I had a nice gentle run after work today. I spent most of it thinking about Saturday’s race and visualising finishing in under 10hrs!! Isn’t believing it half the battle?
I’ve sorted out my food plan for the race. It’s very similar to last year’s race which seemed to work pretty well.
There will be some food at the check points so if anything takes my fancy I might swap something or add to my plan.
The race numbers were published the other day. I’m #185 so I’ve prepared my bags ready to put my food in.
According to my spread sheet of entries there are 18 people who have ran the race faster than me. Plus who knows how many who haven’t done it before who will go faster so I wonder what position I’ll finish.
My finishing time is far more important to me than position as you can’t control who turns up on the day but you can control how well you run. I would rather finish 100th in under 10hrs than 10th in 10hrs 30mins.
If you want to enter my ‘Guess My Time’ Competition you have until 6pm tomorrow (Thursday) night. It is a strict cut-off! I have 123 guesses so far. I’ll post the full list after 6pm tomorrow.
Your food plan sounds a bit like the contents of picnic hamper! All you you’ll need now is some strawberries & cream and pims at the finish to complete the day out 😉
Your approach this time around seems to have been very relaxed about the ultra specific preperation, seems to be me far more focused on general aerobic fitness and speed side suitable for your successful half marathon campagain. The tour of Ben Lomond and ascent/descent of Ben Lomond, and last weekends pacing practise seem to be the main ultra specific bits of training.
This slightly different focus to your usual ultra build should provide some useful insights to the different approaches one can take to ultra training. The fact you have lost a significant amount of weight since Christmas is another factor - both from running economy point of view as you’ll need less calories per mile to carry your body, but also from the fact that your body has been burning it’s fat reserves to cope with the deficit of calories consumed vs burnt. This increase level of fat buring will be present at all times of the day, but crucially it’ll be active when you train and recover too, so even though you haven’t done lots of really long runs that normally would stress fat burning, you’ll have been in that fat burning zone already and gaining the benefit on all your runs. If this is right then having less long runs won’t be an hinderance.
The forecast for the weekend looks perfect for running - cool but not cold, overcast but not raining. With your stella levels of aerobic fitness (a 1:26 half proves this), your commitment to being discplined with pacing, experience, good prep and mental attitude all put your on really solid platform for doing well. It’s a great feel standing well perpared on an ultra start line with a good day out in the countryside ahead of you, it’ll be even better when you charge home for your sub 10hr.
So jealous not to be standing on the start line with you with the same adventure to unfold! I’ll have to wait till the Fling before I can enjoy the same buzz. Best of luck with final prep.
Thanks Robert …. strawberries and cream at the end sounds lovely!!
I appreciate your positive comments and I’m really interested to see how it goes! I am going to be very disciplined, especially early on, with keeping my HR within the 130-140 range.
If you want to do your best you’ll need to stay disciplined for the first half, not just early on. If you are pacing close to your maximum average pace then there isn’t a huge margin for error, unfortunately with ultra’s you don’t get to find out these errors until hours afterwards.
If you can manage to keep the pace in the first half in your zone then you’ll find that your glycogen stores will be maintained better, there will be less accumulation of muscle damage and associated fatigue, and your digestion of both food and drink will be better. This all adds up to being much fresher for the second half so you can start to really attack. If you can get to 3/4’s the way through feeling tired but strong you’ll be able charge home.
You have the fitness and the guile, it’s now just a matter of executing on the day, and you’re a bit of pro so I have every confidence that you’ll smash it. Revising the route beforehand and staying ontop of navigation during race might be a make or break aspect too. There will always be little things that don’t go perfectly during a 10hr race, but as long as you keep your batting average up you should be in a good place in the last ten miles, feeling strong, with a big grin on your face.
Thanks Robert. Lots of helpful advice which I will take on board.