My first ultra-marathon, post mortem

It’s been a week now since I became an ultra-runner by completing my first ultra-marathon – the WUU 2k; 60kms of big, bad hills around Wellington New Zealand.

It’s been an interesting week for me.

My body seems to have come through the rigours of the race remarkably well. My knees are a little sore and my back has some knots in it that need a good massage (I’m looking at you Mrs. Trev. ;-) ), and I have been a bit tired for most of the week, but apart from that, I’m feeling quite fine.

I’m really surprised by that. I thought I’d come out of the race a broken wreck. But it seems like the training I did was enough to see me through. I’m really happy about that, because it was a training plan that I made up all on my own, based on what I thought I’d need to be doing for the race. The fact that my body performed well, and came through it well, even after the punishment of pounding down the Tip track, says I’m on the right track with my training.

I’ve been reading the blogs other runners have put up about their experience of the race, and it looks like a lot of people really suffered during their run. Each with his or her own story of the struggle to keep going, both physically and mentally. There was even a blog from one guy who didn’t make it to the end. He made a tough call and quit while he was still able to walk off the course.

I remember hearing the call that a runner had DNF-ed over the radio carried by the tail-end-charlie who was running with me. I had wondered at the time how someone so far ahead of me could quit, and now I know why. This was his third ultra and he just got his nutrition wrong, and tried to push too hard through the resulting stomach upset.

Lesson learned - get the nutrition right.

In reading these blogs, and watching videos where people talk about their experience of running an ultra-marathon, I can’t help but feel I’m missing out somewhat. I don’t seem to have the mental anguish, or ‘going into the dark places’ that other people seems to go to. My only real concerns during the race were missing the cut-off time at the last aid station, and the fact that I couldn’t get enough oxygen. Once I made it to the aid station in time, the rest of the race was really relaxed.

Physically it was hard, challenging, but not too hard or too challenging. My legs were still up for it at the end and I was still happy to continue. I wasn’t suffering. I just couldn’t breathe well enough to go faster than a little old man shuffle.

I know why that is now.

I’ve encountered this in training also. If I start off a run by running hard for the first could of kms, I get a ‘feeling’ in my chest, like a tightness. It never goes away and I struggle for the rest of the run. If I go slow for the first 3 kms or so, and then speed up, I don’t get that tightness and I have no trouble running. I can then do a hard and fast section where I really push it, and then when I slow down again, my heart and lungs recover quickly and I can carry on. So those first few kms are critical for me to set up the whole run, so I need to really focus on getting the start right.

That first run / walk up Mt. Kaukau right at the start of the WUU 2k is what messed me up. If I had taken that first section much slower, I would have had no trouble for the rest of the race. And I probably would have come home in about 9-10 hours. So there is a good lesson learned there. It nearly cost me my first ultra, so it is a lesson that will be taken to heart and I’ll make sure I never repeat that mistake.

Nutrition is really important in an endurance activity like this, and my plan didn’t really work. I took some One Square Meal bars with me, as I eat a lot of these and they seem to work well in training. But in the race I just couldn’t stomach them. They were too dry, to chewy, too grainy. I also don’t want to be running on gels. I think I am fat adapted enough to run on my fat stores, with a bit of supplementation of food to keep me going. So I’d rather do that than pump my body full of sugar and endure the inevitable sugar crash a short while later.

What was really interesting was taking a bite out of an apple at the Owhiro Bay aid station. I like apples, a bit. I’m not that fussed on them really. But as soon as I bit into the slice of apple at the aid station, it was like an electric shock in my mouth and my brain. It was as if my brain was shouting at me this is what I want!. So I’m going to explore making my own fruit based gels, like a smoothie, to use in races.

Even though I didn’t eat very much for the 12 hours I was running – 1 One Square Meal Bite, a couple of bananas, about one apple’s worth of apple slices, and a handful of sweets, I wasn’t hungry at all. Richard, my tail-end-charlie for the second 30km gave me two gels, one at The Windmill when we started off together, and one at the top of the Tip Track.

I ran out of gas at the top of the Tip Track and really needed a boost. To be fair, I always run out of gas at the top of the Tip Track and need a boost ;-) but in training I have plenty of time to stop and eat something. The gels worked well in that regard in that they were easy to get down, and they didn’t cause me any stomach issues.

I think if I can make my own smoothies from real fruit and package them up in gel packs, that will work even better.

In terms of my Ultimate Direction hydration belt and Macpack combination, this sort of worked ok for about 40kms or so. Then it really started to hurt. I think I will need to buy a running vest for the longer distance runs. I love my Ultimate Direction belt – it works great on the sorter training runs up to 40kms. But anything over that is going to require something with more carrying capacity, and the combination of the belt and my little Macpack, while quite good, is not really going to work long term.

So, some shopping needs to be done 

The rest of my kit worked really well. I love my shoes! I’m so glad I figured out how to protect my ankles from my heels striking them when I get tired. That made the later stages of the race a lot more pain free than my training had been, and my ankles are now almost healed. (I messed them up on a long run a couple of weeks before the race and they were still bleeding even just a week out from the start).

Other runners remarked on how good my head-torch was in the first part where we ran in the dark. I was thinking of getting a Petzl reactive light, but having run next to someone that had one, I think I’ll stick with my Led Lenser. It has a wider beam and was a lot brighter than everyone else’s torches. It’s a bit bulky, but you can’t have everything.

I’m super happy with my Garmin Forerunner 630 watch. It worked really well, and apparently my mum tracked me all day through the Live Track feature. It was great to be able to share the race and know that they were following me along. Now all I need to do is play with my Osmo Mobile and get live streaming working and then they can really see what’s going on during the race.

Speaking of the Osmo Mobile, I didn’t really have much opportunity to use it during the race. I knew pretty early on that i was going to be tight on time, so I didn’t spend any time trying to make movies. But that’s ok. For the next race I should have more time, as I won’t mess the start up.

So where to from here?

In terms of training, I have another week off to really let my body recover and feel good about getting back into it. There is no real hurry or urgency, so I’ll take my time and make sure that everything is happy to start pounding the pavement again.

I’ll start off with a few 10km slow runs, just getting back into the rhythm of running regularly again, especially while the weather is so crap and we don’t have much daylight in the evenings.
Then I’ll start ramping the distance back up again. I’m also going to be doing a bunch of core work at the gym and stair climbing. I think the stair climbing with a heavy pack on is a really good training technique. It really helped me in the latter stages of the race where I had stairs to climb. Again, my legs just said ‘no worries’ and handled it.

I’m also going to do a bunch of swimming to improve my lung capacity and breathing. It’s not a huge issue if I start off slow, but even so I think the swimming will just make things much easier, especially in the latter stages of the race.

And then, there will be hills. Yes, the Tip Track and I will become the best of friends I think. By embracing the hard hills and running up and down them frequently, I think it will make the other hills much easier to run. And with any luck it will mean I can run them instead of walking them. That should save me quite a bit of time over the course of a race.

The other tactic that I’m going to try, is going for long runs on the flat, but with a weighted backpack – 10-15kgs, especially on sand. This should really build up my endurance and serve me well again in the latter stages of the race when my body is getting tired.

For the mental side of things, I don’t think I have too much work to do here. I was happy during the whole race, concerned I would miss the cut-off, but happy and determined to finish. At no time did I consider pulling out or quitting. At no time did I consider myself to be ‘suffering’. So I didn’t need to ‘go into a dark place’ or anything. I might try running with music as an experiment, but I’m in two minds about this. I don’t currently run with music, but I do know how motivating music can be, so I might try it out and see, but I’m not that fussed about it just yet.

I’m happy to run and play with the thoughts in my head, work through stuff (coding usually) and generally try to do mental maths with a brain that can’t do maths sitting still on a good day.

I’ll experiment also with nutrition. I think getting this right in training will be very useful in the upcoming races. My usual snack of One Square Meal bars just won’t cut it in race conditions, so I’ll need to find out what does. I know that gels will work, but my preference is for something a bit more wholesome for my body.
Having given up sugar and worked hard in training on getting my body adapted to burring fat, it seems counter-intuitive to then load up on sugar on race day. If I go down the smoothie route at least I’ll be putting good value food into my body, and given my body’s reaction to the apples at the aid station, I think I is what my body will want.

If this works out, I’ll put up some recipes for others to try out.

Well that’s about it.

I enjoyed my first ultra-marathon experience, enough to target another one later on this year. I’m going to put in the training and experimentation between now and November and then hit the race hard and see what happens. Hopefully I’ll come home in a much faster time and in even better condition. And if that happens, then I’ll know I have really found something my body is good at, and something that I’ll continue with for may hears to come.

Ok. I'll stop going on about the WUU 2k now. I'll come up with something else to go on and on and on about ;-)

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Check out my stories here on Steemit

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Charlie tides up
Charlie Rabbit and Margery Mouse
Charlie Rabbit and Margery Mouse make music

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Check out @len.george and find out what other madness he got up to!

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