RE: The little, old, grey haired man that could – my story of running my first ultra-marathon – the WUU2k
Congratulations! This is an amazing achievement. Well done!
I read all the bits and I enjoyed your experience deeply. I think you won this one. There might be one thing no one told you about ultra marathons: if you finish them, you win them ;) Keep that in mind for the next one.
As for the trouble you went in, and what you deem as being a lung problem, for me it looks like you never really got out of the anaerobic running stage. It's worth getting out of this stage even if you spend more time walking or even resting in the beginning of the race because, as you advance, the compounded problem will be much bigger, as you already saw. So maybe just stopping for a while to just get over the choking would pay off. I know how hard this is, from a psychological point of view, especially in the beginning, as you think that if you stop or slow down, you will never make it.
As you will do more and more ultramarathons you will also discover some points where suffering is not really necessary. Counterintuitively, in order to get there, you have to slow down, not to push harder.
In an ultra, start slow, and then slow down.
Once again, I'm really proud of you. And you made me wish to run an ultra in NZ. :)
Thanks @dragosroua. That means a lot to me ;-)
I am taking a whole lot of positives from this experience, and to be truthful, it was all positive. I know I got it wrong at the start. I was in the wrong place - I had planned to be at the back so I could go slow.
but for all of the race, even though I was not running as well as I knew I could, I was enjoying it. i didn't really suffer for the whole race. My calves cramped up, which felt really weird - kind of painful, kind of not. But everything else was just humming along.
If, as you say, I ran the race mostly anaerobically, then that's really encouraging for the next race. If I start out at the back of the pack I know I have the legs to get me to the finishing line. I was planning on finishing the race in under 10 hours. but what this proved to me is that i can run for 12 hours across some really tough terrain and really tough conditions.
I can do this! My next race will be the Tawarerra 100 in February. So I have plenty of time to (first relax) train and experiment with gels and things.
Knowing how I screwed up the start of this race, all I have to do is get the start right for the next one and I can be really confident of finishing.
Thanks very much for all your advice and support. And if you are looking for an ultra that will challenge you the WUU2k will do that ;-)
Oh, to give you some idea of the difference between first and last place - the guy that won it did it in a time of 5 hours 15 minutes. He finished the race before I was even half way. Now that's astonishing! ;-)
I did quite a few mountain ultra-marathons too, they're quite popular in Romania. I did one called 7500 (the positive level difference, in meters, mind you) so I'm used to it. I'd love to run there not for the difficulty, but for the beauty of the places.
Stay strong and good luck on the next race :)
BTW: would you like some RUNCOIN for this race? If you can share the Strava link (which I presume your Garmin saved it) you qualify. :)
I'd LOVE some RUNCOIN :-)
The link to Strava is - https://www.strava.com/activities/1083853482
I think I still have to set up and account somewhere for you to send it to right?