UTMB and got pulled early in the race along with all of the other runners which in hindsight was a blessing in disguise because I was ill and struggling after just 4 or 5 hours. I had a shocking race at CC100 and finished on nothing but sheer stubbornness. Then I had a break, a couple of small ultras and ramped up my training again for RR100. The whole of the last 3 months I have been teetering on the brink of disaster and so far this year I've suffered two, DNFing at Rocky Raccoon and then picking up this stress fracture. What it showed me was that I'd taken it as far as I could on my own. If I wanted to carry on finishing really hard races I could probably do it without help. But I feel like there is at least some potential to do better than that. I don't think I'll ever run a 2:40 marathon or a sub16 hour 100 mile race or be anywhere near competitive at the bigger ultras but I would like to at least do myself justice and do as well as I can. In the end I will go back to just running things to finish them and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It's all I've pretty much ever done and I love that about our sport. However whilst I have another couple of years to push myself as hard as i can I am going to give it a crack.

So that led me to contacting my new coach Lisa Smith-Batchen. I'm not going to write any more about Lisa now than to say I'm three weeks in under her wing, I've spent two of that three weeks injured and yet she's already changed the way I view everything about training and what I want out of racing. I set myself some pretty ambitious goals to give to Lisa and she feels I can achieve them. It will take time for me to get to some of them because of having to sit it out for 6 - 8 weeks with this fracture but I have total confidence that once I'm back in the game, I will be back better than ever. It is Lisa who picked out that I had a stress fracture by just talking to me from the other side of the atlantic when my physio couldn't even do it with me on the table. Lisa told me in no uncertain terms to get a scan immediately, which threw up the fracture and has subsequently given me what I need to keep my mind in the game, stay reasonably fit and get healthy again without rushing and causing longer term problems. I put my total faith and trust in her. If Lisa says cycle, I cycle. If people in the gym look at me like I have a mental issue that's fine. I'll just keep getting on that bike and visualising the first big climb out of Squaw Valley at the start of Western States.

That goal became all the more real today when my application for the Grand Slam went through and my name joined the short list of others going for all 4 100 milers this summer. A lay off from running was the last thing I needed right now but it has only fed my hunger to succeed in completing something not many other people have done or get the chance to do.

Thames Path 100

2011-03-13T11:08:00.000-07:00

Al and I finally got our act together and launched the new website this week. It is so much better than the previous one in terms of communicating the details of each race to potential runners and allowing them to stay in touch with race news and progress.

As part and parcel of that we sent registrations live for the Thames Path 100 at the same time. A 100 mile non stop run from Richmond in London to Oxford.

We have worked very hard to make sure we don't clash with any existing race dates and particularly to stay clear of the excellent races put on by Go Beyond (Country to Capital 45 mile and Thames Trot 50 mile) always in Jan and early Feb each year. A big part of that is that selfishly I intend to keep running those races myself every year!!!!

In the end I went for the first week of March. My frustration as a runner is that there are no early season long ultra courses available in the UK. As such I have flown to the States twice to run Rocky Raccoon because I like to race often and stay fit rather than have a big gap over Christmas. It gave me that early season opportunity to get a good 100 mile trail run under my belt. For experienced runners it will also provide a gauge of where they are in terms of fitness and of how difficult some of the longer or more challenging 100 mile plus races are going to be for them during the true long ultra race season of May to September. The TP100 will form an excellent platform for major races across the summer. I include in the category of major races: GUCR, WHW, Badwater, Spartathlon, Lakeland 100, UTMB, Western States, Leadville, Hardrock etc etc.

It is always going to be a balancing act putting on new events. We will always incur some criticism for either clashing with existing race dates or putting races on, on courses or national trails that are already covered by existing events. In my opinion there is room for 3 things:

1. An early season long course.

2. A race that offers first time 100 milers a chance to complete the distance under the simplest possible conditions, after all the distance itself is enough of a challenge.

3. Another 100 mile option to UK runners at an affordable price.

I'm sure also, as per the NDW100, that we will receive a backlash against the cost of the TP100 entry, which I have set at £85. The cost is £85 for two reasons. 1. That is the minimum I have worked out we can charge runners and not lose money. That is based on reaching a certain reasonable but optimistic number of entries which I will keep to myself bearing in mind we are including buckles for all finishers, easily the most expensive part of staging this race but crucial in my eyes, to give people something they can take away and be proud of apart from the sheer pleasure of simply finishing and having the memory of doing so. 2. Because I personally consider £85 for a 100 mile/ 30 hour fully supported marshaled and marked race with proper medical back up, good value for money. The cheapest 100 I have entered to date is Rocky Raccoon and the early entry cost for that is $130, or, you guessed it..... £85.

The cost has always been the most difficult thing to get right for me. I am extremely confident I or rather we as a team can give people an awesome race day experience, because frankly I intend to put on my ideal race as a runner, leaving as little as possible and preferably nothing to chance. Things will go wrong in our first events but the mistakes will be minimal and there will be plenty of capable people around on race day to ensure that we correct any mistakes swiftly and properly. I guess I feel a little vindicated in our costings given that we are up to 57 runners for the NDW races, 5 months from race date, and the fact that 6 people signed up within 24 hours of the TP100 going live, 12 months prior to race date.

Last thing to be aware of really is limiting numbers in case the races turn out to be so popular that we get out of control. I have put reasonable limits on all the races, a number that I feel we can properly manage in our first year. There has to be an element of 'testing the water' and in my eyes to unleash 100s of runners on to new race courses, is irresponsible. This after all is not Western States which I understand will have 1400 volunteers this year for under 400 of us runners. Insane.

So thanks to those who have supported us already and I promise we will do everything that we physically can to blow you away before, during and after race day.

For those that follow the misery of my running career at the moment, I am currently spending between 2 and 3 hours a day cycling in the gym, wearing a cast on my left foot. Im not joking. Some of the looks I've been getting are priceless. It is mind numbing and not in the least bit enjoyable but hopefully I can retain some level of fitness for the Grand Slam. There is one bonus, I get to watch a shed load of TV ( mounted to the bike frame). Today I watched 3 back to back episodes of Jamie Oliver cooking tapas on Channel 4, whilst burning 1100 calories. I have to wear this thing for between 4 and 8 weeks. Oh JOY!!!!!

The Scan

2011-03-06T05:49:00.000-08:00

It's official I'm out of Umstead 100 and looking at 6 - 8 weeks off of running. I am not very good at reading scans but allegedly you can see from the below on the right hand leg (my left leg), next to the oval shape and under the darker line on the edge of the bone there is a stress fracture. Will be becoming a spinning junkie in the meantime in an attempt to remain fit enough to tackle Comrades and then 4 x 100 milers in the space of 11 weeks this summer. Obviously Centurion Running will benefit somewhat also.

8 weeks from the 1st March which was the last run is the 25th April 2011. Wow that seems a long way off....

MRI Scan Wednesday 2nd March 2011.

Stress Fracture

2011-03-05T03:45:00.000-08:00

Well I had the MRI on Wednesday night which was an interesting experience in itself. I hadn't had one for about 11 years and the machines have certainly gotten a lot quieter in that time. I actually fell asleep lying down listening to the clunking of the cylindrical behemoth.

I got the results back on Thursday afternoon with a pretty abrupt e mail from the doctor stating quite simply that I did indeed have a stress fracture of the left tibia. As discussed in previous posts it was obvious something was pretty badly wrong ever since Rocky Raccoon, but I hadn't expected to find out I had been running on a broken leg for 3 weeks.

It's hard to state exactly where I go from here because I don't have the full prognosis yet. Obviously I need to let this heal and any impact will prevent it from doing so. That means I won't be able to run for what is my book an awfully long time. I've had to abandon all short-mid term racing plans including Umstead. It is possible I may need surgery but the physio talked to me on Friday night and said that was unlikely. I'll find out soon if I need an air boot to help keep the weight off of the bone whilst I'm going about daily life.

On the bright side I can continue to cross train so I will do that as much as I can and try to retain the fitness I have built up over the last couple of months and try to get well in time for Comrades (3 months away) but more importantly the Grand Slam (4 months away).

It really does suck not being able to run. It's been 4 days and I'm already fidgeting. I want to do everything possible to assist the healing of the fracture but the reality is there is little I can do except rest. It doesn't hurt just walking around, there is more of an itchy sensation from deep within my leg which is a little perturbing but at least I'm not immobile.

On a much happier note the Centurion website is all but done and we will be launching it later tonight so check it out from Sunday 6th onwards www.centurionrunning.com . We are adding forums and a lot more detail on the individual races themselves including where and when the 2nd 100 mile trail race which will be held on the Thames Path in March 2012. The North Downs Races are proving popular and we passed 50 entrants this week. The entries into the 50 have increased to 8 but still lag well behind the 100 (21) and the marathon (24). We are still over 5 months from race day so if the interest levels continue I will have to think about limiting the numbers to make sure we have a sustainable race in our first year which is extremely important.

I read Anthony Kiedis' autobiography again this week. RHCP a class act for 25 years. My top 2 below Yertle the Turtle and Don't Forget Me. John Frusciante at his best at 4:00 in the first one.

Hope

2011-02-28T11:48:00.000-08:00

For a while now I've been living in hope that the injury I sustained to my shin as a secondary issue at Rocky Raccoon isn't as bad as it may appear. There is a difference between hope and denial here and I would consider myself not to have ventured over to the much more dangerous area of denial.

For the past couple of weeks each time I've commenced running the pain in my shin has varied between mild and excruciating. The calf feels as tight as a drum and a particular point in the tibia is extremely sore leading to shooting pains in my leg with each foot strike and push off. At times the pain has almost completely subsided. Plenty of times in the last fortnight I've run for half an hour in a hobbling fashion only for the leg to loosen up as it gets warm and for the pain to die right down. It's meant I haven't been able to do any fast running but that I have been able to get in some decent slower mid length runs (12 - 16 miles). I have added a lot of bike, spinning and strider machine to my weekly regime all of which have been pain free and are helping me build all round strength.

Nevertheless every night I go to bed hoping that I will wake up in the morning to find the physios work and my stretching, icing etc will have brought the pain down to a lower more manageable level and that I can resume running freely and properly. Today my shin was screaming at me as I got on the treadmill for a short test run of 20 ish minutes. I got off and went back to the physio tonight.

The prognosis is not good. Best case I have chronic shin splints which will take a couple of weeks no running to get over. Worst case I have a stress fracture that will put me out for up to 3 months. On Wednesday night I will get an MRI to determine what state the damage is at. Until this point I have followed the advice of the physio 100% and he has always managed to get me back on my feet quickly and without further problems. This time I think even he has conceded the problem goes deeper than he had thought and than I had hoped.

So I have resigned myself to the worst possible fate of having to be off running for a considerable length of time, a longer break than I've had since the MdS in 2006. In that case anything better is a bonus. Relinquishing hope that things are ok when really they're not is actually a weight off of my mind. I have decided that my body knows best and that when the pain is how it is something is clearly badly wrong. If I can cross train in the meantime I will have a hope of keeping some of my half decent fitness levels. If not well then I'm going to have a hell of a job to get ready in time for Comrades and the Grand Slam. Umstead in 5 weeks looks to be a pipe dream right now.

Good luck to everyone taking part in the Atacama Crossing starting this weekend. In the meantime to those reading who are also injured out there, rest up and heal up good and proper. I am going to try to that's for sure.

Heroes

2011-02-22T07:17:00.000-08:00

There are a lot of people in the ultra-running world to look up to. A lot of them are listed in my blog roll down the bottom right hand side of this page. Some of them train obscene amounts and achieve incredibly fast race results. Some of them train a lot less and are even faster still. Some of them have been running for 10 or 20 years and performing at the top for a good proportion of that. They are all incredibly impressive athletes which help to inspire me and many others to go a little bit further, making what would otherwise seem to be impossible seem suddenly human.

Of all of those people the one that I look up to the most is Marshall Ulrich and although a lot of people have heard of Marsh and his exploits over the years I think he's about to become a whole lot better known in the near future with the release of his film and long awaited book. The reason I look up to Marsh more than anybody else is because of Badwater last year. Marsh raced the Gobi March in 2007, my second desert and that was the first and only other time I had the pleasure of meeting him, even then Jim and I really just admired from afar as he made seemingly light work of the course. His demeanour exuded total relaxed control of the race, respect for all of the other racers and for the environment, local people and the opportunity we were all fortunate enough to have, to run in such a remote location.

At Badwater Marsh started about 4 hours ahead of me and had a difficult first section of the course. I passed him on the way up Townes Pass maybe 50 or 60 miles into the race and he was dragging his feet along like he was out for a stroll in the park. He was clearly having a difficult time but made sure to tell Frank and I what a great job we were doing and to keep it up which gave me a huge boost. He then stormed down the hill into Panamint and overtook me leaving me for dust (he was 59 at the time of the race). I carried straight on where he took some time to tend to blisters and made his way on when he was ready. Right at the top of Mount Whitney Portals about 2 miles from the finish Marsh came past me again with a slap on the back and words of congratulations we're almost there you're doing awesome. That meant an awful lot coming from him. Even then he had a smile on his face and was pretty much on his own just doing his own thing at his own pace, totally unconcerned about anything else.

The reality is i'm not sure I can really begin to list some of the things he's achieved as there have been so many but I will certainly be buying a copy of his book. He recently mentioned he has only in the last year or so felt he was qualified to put his experiences down on paper which may just be the craziest thing I've ever heard. When he passed me at the top of the last hill at Badwater it was on his way to his 22nd finish on that course which has included a number of wins (5 i think). he has run Leadville 13 times. He was one of the first people to race and finish the Grand Slam and did so in astounding times. He raced all of the eco challenge adventure races before they came to an end, climbed the 7 summits including Everest in a calender year (he also ran Badwater just a few days later) and has completed over 100 races of 100 miles in length.

Have a look at the video trailer and read a little about him if even you feel like you need a little inspiration.

http://www.marshallulrich.com/

Weekly Summary Feb 14 - 20

2011-02-20T09:22:00.000-08:00

Monday - 4 miles 40 minutes
Tuesday - 4 miles 45 minutes
Wednesday - Rest/ Physio
Thursday - 4 miles 28 minutes
Friday - 4 miles 28 minutes & 20 minutes Strider
Saturday - 8.7 miles 1 hour 11 minutes
Sunday - 14.6 miles 2 hours 4 minutes

Total - 42 miles 5 hours 58 minutes

This week began horribly and got a lot better. Saturday was the first day I've been able to walk around since the race without pain in one or other part of my legs. I've had ice on my knee and shin on and off for about 2 hours of each day and spent a lot of time stretching both legs out. Saturday evening I managed just over an hour and today I ventured out for 2 but was baked by 90 minutes and struggled the last 5 or 6 miles. The 76 miles are still clearly taking their toll but I'm pretty familiar with this process. After a week of total rest and the problems I had in the early part of this week I'm pretty pleased how the last few days have panned out. A painful physio session paid huge dividends again mid week and turned me back around from a hobbling wreck to a functioning runner again in the space of 48 hours.

6 weeks until the next 100....

Rehabilitation

2011-02-13T13:41:00.000-08:00

I had a great week this week, lacking nothing but my beloved running. I took the opportunity to rest as much as I could, catch up with people and stay off of my feet and knee as much as possible. I saw the physio twice in the week and heeded the advice I was given, don't run but the overall prognosis was way WAY more positive than I was even optimistically hoping for.

On the massage table yesterday my shin splints felt better, my feet, whilst still sore when I apply pressure, are causing no problems when I walk around but my knees were both pretty sore. I have iced, stretched elevated all week long and this evening I felt strong enough to spend 30 minutes on my feet, about 20 minutes running and 10 walking.

This week I will ease back in slowly with cross training, swimming and some very light experimental running. I know I won't be able to get over the disaster that was Rocky Raccoon until I cross the finish line at Umstead 100 in 7 weeks time so I have decided just to get on with it and dive back into focusing on that from now until then. As mentioned in a previous post I do need to tell myself that out of 6 more goal races this year, this one is the 6th most important but it is essential I have a good race there to get my year back on track before the big races kick in beginning with Comrades in late May. As such if my training goes to plan in the next week or so of gradual build up then I will drop back in to a couple of longer runs the week after and finish off running the majority of the course/ planning the second 100 miler in the Centurion series which I'll be putting on in March 2012. After that I have some pretty cool weekends planned with races on some of my favourite trails and some shorter local ones which will give me a chance to push up my leg speed. All in all if things go to plan I am aiming to fit in a few 50ks and a couple of marathons in the 6 weeks leading up to April 2nd. If I stay positive and sensible the physio believes that it should be possible.

I haven't really said much to anyone up to this point about my DNF at RR100 other than reflecting on it in the race report on this blog. The fact is my opinions on DNFs are a little controversial and hence probably better kept to myself. I received a lot of good wishes from friends, family and particularly runners after Rocky, but the underlying fact is I failed to finish a race and in my book that's not really acceptable unless you literally have to be dragged off of the course. Undoubtedly my decision to drop was the right one but given that hypothetically, although traveling excruciatingly slowly, I 'could' have finished with 15 hours left on the clock, I'm very far from delighted with the outcome. Of course I went to run a PB/ to see how fast I could run 100 miles and not just to finish at any cost given that I'd done that there once before but that doesn't make the decision any less 'right'. It's an area I don't really want to get in to as I say as frankly it's done and dusted and it affects no-one but myself. If you're interested in the debate over DNF-ing have a look at this post from AJW which kicked up a bit of a storm (if you're a real geek read through the comments which is where this subject gets interesting) http://ajwsblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/dnfs.html

The Day After/ Wasatch Lottery

2011-02-08T11:06:00.000-08:00

My leg feels significantly less swollen today. Decided to see the physio tomorrow to give the general swelling an extra 24 hours to reduce enough for him to be able to give me a steer on the level of damage I've caused. I am hoping for a prognosis of under 4 weeks before I can commence build up again but that may be a little hopeful.

What I do know is that my hunger to get stuck in to Umstead in 8 weeks time is pretty huge. I cannot abide DNFs. This wasn't my first, in fact I have DNFd two other ultras before, both due to debilitating injury, but that was a first for 100 miles and my first since August 2007. Mentally rather than rock my confidence it's just made me more resolute about my strategy and goals for Umstead. Of course I have to get healthy again first and it will be about being patient to allow a full recovery before I get into it.

I see I wasn't lucky enough to be drawn in the Wasatch 100 lottery but am guaranteed a place as a Grand Slam runner should I complete Western States, Vermont and Leadville. Some big names did get drawn including Tony Krupicka and Karl Meltzer who both also toed the line at RR100 last weekend. I think both those guys are also doing UTMB which is a mere 13 days prior to Wasatch so they will have 7 days less than me to recover from an even more mountainous 100. Fair play to them for throwing their names in for both. Also running are two Brits, Nicole and Ryan Brown and it will be great to share some British company at another one of the major US 100s this year.

Congratulations to everyone who finished Thames Trot, Pilgrims or Rocky Raccoon this weekend, there were some stellar performances out there although I have to say I don't think anything will come close to Ians somehow!

Rocky Raccoon 100: DNF

2011-02-07T16:20:00.000-08:00

Arrived back from Houston this morning and sadly I had no internet access from my Hunstville Motel Room hence the delay in posting any kind of news on here.

The journey out to Houston was as uneventful as I could have hoped for. The 10 hour flight went like a dream with no interruptions and I managed to get some good rest spread out across three seats in the very back row of the plane. The new airline formed out of the merger between Continental and United has left behind probably the best carrier service I've flown with for a very long time. We were told on taking off that the weather in Houston was horrendous with mixed freezing snow and rain icing up the runway. About an hour before landing the pilot let us know that the storm was sufficiently far south for us to land without issue and that hiatus was actually enough time for me to collect the hire car and make the hour drive up I45 to Huntsville where the race is held. I hit the sack straight away not wanting to change my body clock as per the last time I was there for the race. The idea of that being that given the 6 hour time difference if I got to bed at 6pm and woke up at 3am, I would time things perfectly for race morning when we would start at 6am.

I got up at 3am on Friday and went outside to make the drive over the I45 to Wal Mart and stock up on supplies. Unfortunately the entire car was engulfed in a quarter of an inch of ice. It had been blown on by freezing cold winds and was rock hard so it took me literally half an hour to get moving. The roads hadn't been gritted so were extremely slippery. When I turned up at Wal Mart obviously there wasn't a soul in sight but this is America and it was a 24 hour store. I went inside and spent an hour cruising around buying tortillas, turkey, cheese, chips, fruit, bagels, water etc etc most of which were for the race. I spent the rest of the day watching tv in the room waiting for Ian to arrive and for the pre race meeting to start. Ian got in around 2pm and we hit the streets of Huntsville for a 3 mile - ish slow run just to loosen up before the morning.

We got to registration and the race briefing was in full flow, so we snuck around the side and checked in to collect our race numbers and swag bags. At this point Ian met up with his crew for the race, Paul and Meredith Terranova and we spent some time out in the hall with Meredith chatting about different races and his plan of action for the morning. Ian has been running at the top level for a while now. In the lead up to the race we spoke a lot about the speed the other guys in the field had vs his own success on road in particular and how this course might suit him better. Knowing what happened now makes this post from a few weeks ago a little more pertinent!!!! http://runthroughtime.blogspot.com/2011/01/11-days-to-go.html

Meredith and Paul were obviously extremely accomplished runners, Paul recently finishing 2nd just behind Ian in TNF50km in December. They had also had success in pacing runners to success on this course helping 4 previous runners to wins with some breaking CR's in the process. After a massive pasta dinner I left my drop bag with supplies for the Dam Road aid station at mile 6.5/ 12.5 and head back to the hotel for the night.

I got up at 3am for the race with a good nights sleep under my belt. Having run this one before and having done a number of races significantly more challenging since I didn't have pre match nerves. I knew I was capable of running the time that I wanted as long as things went to plan and I really didn't have any other pressures on me than that. If it all worked out then great and I would have the pleasure of watching some of the greats in the sport battle it out up the front of the field due to the lapped format.

I got to the start at 4:45am and it was 23 degrees F outside or minus 5 centigrade in English money. I jumped out of the car and checked my name off of the list and after 5 minutes outside I was freezing cold and shivering. Not a nice start to the morning. I stayed in the warm until 5:54am and then jogged over to the start, switched on my headlamp and joined the Ian a row back from the front. I looked at the line of runners in front of us and left to right picked out Tony Krupicka, Scott Jurek, Hal Koerner, Karl Meltzer a couple of unknown guys and Zach Gingerich on the right. Ian looked ready with his camelbak on and we wished each other good luck before Joe the RD set us on our way at exactly 6am.

The pace at the beginning was slower than I'd expected. I say that with the exception of Zach who sprinted away down the 100 yard straight and wide trail from the start/ finish line. He was out of sight within 30 seconds and that was kind of a shock to see as I imagine it was for all of the other guys. As we got into the first little section of narrower trail the lead guys began to pull away and I was running in maybe 20th spot with a group of 4 guys running together. As we spread out even a few yards it became apparent that my head torch was pitifully weak. I'd changed down from my heavy duty Petzl to a smaller model as I knew I'd only need it for about 45 minutes but it did nothing to cut through the pitch black of the woods. I tripped a few times on the prominent roots and nearly crashed into a tree by one of the many boardwalks in the first 2 miles or so. Neverthless I made good time to the nature centre at mile 3.1 in about 25 minutes and as we got on to the trail to the Dam Road Station at mile 6.5 the sun began to come up and reveal a beautiful day on the trails. The rest of the first 20 mile loop just disappeared in a flash and I was back to the 2 mile out and back section to the start in about 2:45 or so. At that point I knew I would see the front runners coming back past me and sure enough there was Zach running at mile 21.7/ 18.3 for me which put him on roughly 3:05 marathon pace. A couple of minutes later, Ian came past and I gave him some words of encouragement. Directly behind him were Scott, Hal, Anton, Karl, Mike Wolfe and a couple of other guys all running together. Scott was the only one to exchange words as we went past and I kind of guessed that figured as they were all working so hard. I hit 20 miles in 3:02 in 30th spot.

My pacing strategy was simple and was to go 20 hours split down as Loop 1: 3 hours. Loop 2: 3:30. Loop 3: 3:30. Loop 4: 4:30. Loop 5: 5 hours. At 4 mph for the last loop I knew I'd have plenty of fat in there to push towards my best case target of 18 hours. I knew that would be enough for top 20 even with the strength of the field in question and I felt it was achievable before hand.

For loop 2 I grabbed a handheld bottle and some more gels and made good speed out of the gate. I'd run the whole of the first loop including all of the 'bumps' (not really long enough to call them hills). It would be wrong to describe this course as flat as there are some minor undulations which amount to about 5500 feet over 100 miles but you just wouldn't find a trail flatter than this unless you look at canal towpaths which clearly offer the fastest possible terrain, short of road, on which to run. Loop 2 I began to speed hike some of the slightly longer shallow inclines to conserve energy. The heat came up a bit and I hit the marathon point in about 4:05 which was spot on. As I made it out to the 50km point I could feel the ITB in my right leg, ever present in all of my training, tighten up particularly on the downhill sections and it certainly put the fear in to me a little. I tried to protect it where I could but with shin splints in my left leg in the run up to the race also, it was really about balancing the whole situation so that neither became my undoing. I felt a little like I was running on a knife edge and that either could cause a big issue at any time. Still I made decent progress on lap 2 and came back in to the start finish in 6:32, 2 minutes off of target pace and still in exactly 30th place.

Loop 3 I intended to continue running as much of as possible. My legs felt a little weary but as is natural after 40 miles of running and everything else was running as smooth as I could have possibly hoped. I allowed myself to start to think about how many problems with injury and illness I'd suffered in the 12 week build up to this race and how I had always hoped that things would just come together on race day and that the big guy upstairs would allow me to travel the course without any single problem coming to a head. I power hiked the inclines, made it through the 50 mile point in 8:09, stayed sensible with my nutrition and hydration, taking on lots of enduralytes as the heat came up a little towards the low 60s and made good progress back to the 100km mark in 10:27 about 3 minutes up on my plan. By this point, Ian had already come past me on his 4th lap and looked fantastic, flowing freely and easily in a bouncing fashion right down the track. He had a lead now and clearly was out to push that lead rather than sit back and try and hold it.

Loop 4 began in daylight but quickly descended into darkness so I had my torch and a second layer ready. I started to hike a lot more of the trail and knowing that I had 4 hours 30 for this loop I could afford to conserve a lot of energy and have a faster last lap as a result. As I went through 65 miles or so, Ian came barrelling back down the trail past me with Meredith and we had a shouted conversation whereby he informed me he was running a half an hour under CR pace for a 12:45 projected finishing time. I was pretty much speechless. He was obviously going to stamp his name into the record books and put his name on the map of world ultra running. I tried not to get too distracted in his success as I was aware I had a big job left to do myself. I pressed on through Dam Road and on the long lonely ATV trail up to the 70 mile Far Point timing mat which I reached almost bang on 12:30 still pacing perfectly. As I head up the single track from mile 70 to 72 I could feel my leg tightening but nothing worse than I'd had all day. The temperature had dropped massively, around 20 degrees in the space of only an hour and a half and I could feel the cold starting to get in to me so I pushed the pace a little out on the dam and into the aid station at mile 73. I grabbed a large cup of mashed potato which I'd been eating all day and was frankly a revelation and made my way out of there without stopping. At that point I had spent a maximum of 30 seconds at any one aid station all day so hadn't wasted any extra time. As I got on to a section of slightly steeper descent at around mile 74 my right knee pretty much gave way. Anyone who has had ITB issues in the past will know that feeling, when you're running along with no issue and all of a sudden it feels like someone has jammed their thumb right into the side of your kneecap and it almost makes it feel like the leg will collapse. I gathered myself quickly and tried to walk through it but it pretty much seized up and the flex I'd had in it to that stage went entirely to the point where it was locked pretty much straight. I knew I had 2 miles to the aid station so figured I would walk it in and try and shake it off over that time.

This section of trail is a jeep road which undulates down the far side of the park on really easy and very runnable packed sand. I was, however, reduced to an absolutely crippling hobble, striding with my left leg and swinging my right around like a club foot, placing as little pressure on the knee as possible and taking all my weight back on to my left as soon as I physically could. I carried on for maybe half an hour in that fashion with my head down just plugging away. As the knee became tighter and tighter I could feel the ITB stretching across the knee and literally creaking as i held it in place. The temperature was back down to single figures and I knew that wasn't helping the situation. That jeep road became an absolute bastard and I was reduced to going tree to tree for the 2 miles. I managed to make it in to the aid station at mile 76.2 in just over 15 hours. When I worked back I realised it had taken me over 2 hours to cover 3 miles and that had been with a pretty good pace for the first mile of that. I knew my race was out of the window at that point and that I couldn't shake this problem off. I had two choices, continute on and with 15 hours left in the race, hope that my leg eased up a bit to allow me to continue at the previous pace of just over a mile an hour and finish the last 24 in time, or call it a day.

I went back to Rocky Raccoon this year for one reason, to see how fast I could run 100 miles. That would seem to be a little pointless to some people but in the 3 previous attempts at the distance, all of which ended in success but ultimately included long stretches of walking and struggling, I felt I hadn't really had the race I was capable of. In 2009 in my first 100 miler I'd run the course in a very respectable 22:54. When I worked out the average pace I'd need to complete the remaining 24 miles in, I knew it was impossible for me to better that time albeit I was, even with the 2 hours of crawling along, way way ahead of my 2009 splits. I actually left the 76.2 mile point and made my way down the trail back to the start finish. Around 5 minutes in I'd only made a couple of hundred yards at the most and could still see the lights behind me. I stood still felt my knee which was severely inflamed and thought screw this. It wasn't even that difficult a decision. I knew I would hate myself for DNFing a race but I came to the realisation that 1. I have another opportunity to run a decent 100 mile time at Umstead in under 2 months time and that having managed to get into Western States this year and the Grand Slam, this race paled into insignificance versus those things. If I did lasting damage by battling out the rest of the course I would be inconsolable. I turned around and made my way back to the aid station and that was that. 76 miles of very hard work and 12 weeks of training undone in under 3 hours.

That for me exemplifies the massive gulf between 50 miles/ 100km races and 100 miles. That last 40 miles of a 100 is a totally different level to any other running. Of course the longer you are on your feet, the greater the opportunity there is for something to go wrong. The last 40 miles of a 100 will, for most people, involve a huge amount of walking. Given that, you end up being on your feet for the same time again as the initial 60 miles might have taken. When it gets dark and cold and you're whole body is depleted and in pain it is easy to make mistakes like forgetting to eat and drink or take on salt, or, in my case here, get injured by being sloppy with your gait/ tripping over etc etc.

I hitched a lift back to the start line with one of the volunteers and dragged my leg the 20 yards or so into the start finish tent where I found Ian sitting in a chair surrounded by ultra running legends and admirers alike. He had finished in a time of 12:44 and in the process set the fastest ever time for trail 100 miles on US soil. Tony Krupicka and Hal Koerner had come in shortly after him in 13:18 and 13:24 respectively, both also astonishingly quick times. Ian was humble but obviously elated and after about an hour of sitting around everyone dispersed and head back to their respective hotels.

When I got up the next morning my leg felt dreadful. Negotiating stairs was almost impossible, but we jumped in the car and went back to the start finish to watch some of the last runners come home. There is something really special about watching people who have been out battling their inner demons for 28/29/30 hours finally cross that finishing line. It's a moment you don't forget in a hurry and obviously from my perspective I had huge pangs of regret for not struggling on round to finish. At the same time I also felt what I can only describe was almost pride in myself for not being as stubborn as usual and going on to cause long term damage to prove a point I had proved many times before.

Having spent a little time there we head over to the post race breakfast where Ian recieved many contgratulations for his stellar performance. Watching him sign autographs was kind of surreal and I know he felt the same way, but this is a big and growing community and all of a sudden he had gone from a recognised name albeit on a kind of unknown level, to stardom, overnight. I felt delighted for him that he'd achieved something truly special and that he was about to start getting the kind of support and respect he had probably deserved for some time. It's going to be seriously exciting to watch him race in the future.

For me the question is how long will be off my feet. On top of the knee I have some serious plantar fasciis going on in my right foot and an exacerbated shin split problem in my left leg. I have 8 weeks to umstead so whilst it was no bad bad thing to have got in a 76 mile training run, if I'm out of action fo 6 - 8 weeks it will make Umstead a race too soon. I will travel there irrespective as I have pre paid for flights and entry but as to what capacity I'll be in, racing 100, running 50 or pacing pete for a lap or two who knows. As for Rocky Raccoon you can never say never but I doubt I'll be back. Finishing it once ticks the box and this years DNF doesn't detract from that at all. I still had an awesome time and am pretty sure that if my knee had lasted the course I would have been able to pocket a time somewhere between 18:30 and 19:30 which would have made it a successful start to the year. Still you roll with the punches and in ultra running you will get KO'd occasionally. Hey after all Scott Jurek dropped at 60 miles so I feel my decision was kind of validated by his ;)

Until next time....

3 Days to Go

2011-02-02T13:54:00.000-08:00

Fly tomorrow 11:40am to Houston with Continental Airlines. The last time I got on a plane I was off the back of a 3 day drinking session and had a major panic attack. I will try not to do the same tomorrow but I am anxious to say the least.

Have spent a lot of today visualising the race. I think it's fair to say having run this in 2009 that I know what to expect, but the reality is 100 miles is such a long way that at some point something will inevitably go wrong, it's just about how you cope with it. I want to run the first 60 miles the way I ran the first 42 at Badwater. Just in a nice comfortable zone where I don't push the pace but keep it moderate and steady and the time just flies by. I have a pacing plan but I'm not going to put it on here because I don't want to jinx an already finely balanced situation. Last time I ran 22:54 and that was with a significant delay at the 80 mile aid station and a massive amount of walking on lap 5 from mile 80 in to the finish. It won't take much of an improvement this year to annihilate that time.

Hope to update tomorrow from Motel 6 off the side of the interstate running from Houston up to Huntsville, Texas. It is forecast to snow there tomorrow so I've had to pack all of my cold weather gear. A slightly interesting turn of events to say the least!!!!

4 Days to Go

2011-02-01T12:27:00.000-08:00

pm: 4 miles.

I fly on Thursday morning so I will fit one more short run in tomorrow and then get my stuff together for the journey. Heathrow to Houston. Houston to Huntsville and Huntsville to the State Park where it will all go down on Saturday morning.

I've enjoyed watching this a couple of times in the past. Look foward to running the course in August.

5 Days to Go

2011-01-31T11:58:00.000-08:00

pm: 5 miles easy.

Can feel I have a shin splint in my left leg so will get a sports massage tomorrow to iron that out. Don't need THAT getting any worse right now!!!!

Battersea Park tonight

6 Days to Go: 5 Step Plan

2011-01-30T10:16:00.000-08:00

Last night I got 10 hours sleep, ate two good sized meals and did what I needed to do, rest after a long working week. This afternoon my plan was to split up a slightly longer run into two parts, a shorter faster 4 mile effort and a slower more relaxing 6 mile easy run. I pushed the 4 miles in at 6:30 pace just to get a gauge on how my fitness stands going into next weekend. That is significantly slower than I'd usually do tempo runs because at this stage I don't need to be doing all out efforts, but it didn't feel as relaxed as I'd hoped it would. When I'm back from RR100 I'm going to commit to doing a few shorter local races to try and maintain some speedwork. I do actually enjoy racing and I guess if I get a little smarter about how I train rather than just bashing out miles I might do ok at a few of them.

That would be quite a departure from my current ethos. In my running career I have run 5km once, 10km twice, one half marathon, one 16 miler and 53 races of marathon or longer. My last less than marathon distance race was in May 2008 and consequently I set all my PBs, 5km (19:30), 10km (39:24), half (1:26:04) and full marathon (2:58:07) at the same marathon in Washington last year.

My goal pretty much since I started running has been to enter long, hard races for three reasons: 1. they give me an opportunity to go to incredible places and meet incredible people 2. to find out which races truly blow me away and which don't, so I'll know what I am missing when I can't race as much as I do now and go back year after year to my one or two favourite events and 3. to see if I had the stones to get through anything that's put in front of me. I guess I'm about half of the way down that path now in terms of number of races but more like two thirds in terms of timeframe. The plan has taken on five pretty distinct separate stages.

Step 1 was simply to finish the Marathon Des Sables. Once Jim and I had finished that and the Gobi March, Step 2 was finishing the 4Deserts series. With that done I felt like I'd done enough desert/ multi day races (that and that they cost me every penny I could save) and started to focus on the major single stage events. Step 3 was initiating myself to 100 milers in order to qualify for Badwater (I needed 2 to qualify but you now need 3). I finished RR100 and OD100 and got selected for Badwater which was always my dream race. When a few other things went awry last year I got a chance to run and finish CC100 in October which was a bonus. So I guess with 3 x 100s and Badwater out of the way and with no DNFs I can move on to Step 4: Mountain 100s. RR100 and Umstead are in every way warm up races for this summer, being relatively flat. Western States is the jewel in the crown, my A race for this year, but I will have to have one eye on Vermont, Leadville and Wasatch at all times during it because the whole lot could unravel with one mistake. Step 4 is really a year long goal for 2011, run and finish the Grand Slam plus get a couple of other 100s under my belt and Comrades which I am really excited about also. That really just leaves Step 5 and that is tackle 5 races which are arguably all harder than anything I will have done yet (Badwater aside): HURT, Hardrock, Spartathlon, UTMB (strike 3) and Arrowhead/ Yukon Arctic.

(Step 6 is Barkley. I'll show up on the startline for that if 1. I'm unlucky enough to get picked and 2. I've run everything else and can face up to the utter misery of it).

I read an interview today, with an old school ultra runner out in the States who still enters multi day lapped events and runs 40 miles every other day. His comment was that while you're young, you should stick to shorter distances and get into ultra's only as you get older and inevitably, slower. As much as I love long hard stuff he is right and I do want to do a little more shorter distance racing while my legs still go round pretty fast....

Tonight my run was out and back along the Thames Path from Battersea Park in a loop up and over Wandsworth Bridge and back. Considering we are 3 miles from the geographical centre of London we're pretty lucky to have a run like this so close. I get out down there 3 - 4 times per week but it's unbeatable at night. I'll post some photos that I took later on.

7 Days to Go

2011-01-29T10:15:00.000-08:00

For the first time in a long time, no single part of me legs hurts when I go up and down the stairs. It's a nice feeling not to have to walk in a specific way to accommodate an issue. Both my knees feel stronger as a result of a massive reduction in training volume. I will carry on running every day until race day but low mileage. It's been a rocky road of injury and illness to rocky raccoon but inevitably it just depends on how I'm feeling on the day itself as to how it turns out. At least when it has come down to the final run in I've managed to shake off the issues that have plagued the last few weeks.

We are in the process of redesigning the Centurion Running Website at the moment. It seems a little early in the day to give it a complete overhaul, however I really want to have a function on there that allows friends and family to track runners progress during the race and see photos and video as it happens. We used Wordpress to create the current site and it is awesome as a start up, I mean I think what we created for a total cost of about £150 is pretty good actually (bearing in mind it took a hell of a lot of time from myself but more importantly the designer, my good friend Al, to get right) but creating it from scratch will give us the ability to change the framework exactly as we want it. So far we have had 35 runners sign up across all 3 distances and I know of a lot more out there looking to sign up in the near future. So pleased at the support we are receiving the first year and a lot of that is undoubtedly down to the good word being put out there by people like James Adams amongst many others. It's nice to feel part of a real community and bar one or two people on the runners world forum (one in particular who really got my goat), the feedback we've had has been tremendous. There is no way, of course, that we can please everybody but I did and do still feel that there is a vast body of runners out there who will benefit from this race and others like it being brought into existence in the UK. We have British runners right at the top of the ultra running scene at the moment racing all over the world and if more races like the NDW100/ 50 take shape, marked courses with full support ie race conditions, there will be a lot more behind them.

10 Days to Go

2011-01-26T12:19:00.001-08:00

pm: 5 miles.

Starting to get some real energy back now and my legs feel stronger. Had to suppress running longer again today. Trying to be as sensible as I physically can be and remind myself it's not actually going to help at this stage putting in long runs. The old adage states it is far better to get to to the start line over rested than over trained. I try to stick to that principal. Everything is in place for the trip now and I'm starting to get pretty excited. It's going to be a game of two halves. Run steady and smooth for the first 3 laps (100km), eat, drink and prevent chaffing. Then run steady and smooth for 2 more. If I smash into a brick wall again for any reason I'll just have to suffer it out in muted frustration. I hope the ultra gods are with me.

11 Days to Go

2011-01-25T13:43:00.000-08:00

pm: 5 miles. Still getting my strength back. It's hard to know what the best prep is from here on in but traditionally I've done almost nothing in the last 2 weeks before big races and invariably it has worked a treat. I'm not going to pull nothing out but literally just keep things ticking over. My legs are still pretty tight and as they loosen up I'll hit the track a couple of times and get some nice easy miles in.

The entry list for RR100 went from a big field with a couple of really fast guys to a who's who of US 100 mile champs. Hal Koerner (2 x WS100, AC100, Bear100, CDR winner), Anton Krupicka and Scott Jurek two household names in the ultra running world all dropped in at the same time last night. Along with Zach Gingerich and Karl Meltzer you have arguably got 5 of the top 10 US ultrarunners lining up in one race extremely early in the season. What's more it's 'flat' (5500 ft of gain over 100 miles) and fast. Personally I think the Course Record of 13:16 could go down if they each push each other hard but not too far. Out of the 5, I would say it is between Zach and Anton. Hal has a great record in the mountains but maybe can't hold such a fast pace. Karl is very much a mountain guy. Scott has been on a long path back to success after a year or two in the doldrums but recently ran 165miles+ to break the American 24 hour record. With that he cannot be dismissed but undoubtedly he is not at his previous best yet. Anton has a 13:32 on this course already and has only improved since then. Zach ran a 13:20 at Umstead on a track with 8000ft of gain so technically 'should' go faster at RR. And then there is Ian.

This is his time to shine. I think this is where people will sit up and take notice of him. If it goes to plan, he has the leg speed and endurance to beat this field if he can race his own race and hold it steady and injury free....

Given that the course is 20 mile laps, tt will be fascinating for me to watch the race unravel. I am going out to try and just do my best. For the first time in a 100 I'm not just there to finish, I've already done that on this course, I am there to push it and see if I can turn in the kind of 100 mile time I know I am capable of. If I can avoid getting lapped it'll mean I am on course for roughly a 18 hour finish. Without giving too much away, I am hoping I won't get lapped....

12 Days to Go

2011-01-24T13:59:00.000-08:00

Much more energy today, working on building that up as quickly as possible over the next week and a half. Todays major success was plotting the NDW100 and NDW50 courses on Google Earth. Looks pretty good although a little under what I'd expected in total elevation change. Climb on the 100 is 10,400 feet and on the 50, 5,700 feet. Could make for some faster times than I had considered....

13 Days to Go

2011-01-23T12:21:00.000-08:00

pm 3 miles. Big day....

Man I'm tired today. It was all I could do to drag myself out of bed this morning and make it once round the park with Lisa this evening. I feel pretty beaten. I guess that's the point of a period of more intensive training, to push your body as close to breaking point as possible without tipping it over the edge and then back off just in time to be able to peak for a race. My mileage has been average to poor in the lead up to this and the quality of those miles has been mixed to say the least. At the same time as putting in 11 weeks of training, exactly as I did pre Badwater, I have been sick, injured and had a very busy finish to 2010 and start to this year at work. Putting in big mileage weeks around my day job is pretty strength sapping and I think after yesterday when I psychologically reached the start of my taper period exactly 2 weeks from race day, I kind of unravelled a little bit. I'm just going to try and keep my legs ticking over, strengthen my knees back up and gain a serious amount of energy in the next 13 days. I am getting geared up for it now, I am relaxed about the distance and get my nutrition right this time around. Regular readers of this blog will know what my one true fear is going into this race.... the only question is which shorts provide the lowest possible risk of damage....

14 Days to Go

2011-01-22T11:51:00.000-08:00

am: 17 miles. pm: 2 miles.

This morning I met Webbo down at Merstham at mile 34 on our NDW 100/ 50 route to run the last 16 miles of the course in to the 50 mile finish/ 100 mile turn around at Knockholt Pound. Running in the opposite direction to meet us was Paul Bennett, a friend of ours from previous races both home and abroad. He had parked up at the finish before 7am and armed with a headtorch and some decent trail shoes. As we left the station and hit the trail the temperature was about 3 degrees C and hovered there all morning. The ground was absolutely horrendous underfoot and made all the worse for me by the fact that I'd decided to wear road shoes. My decision was based on the fact that there are some short sections of road in amongst the trail and with mild pain still from both knees I would rather not risk any more impact through them than absolutely necessary. It was a massive error, I'm not really sure how I avoided crashing but I slid all over the place for a little over 3 hours. Paul met us at mile 2 on our run and turned around with us to head all the way back to his car.

Every time I go back to the NDW I'm amazed at how well way marked it is. Even without a map it's pretty hard to go wrong. Today gave me the chance to properly map out the last 8 miles of the track and in fact we moved the final aid station around 1.25 miles down the track to a much better spot. We also scoped out the exact finishing point in Knockholt Pound. Once again my Garmin packed up in the wet weather and gave me some crazy read outs, plus the strap has torn so it is pretty much a waste of space right now. Luckily Paul had his so I will be able to add the final piece to the puzzle and publish a full route profile of all three events early next week.

This afternoon I jogged a couple of miles but I had pain in my right knee so I went down to get a sports massage. It was an hour of agony, my back and legs were really tight. I am still in quite a lot of pain a couple of hours later and feel pretty sick. That's what you get for leaving it 8 months between sessions.

15 Days to Go

2011-01-21T12:44:00.000-08:00

5 miles easy tonight. That was it. Already from just one day off and a short run tonight, my legs felt 30% better and I had way more gas in the tank.

Today I learned that the Lakeland 100/ 50 mile races (UTLD) have sold out the full quota of 700 places in 2011. That is phenomenal. They have only been going, from what I can tell, since 2008 and have quickly grown the event into a monster. The most intriguing thing for me, is that they do not mark the course. Needless to say the area is absolutely out of this world, the photrography I've seen make it look like a truly stunning race course.

We have had 3 x 100 milers enter in the last 48 hours. To be honest, even if we only get 50 runners total, I will still be proud and delighted that people think there is enough to warrant spending a lot of time and money giving the inaugural race a crack. I will endeavour to send every one of them home having had the best possible experience. The amount of correspondance and number of entrants is growing daily. All in all I'm getting pretty excited already and we're 7 months away....

On another note I got drawn in the lottery for UTMB this week. I was hoping I wouldn't get in as I have a wedding that weekend (plus Leadville the weekend before) so I could defer until 2012 for automatic entry. I can't so I'll have to give up my place. Having been lucky enough to tick a few of my 'dream race' boxes in the last couple of years, the list of things I still want to have a go at ultra wise have reduced and I'm pretty clear already about what I want to have a crack at in 2012. At the moment I have my eye on either HURT or Arrowhead in January, Hardrock in July, UTMB in August and Spartathlon in September. All of those assuming I finish the 7 big events I have this year....

16 Days to Go

2011-01-20T13:16:00.000-08:00

As promised to myself yesterday, no training today. It's amazing how during one day off my desire to consume fatty foods goes through the roof. I had a massive urge today to gorge on junk food but managed largely to resist the temptation.

I'll set back off again tomorrow and see if the rest day has made any difference. Saturday will be my last 'long run' before RR100. I guess we'll cover somewhere between 23 and 25 miles most of which will be on the NDW and eventually form mile 30 - 50/ 70 of the 50 & 100 mile course. I aim to post a full route profile once we're done as I should be able to link accurate Garmin read outs for the full 50 miles/ 100 miles.

17 Days to Go

2011-01-19T12:35:00.000-08:00

Simple day today. 8 miles, no significant pain but it's starting to feel like I'm just running junk miles, not really improving my fitness and generally lethargic.

I'm going to take a day off tomorrow, rest, run Friday and get ready for a good 20+ mile trail run on Saturday, covering the last half of the NDW50 course with Webbo early on Saturday morning. Then it's taper time. Game on.

Around 30% of the runners entered for the UTMB and CCC this morning were unlucky in the lottery so I'm expecting a few of them to drop into the NDW100 instead which would be great for our numbers.

18 Days to Go: RR splits 2009

2011-01-18T12:20:00.000-08:00

am: 5 miles 40 minutes. pm: 9 miles 1 hour 13 minutes.

This morning felt good, this evening did not. Ran with Webbo up into and around Hyde Park and even just trying to hold 8 minute miles felt difficult. We managed it for 6 - 7 miles and then I cruised back home. General fatigue is building slowly which isn't wonderful news but is to be expected. I will push hard until Sunday and then taper massively for 10 days.

Just looked over my splits from RR100 in 2009. You can tell it was my first 100 by the spiralling disastrous split times. I pretty much walked from 80 miles I will post nearer the time what I hope to run this year. It's a ways quicker.

20 miles: 3:26
40 miles: 7:23 (3:57)
50 miles: 9:24
60 miles: 11:36 (4:13)
80 miles: 16:48 (5:12)
100 miles: 22:54 (6:06)

19 Days to Go: Ironman vs Ultra

2011-01-17T13:15:00.000-08:00

11 miles today. 4 this morning, 7 this evening in just under an hour. Felt a little tight everywhere but otherwise good. I will try and shake a lot of that fatigue out tonight and run longer tomorrow evening. Starting to feel a little more consistent again after a rocky patch.

Had a lot of enquiries today about the NDW100/50/26.2 races in August. It feels like interest is picking up a lot despite having a good number of entries already in. We need a lot more to make it a sustainable entity in the first year but I think the UTMB lottery in the morning will leave a few people looking for a challenge around the same time. I hope some of those people pick the NDW as the place to race.

I had a guy e mail me today with the CV of a champ, Ironmans, a Double Ironman and going for Quintuple Ironman at the Enduro races in June. He asked if he was fit to race 100 miles yet? This is a question I get asked a lot, how does an Ironman stack up against an ultra. Well to this point I've only ever raced 1 triathlon and it was only a half Ironman so I am not really fit to judge. I would put that half on a par with running a 50km - 35 miles both time wise and overall fatigue wise. I have read plenty of articles and blogs in the past who have likened an Ironman to a 50 mile run in terms of equivalent difficulty. Most fall on the side of 50 miles being a little easier but not significantly so. On average I would say an Ironman would take the same person around 20% to 30% longer to finish than a 50 mile so that is a deciding factor. Relatively, therefore a 100km or 60 mile run would sit on par with an Ironman. There are a whole myriad of factors that make this a very sketchy estimation including weather, terrain, amount of climb/ descent, elevation, temperature etc etc. But if I was asked that is what I would say. Perhaps a small affirmation of that estimate is the interview Runners world ran with David Goggins. Goggins response to where Ironman Hawaii ranked in terms of races he had completed was that he 'tabbed every 100 mile plus ultra he has run as 1 through 15, all ahead of Ironman Hawaii and all ahead of the Ultraman Triathlon (Double Ironman)'.

A couple of years ago, ultrarunning magazine published a very interesting article listing out the relative difficulty of ultras across North America vs Iron distance events. I cannot for the life of me find the list but the outline in principal was to take a group of runners, all of whom had completed one of 9 of the biggest 100 mile races held that year, and ask them to benchmark other ultra races they had done against them. The results were normalized against Western States ie. WS = 1.00. I've sketched out some of the key ones below. The sample size was 667 people:

Badwater 135 miles: 1.57

Hardrock 100 miles: 1.55

HURT 100 miles: 1.31

Wasatch Front 100 miles: 1.17

Angeles Crest 100 miles: 1.08

Leadville 100 miles: 1.03

Western States 100 miles: 1.00

Javelina Jundred 100 miles: 0.89

Old Dominion 100 miles: 0.88

Vermont 100 miles: 0.84

HURT 100km: 0.81

Rocky Raccoon 100 miles: 0.81

Umstead 100 miles: 0.81

Zane Grey 50 miles: 0.48

Miwok 100km: 0.46

White River 50 miles: 0.37

American River 50 miles: 0.33

Avalon 50 miles: 0.32

So in summary Badwater is 57% harder than Western States and was elected the toughest race in the US, pipping Hardrock by 2%. The hardest 100km race, HURT, was ranked as difficult as both Rocky Raccoon and Umstead 100 milers, the voted the least difficult of the 100s. The hardest 50 miler, Zane Grey was voted as 48% as difficult as Western States 100.

I have tried to explain in the past just how much harder a 100 mile race is than a 50 mile or even a 100km race. Something happens in that last 30 - 40 miles to stretch even the best prepared to breaking point.

In summary I would say to any Ironman, yes you are in a great position to have a crack at a 100 mile run, but expect it to be much longer and much harder, probably up to around twice as hard depending on the terrain. Having raced a number of those in the list above, I would put the NDW100 somwhere around 0.82 to 0.84 given the elevation change of around 12000 feet and the probable temperatures of an August day in England.

More tomorrow....

20 Days to Go

2011-01-16T13:33:00.000-08:00

Some mild pain in my knee this morning but nothing major. MASSIVE success. Nevertheless I decided to take today off completely in an attempt to be sensible after yesterday. I figure there's no way fitness gained from an hour or so running today stacks up against that the chances of doing more long lasting damage by doing so. I'm still sitting here now at 9pm thinking should I just go out and do it anyway.... but prudence will prevail I think.

I ran through my mileages tonight to see how volume is stacking up. Obviously quantity is not everything and actually a lot of the miles I've put in for RR have been at a much better pace than those I laid down before Badwater but:

During a period 11 - 3 weeks prior to Badwater I cleared 517 miles running plus an additional 380 miles bike.

During a period 11 - 3 weeks prior to RR100 I have cleared 415 miles running and 0 miles bike. 7 days off with flu before Christmas and 5 days off with ITB problems last week have been major hiccups.

From here on in pre Badwater, 3 full weeks, injury forced me down to a total of an additional 51 miles. I should be able to get one more full week of training in before RR100. I'm fascinated to see the difference come race day as long as I stay healthy from here on in.

The results just came out and a runner, Craig Stewart, ran a 4:54 over the '45 miles' to win yesterday. Now the course is short by 2 miles as I mentioned yesterday and the last 22 miles are absolutely pan flat BUT I can't help wondering whether the winner is someone we should be keeping an eye out for as a world class athlete in the ultra world. To put that time in perspective, Mike Wardian, probably the best known current ultra runner to regularly compete/ win over road marathons and yet have also laid down a number of 'flat' 50 mile times, has PBs of 2:21 in the marathon and 5:50 over 50 miles. That works out at 5:01 for 43 miles. Ian Sharman has a 2:32 marathon PB and a 6:01 Comrades PB. 4:47 for 43 miles. Comrades isn't flat, neither is JFK where Wardian set his 50 mile best and both are significantly longer than 43 miles, but yesterdays course has 22.5 miles of relative undulations and some very sticky ground. On balance either the course is significantly shorter than even the 43 miles I had down, or Craig Stewart achieved something pretty special yesterday. I would guess there is a bit of both in there but i'll look out for his name in future.

Country To Capital Race Report

2011-01-15T14:59:00.000-08:00

7:27 train this morning from Marylebone out to Wendover from where we would run the 45 mile Country to Capital Trail race back to Little Venice just outside of Paddington Station. This is a well thought out event replacing the original Tring To Town 45 which was my first ultra. In 2006 Jim and I, clueless and inexperienced, ran but mostly walked for 10 and a half hours with very heavy packs simulating 'Marathon Des Sables conditions', Making it to the end in the pitch dark 89th and 90th out of 94 runners respectively.

Go Beyond replaced Tring to Town with the C2C and last year I introduced a friend of mine, Pete, to the world of ultra running on a very wet and windy day. This year, mercifully, the Gods allowed us to cover the distance without once opening the heavens on us. We kicked off at 8:30am and made good time through the first aid station at 7.8 miles and again through the second at 17.5. The ground was thick with mud in places but bearable and didn't slow us down too much. Following on from previous posts, obviously my knee was my primary concern and to be honest f it had taken us 10 hours to get to the finish without knee trouble I would have taken it. We ran a lot of the first two sections with a guy called Ian Holdcroft and Claire Shelley who has signed for the NDW100 in August already. Ian is off to do the Atacama Crossing in March so it was nice to talk about my great experiences of that race through with him and the time went quickly. As a result when we hit the canal at mile 22.5 signaling the end of map reading duties it felt like we'd been out much less than the 3:45 or so on the clock. This was assisted greatly also by the strength I had in my knee.

Time can either drag down the canal or go pretty quick and for me today, it went quick. Pretty soon we were through the marathon point in around 4:20 and to the left turn indicating 13 miles to Paddington at the end, actually only 30 miles in to the race (its been short by 2 miles both times we've run it). Pete came a little unstuck at this point but then we were at least 45 minutes up on the 2010 effort by that stage and the sticky mud through the first 20 miles had undoubtedly created additional fatigue in the legs. We slowed to a walk periodically but I wasn't overly fussed given that all I wanted from today was to get 43 pain free miles in my legs. We went through aid station 4 at 33 miles and 5 at 37, where we hooked up with Hadley, an American runner who placed 2nd woman and 6th overall at last years Sahara Race, obviously a pretty impressive athlete. 6 miles from the end we were back to walking and I admit my heart sank a bit at the thought of another hour and a half on our feet to get to the finish, but as usual Pete came back strong and with 5 miles to go we ran it in finishing in a little over 7 hours. About an hour better off than last year. We capped the day off by meeting up with Drew Sheffield and Tim Adams, both of whom are heading out to Leadville in August with me and by finally meeting Mark Cockbain properly albeit briefly. It seems amazing the number of races we've both been at over the years, not to have met previously.

My nutrition today was horrible. I had a piece of bread for breakfast and followed that with 13 gels and 10 ibuprofen. I challenge anyone to put that lot in the system and feel good. I kept a handle on my hydration and regular gel inhalation because we were moving slower than I usually would have but I still have concerns about my ability to 'get it right' at RR100 and not get too behind in eating/ drinking in the first 50 which I tend to do through laziness. Slowly but surely I seem to be learning my lesson.

My legs tonight are good. No issues either in terms of muscle soreness or ligament pain. Tomorrow morning will be the acid test as to whether I've done any additional damage which 10 ibuprofens probably helped to mask. I do wish I could have a crack at Thames Trot this year as I'm pretty sure at a push I could have put an 1hr to an 1hr10 into todays 43 mile time and potentially take my 50 mile PB to sub 7 hours. The question is whether I can string that together and more to go sub 7:30 at Comrades and get myself into the silver medal bracket. Either way we had a good day out and I am delighted that my knee held up.

So back to it tomorrow, we'll see how it goes but one more decent training week and I'll start to allow my confidence to build a little in anticipation of RR100....

22 Days to Go

2011-01-14T13:53:00.000-08:00

4 miles this morning in the altitude room, increasing tempo each km. Knee clearly still not 100% but sustainable. Spent the afternoon at the Outdoor Show down at the excel centre where I spent some time at the RacingThePlanet stall with Mary, Alasdair and Dave Annadale. Great to catch up with them. Sounds like the 2012 roving event is going to take place in Jordan. I'll be putting my name down for it almost certainly.

Big day tomorrow. Big test for the strength of my left leg. 45 mile Country to Capital. It will be very wet to begin with and possibly all day so we'll see how it works out. Purely a training run for RR100 so will be trying my best to enjoy it.

23 Days to Go

2011-01-13T13:32:00.000-08:00

am: 4 miles 30 minutes, no pain. pm: 7 miles, 58 minutes, no pain. Felt good. Confidence better, stride better although I felt like I needed to adjust my left foot strike slightly which isn't a great sign.

Heading up to the Outdoor Retailers Show tomorrow to see Ranulph Fiennes give a lecture. Pretty excited to see him speak. Will take it easy and stick to a morning run.

Its still immensely difficult to not go out and run longer but I'm pretty sure I made the right decision to stop short again tonight.

24 Days to Go

2011-01-12T13:02:00.000-08:00

No running this morning. Depressing. Spent all day icing my leg, stretching etc it's so boring. I literally spent all day gettin psyched up about trying to run 4 miles home without my leg collapsing from under me. I was supposed to be running 15 - 17 each day this week. Oh dear.

Anyway I made it home, totally pain free. More importantly my leg felt strong, not 100% but some of my confidence came back within the first few minutes. It was unbelievably difficult to just reign it in and call it quits after half an hour but common sense sort of prevailed.... I couldn't resist going out and doing another half an hour after dinner just to see. It's fine. So fingers crossed I can get a couple of sessions in tomorrow again, a short on on Friday and then C2C 45 miles on Saturday. One day at a time.

Back to the subject of Rocky Raccoon, I saw this evening that Zach Gingerich has put his name down against the 100. Zach won Badwater in 2010 beating me by a paltry 15 hours, coming in 24:44 and change. He had a great year in 2010, winning pretty much everything he entered and with his course record at Arrowhead 135 mile, pretty much the coldest race out there, he gets the title of Fire and Ice Champion for '10. It's still not clear whether Anton Krupicka is racing. Reading his blog, Karl Meltzer seems to think so (karl is also running) but who knows. If those two both turn up then it's quite possible that Eric Cliftons CR of 13:16 could go down. I exchanged a couple of messages with Ian Sharman tonight. For those that don't know him, Ian has begun to establish himself as one of the best, if not the best, British Ultra Runner. Whilst performances like Jez Braggs at the UTMB-lite in 2010 put him right up there, Ian managed a 6:01 at the 89km Comrades Marathon in May 2010 and strung together a top 10 finish at Western States on his first attempt, only his second at 100 miles. With his leg speed proven in his marathon PB but more so in Comrades and his ability to hold it together over longer distances (WS) I can't wait to see if he can cause a stir at RR. I don't want to put him under too much pressure as he had and maybe still has no intention of racing for a win but personally I hope he does. Look out for the final standings come midnight on February 6th.

25 Days to go

2011-01-11T10:51:00.000-08:00

Massive set back this morning. Got up early and put my gear on. Almost immediately my knee felt tight. I got through Battersea Park ok but as soon as I got north of the Thames over Chelsea Bridge I was reduced to alternating running and walking again. Weirdly the pain didn't become too much to force me to stop running but way more than mild discomfort which was the limit the physio gave me to stick within.

I got so hacked off towards the end that I just put the pace down and ran it in. The only positive is that I was able to run albeit my stride was all over the place. The problem is getting to critical so I spent the entire day alternating ice with elevating it and stretching and tonight the pain i had even going down the stairs earlier on, has subsided. I will rest tomorrow morning again and run home tentatively tomorrow night. In fact I'll probably just take it to the track as I'll get more natural cushioning there.

So with a bit under 4 weeks to go, I can't run 3 miles without stopping. Doubt I can walk 97 miles of RR in under 29 hours 30. Probably still worth a go though....

26 Days to go

2011-01-10T12:43:00.000-08:00

I'm going to try something new which might be quite boring but might help me keep focused a little bit during a difficult period in my training. Rocky Raccoon is 26 days away so I am going to try and diarise the run in on here each evening.

After no running Thursday - Sunday with ITB issues I got back to it tonight. I've seen Mark my physio at Third Space Medicine in Soho 3 times in the past 6 days. He helped me back to strength after wrecking my achilles and acquiring shin splints in the run up to UTMB 2009 and again before Badwater in 2010. Each time he has got me back on my feet quicker than I thought really possible, helping me to help myself so that I don't need extended and expensive weeks of needless treatment.

Last Wednesday I attempted to run the 4 miles to work and literally had to walk it 4/5ths of the way there. My ITB was swollen, rubbing hard on the outside of my knee. The well known condition 'runners knee'. When Mark started applying pressure to it on Wednesday night I was in agony, the kind which makes you sweat profusely right there on the table as you grit your teeth. He advised me against running Winter Tanners this weekend which I duly did and to stay off my feet as much as possible, ice, stretch repeat.

Tonight I went back for round 3 and the pain had all but subsided. He advised me to run in tomorrow and to get back to longer runs tomorrow night, but I am impatient and as much as I tolerated stepping away from training for 4 days, pain free meant I felt like giving it a go.

I managed 10 miles in a little over 1hr20. For 6 miles I was fine but on the back straight of Hyde Park down the hill on the trail I started to get niggling pain so each mile I stopped and stretched it out before continuing on gingerly. I am going to have to be really careful not to do myself lasting damage, whilst getting in enough training. What is supposed to be a 100 mile week culminating in the Country To Capital 45 miler on Saturday will have to be taken each day as it comes. I still plan on toeing the line on Saturday morning albeit it is purely a training exercise for RR100.

The biggest problem with being injured is that you lose confidence. Last weekend I was running with total control and a good amount of pace. Tonight I led the whole way with my right leg, trying to protect the bad knee. I need to balance out my stride and spread the load otherwise I'll damage something on the right hand side and risk making the left too weak to sustain the pace.

Anyway I'll try again tomorrow morning and again tomorrow night and see how it goes.

Injury?

2011-01-04T13:58:00.000-08:00

Well I guess I've been pushing it harder recently with the training but just towards the end of 20 miles yesterday I could feel my left knee starting to go. When I got up this morning to run in it was cold and my ITB felt like it was drawn tight as a rubber band over the outside of my knee. I have had 'runners knee' regularly in the past. The fact is I have ended up putting most of my longer runs together on concrete this past 6-8 weeks rather than sticking to trails. I guess that's part of the problem living in a city.

This past 7 days I've put in around 80 miles and the week before that 75. That was a alight increase from late November - mid December where I averaged around 65 miles per week (lowest 58, highest 84). I don't feel overly tired and the average pace of my long runs has increased significantly as I start to cope with longer sessions better with increased fitness. In the past I would happily run 20 - 25 milers in 4 hours plus whereas this past week I ran 23 miles in 3:02 and 20 miles in 2:32 a few days later, averaging 7:30 miles. It's nothing spectacular but i'll take the improvement and consistency in running longer. That is way more important to me in training for a 100 rather than speedwork.

Having a great base on which I was planning to build will count for nothing if my knee blows up. I will see the physio tomorrow and keep applying ice to the inflamed ITB. Boring story I guess but useful for me to look back on as another hard earned lesson not to train on the roads as much as I have been.

An old classic but always worth a view to remind where your limit really lies.

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New Years Day

2011-01-01T15:52:00.000-08:00

Went up to the South Downs Way at 10pm tonight to get a bit of night time trail running in. I left it all day as frankly I was pretty hung over this morning and didn't get out of bed till gone 11. I parked up by Jack and Jill, the windmills that sit on top of the downs above the village of Clayton and ran west over Ditchling Beacon before turning around and coming back again. For the first time in a couple of weeks the clouds had cleared a little and the stars were out, but there was light snowfall the whole time. Apart from that the only other light was my headtorch, reflected back at me by hundreds of pairs of eyes belonging to the herds of sheep that wander the hills up there. I'll take it relatively easy tomorrow before commencing back to back big weeks as the last big push before Rocky Raccoon. Next weekend I'll be at Winter Tanners 30 mile and the weekend after at Country to Capital 45 mile. My left achilles and calf are tight so I'll need to tread carefully....

Big run coming soon in training also as I'm going to run the full 50 mile Centurion North Downs Way course. I will get a GPS read out for the whole gig to give entrants and potential entrants a totally accurate picture of what they will face in August. Timewise I'm expecting it to take me around 8 hours but again we'll see about that...

Happy New Year to anyone reading this.