Posts Tagged ‘ultramarathon’

Trinity Harriers run an annual fundraising event that involves teams of four competing to see who can run the farthest combined distance in 24 hours as well as raise the most money to fund club activities. I did the event two years ago and it was a lot of type 2 fun.

This year there were another ten teams competing. I was on Chariots of Tired with Clíodhna, Jack and Adam. Alas, I still don’t have a photo of me running in a DUHAC vest.

Race day report

I’m heavier and probably less fit than two years ago when I was still in IRONMAN form. But i had logged some long runs. And unlike my previous two 24-hour races, where I slept from 2am to 7am, this time I wanted to try going straight through.

Unfortunately, things did not go to plan. My stomach was unhappy from Saturday afternoon onwards (the race was on Sunday) so I was feeling crap to begin with and was running a slow pace with lots of bathroom breaks from the start. My mood was unusually low and I felt really sad for most of the night. I was originally running with an audiobook but decided to switch this off and just be present to see if that helped, which it did a little. As a result, by 6am I had only covered 35km which felt barely further than last year. I decided to abandon my attempt to go all the way through and opted for a 30-minute power nap.

As soon as I climbed into bed, fully dressed in my running gear, I decided I couldn’t face a 30-minute timer either so I cancelled it and just went to sleep. 90 minutes I woke up naturally and felt a little better so I switched into my super cushioned shoes. By this point it was daylight and I switched to my 1.3km loop around the green space. By 10am I finally made it through 50k. Not going to be finishing Donedea anytime soon, but I got it done. I was running in blocks of 10-15km at a time and did another 12km to take me up to 62k before taking a break for lunch.

I had a series of milestones to try and get myself excited about reaching a certain distance. Post-lunch running was a bit of a slog as once I was through 60k there wasn’t really anything until the double marathon at 84.4 so there was hours of running in circles with not much to celebrate. I think I around 50 loops of the green space in total. After each block I got on my foam roller to try and loosen up some of the muscles, especially around my hip that tends to cause problems.

My final daylight loop took me to 97k at which point I briefly paused to stick some tea in the oven before doing a final 3k to round up to 100. This gave me a new 100k PB of:

19:09

At time of writing, the world record is just over six hours so lots of room for improvement there. But self-compassion and all that: most people don’t have a 100k PB.

Unfortunately, dinner upset my stomach again. My previous experience of running ultras has been that some real food is helpful but I fuelled most of this on Haribo, Lucozade and gels. That was working for me so maybe I should have stuck with that. With my ongoing stomach issues for the past few years, eating and drinking anything is pretty hard at the moment so getting anything in was a challenge. In total, I got through 12 bags of Haribo, seven bottles of Lucozade, six gels, six chocolate bars plus some crisps, shortbread, strawberries and salted potatoes.

I took my time getting back out there but by now I was exhausted. My running was barely faster than a walk and my ankle was starting to wobble in a way that said I might hit the deck at some point. So, after a final 10k, I decided to call it. At this point, I still had two hours left and it was a bit frustrating to have done all of this work not to use all of the time. But I think I was physically and mentally done at this point and deciding to let myself stop here was a real sense of relief.

Results

My total distance was:

110km

Plus my shiny new 100k PB of 19:09 which is about 3.5 hours faster than two years ago. I also set a new single-day step record of 122,988. My total running time was 13:05:32 which is about two hours up on my two previous 24-hour races. I burnt around 7,779 kcals.

I managed to avoid any serious chafing thanks to copious amounts of vaseline and bepanthen but I did pick up a blister on one of my toes.

It felt a bit deja vu because two years ago Team Cool Runnings monopolised the leaderboard with 1st, 2nd and 4th, and this year again we took 1st and 2nd with Jack posting a monster 200+km 8-hour+ cycle that he traded in for running miles.

That final 10k managed to take us over the 200k mark for a comfortable victory but things were exciting close behind with just a few kilometres separating our second and third place. The total distance covered by everyone was 1,293km meaning that on average people ran over 32km each: a phenomenal effort given not everyone is a distance runner.

On the fundraising side, Lost In Pace (great team name!) flattened us all with €1,670 raised. In total, we raised over €4,000 for the club which might still be rising as the fundraising page only launched the day before the event.

Reflections

In the days leading up to the event, I was both excited to get started and nervous about how much it was going to hurt. And that was pretty accurate. But I would like more tired legs and less stomach issues. They’re really driving me crazy at this point. But despite all of that, I did make it to 100k, and past it for the first time, and that’s pretty cool.

I tend to get caught up in “X ran 180km when they did a 24-hour event” so I am going to stop and pause and reflect on 110k being a really long way. It’s more than two and a half marathons and most people will never run a marathon. I can be proud of what I achieved and how hard I worked for it, both in training and in those difficult hours when I pushed through.

A big thank you to everyone at DUHAC involved in organising the event. And to everyone who has contributed to the fundraiser. And to my wonderful team mates, my family, and everyone at Blackrock that sent encouragement over WhatsApp.

One of the main reasons there is nothing on my blog this month is that I have my head burried in writing a research paper. Even though I’m not at the writing stage yet. The paper is on mental health in ultra-endurance athletes and I’m currently on the data analysis stage. Watch this space. But not too closely because it’s a slow process.

Four years ago, Toby came up with the idea of running three laps of Woodhouse Moor (approximately 5k), every hour, for twelve hours. Some said he was crazy. Others said it was too easye because in a real backyard ultra, you would have to run 6.7k. Neither group were listened to.

2024 arrives and we’re doing it for the fourth time. Last year was glorious sunshine. This year was back to the rain-soaked day of 2021, and possibly the wettest it has ever been.

It’s a lovely format because you can change your pace and running partner on different laps which is great for catching up and having a chat. Thanks so much to Cat, Naomi, Robyn, Louise, Susie, Steve, Kevin, Kay and everyone else who provided some good banter on the way around. I’m sure Toby and Rich would have some good banter too but they’re in a different league. And a big thank you to Andy for looking after our stuff, providing insightful political commentary and buying ice lollies from Tesco.

I haven’t done any long runs since February, except for making it half way through Westport marathon, so I wasn’t sure how my ankle would hold up. The answer is that it held up fine: but I did get a pain in my hip after 10k. It was the same pain that forced me to retire at Endure24 2020 so I was concerned. I foam rolled between every lap and that got me through, but it was pretty sore for the rest of the week.

Early on, I felt quite a bit of panic, despite lapping a park I knew really well and being surrounded by friends. That was frustrating and scary. But I pushed on and made it through and I am glad I did because once I got onto the Red Bull for the final two hours, I felt great. By 8pm I was exhausted and keen to get home to check on Venla who was poorly at the time, so ended up skipping the pub.

It was absolutely lovely running with you all and I will see you soon! Thanks to Toby, Laura, Robyn and Andy for the photos.

She’s only gone and bloody done it!

The Barkley Marathons is a notoriously difficult race. If you haven’t heard of it, it is a nominally 100-mile race (nobody is sure how long it really is) that consists of five 20-mile laps through Frozen Head State Park, Tennessee. The elevation gain is huge and much of it is off-trail running. It contains many cult elements: the start time can be any time from midnight to noon for example and is announced an hour before when a conch is blown.

There is a 12-hour cut-off for each lap, giving athletes 60 hours in total. The terrain is so tough that most years nobody finishes. Though, if you manage 3 laps within the first 40 hours, you at least get a “Fun Run”. There have been various documentaries made about it including The Race That Eats Its Young, Where Dreams Go To Die, and Last Woman Standing which followed British ultrarunning legend Nicky Spinks trying to be the first woman to complete the race.

Enter the 2024 race where a star-studded line up. This included last year’s winner, Aurélien Sanchez, Jared Campbell attempting to get a record 4th finish, and Jasmin Paris who had a Fun Run under her belt and until this year held the out-right course record for the Spine Race which she famously set while expressing milk for her baby at the aid stations.

Either conditions were good or the field is getting stronger as a record 12 people achieved a Fun Run this year. It may have also helped that the race started at 5:17, allowing the first, third and final lap to be done in daylight. This meant a record 7 athletes were able make it to lap 5 before the 48-hour cut-off. The most finishers ever had been three, set in 2012 (the year The Race That Eats Its Young was filmed) and repeated again in 2023.

Sebastian Raichon and former Spine men’s course record holder (still two hours slower than Parsis’s time) Damian Hall dopped out leading five athletes out on the course. The only way to follow it is to follow Keith Dunn’s Twitter feed. Elon must have been delighted that people were briefly using it again as we all desperately refreshed for news and chatted on WhatsApp.

Ihor Verys was the first to come home with an hour and a quarter still to go before the 60-hour cut-off. John Kelly arrived 30 minutes later to briefly equal Jared Campbell’s three finishes until 15 minutes later, Campbell himself arrived back to set a record 4th finish. Greig Hamilton came in 9 minutes later, leaving Paris the only athlete left on the course with 19 minutes to get home.

We continued to madly refresh the Twitter feed as the 9:17 pm GMT deadline passed. No news. Then, a few minutes after the cut-off had passed, Keith tweeted to say Paris had made it home! At 59:58:21, she made it home 99 seconds before the deadline making her the first ever woman to finish the race!

The concept of Around The Park, Around The Clock is simple. Every hour, for 12 hours, we run 3 laps of Woodhouse Moor. It is roughly a 5k course making for a total of 60k over the 36 laps. In between, we sit around getting stiff.

It is organised by Toby who, this year, decided to schedule it on his birthday. That meant not only did we run a lot of laps of the park but we also sang happy birthday over and over again until he hid on the floor in his hoodie.

The weather was kind this year, as it was in 2022. My form was okay. I was pretty tired but plodded through. It’s not an event you need to rush. Nor would you want to: chatting is the best bit.

18 of us made it through all of the laps this year. But it’s not really about that. it is more about the social aspect: people can drop in and out, run some laps, walk some laps, or just sit around and enjoy the sunshine and the picnic.

I even made it to the pub this year where Toby was trying to buy people drinks despite it being his birthday.

Thank you for a lovely team, team. And a big thank you to Toby for organising the event. Finally, thank you to Laura, Toby and Lizzie for the photos.

A backyard ultra is looped race where you have an hour to complete a 6.7 km loop. At the start of the next hour, you have to be back in the starting corral ready for the next loop or you are out of the race. The winner is the last person standing; everyone else is a DNF.

I packed plenty of spare clothes for all weather and a big bag of snacks including some homemade chicken wraps and a pizza cooked freshly in the morning and packaged up into convenient pieces. The weather was much kinder than at the official recce and everyone set up their camp outside in sunshine.

It has “mountain” in the name for the reason: there were around 230 metres of evaluation gain in each lap. Each loop started with a 22-minute slog up the hill that almost everyone walked. There was then a short section along the top before the bog field and a technical off-road descent through the forest. Finally, it joins a gravel track going back down to base camp. This is the hard way around and the opposite way to how we were promised: perhaps a bit of Irish humour creeping in.

100 people entered the race and 87 people started. By lap three, we were four runners down. The adage is “run your own race” but this was difficult given there was such a big crowd walking the first few kilometres. Being a road runner, I was slower on the bog field so slower walkers would then want to overtake me, and then on the downhill where I would open out my stride (and my gravitational advantage) I would go back past them.

I took my backpack on the first loop to get some hydration but soon decided to ditch the extra weight and eat and hydrate at the end of each lap. This was no easy task, though. Laps would take 52-56 minutes which doesn’t give you much time to do more than one thing. If I needed to sort my shoes out, change some gear, or have a wee, as well as my hourly feed and drink, things got very tight.

I was pretty grumpy the whole day. I was grumpy on lap one because we were going the “wrong” way and the technical bits were hard. Then I sank into “why am I doing this to myself”. After lap six I switched from sports drink to caffeinated drinks, aiming to do between 10 and 12 laps. 10 seemed like a round number. But then 11 would be a night lap and 12 would be one better than God’s Own Backyard Ultra.

After lap nine I grabbed my backpack with a base layer in it and swapped my cap for a buff and a head torch. 49 of us set out on lap 10 as the sun went down. I was feeling relieved by this point that I had reached at least ten. By lap 11 the sun had fully set and I was half excited for a night loop but also suffering. I felt myself wheezing up the hill and the bog field was even harder to navigate because it was impossible to tell what was hard mud and what was soft mud. I got back with four minutes to spare but had already decided I couldn’t face a fourth loop. 33 runners outlasted me.

In total I managed 73.7 km (my watch measured 69) with 2,512 metres of evaluation gain. This is double my next hilliest race, Man Vs Coast. I was moving for 9:48:57 of the 11 hours. Congratulations to Kevin Leahy who ultimately won the race with a course record 29 laps, and to fellow Brit Myles Barnes for the assist.

A backyard ultra is a type of ultramarathon in which athletes have an hour to run 6,706 meters and get back to the start line for the next lap. If you don’t make it back in time, you’re out. The race goes on until there is only one person left standing; everyone else is a DNF.

I think I originally dismissed the event as being too close to Race to the Castle. But when that got cancelled, and Elenor wouldn’t shut up about it, I decided it was worth another look. By this point, I had already invited a bunch of friends over for a Eurovision party and so I would have to drop out after 11 laps. I said to myself “what’s the point if I can only run 72 kilometres.” Then I heard myself saying it and decided that was probably plenty of running for normal people 😂. And the whole discussion might be academic as I might not make it that far.

The first six laps

If you’re going to go deep at a backyard ultra, the entire first day is basically a warm-up. But it doesn’t feel like that. Probably because, again, three hours of running is a very long run to most people.

I ran the first lap with Kevin who was looking to get his second ultramarathon in the books (which he achieved!). The course heads down the canal and then loops back through Bramley Falls Woods. There is just over 90 metres of elevation gain per lap, which is not horrendously hilly. But for someone like me who mostly trains on the towpath, it’s pretty hilly!

After sussing out the course I switched to my Nike Vaporflys and went out in search of glory. This proved trickier than I imagined: some of the crossroads in the woods left me unsure and it took me a while to spot the red ribbons that guided the way. While experienced trail runners would have zero problems, again towpath-boy over here felt pretty proud that he had successfully navigated a marked course.

I was eating some heavy food at the start: sandwiches, fridge raiders, stuff that I would normally avoid in triathlon but works well in a slightly slower event.

Lap seven

The seventh lap is a nice milestone because it takes you through the marathon distance. Except it didn’t go so well.

Halfway through running through the woods, I tripped and hit the deck. One of the benefits of trail running is that you have nice soft dirt to fall on and so I got away with some grazing of my leg and dirt all over my hands, left leg and left arm. No broken skin or any use for the first aid training I was on last weekend.

It did knock the confidence out of me a little, though, which slowed me down. My energy levels crashed towards the end of the lap so I knew I needed some sugar. This was an issue because I was getting back in 45-50 minutes which gave me 10 minutes for food and a toilet break. But after lap seven I had to fit in washing the dirt off, assessing the grazing on my leg, and eating more than I normally would have on a given lap.

Laps eight and nine

After lap seven I switched to my Hoka Bondi X for some extra-cushioned running. I was tired by this point, though, and kept tripping over more things. No further falls but I started to rattle my confidence.

Then on lap nine, I fell over again. I didn’t go down, but I did roll my right ankle, which is the one I broke in December. For a minute I thought “oh no, it’s all happening again”. But I decided to spend a few minutes sitting in the dirt to see what was going on. The pain went away and I had full functionality of it so luckily I was able to continue running.

A big thank you to everyone who stopped to check on me, help me back to my feet and the marshalls that came to find me. I was back up and walking by this point but I felt well-looked after nonetheless.

Laps ten and eleven

After lap nine I had given myself permission to crack open the caffeine. I only do this when I know I have enough caffeine to maintain the caffeine buzz for the rest of the race. This is usually halfway through the marathon at Ironman but impossible to tell if you were going for the win at the backyard.

The Red Bull tasted so good. I think it perked me up a bit as I stopped tripping over things. That said, I was using a deliberate strategy of pushing a little harder on the towpath and a little easier on the technical descents, to mitigate any issues.

By the end of lap ten, I was eating mostly sugar, not wanting any other fluids or food of any kind, and generally feeling like my stomach was getting tired of this nonsense. It was a warm day so I was drinking twice as much as I usually would but it still did not seem to be enough (but my wee was still a lovely straw colour, so who knows).

Lap eleven was one of mixed feelings. I knew it was my finish line which is always a bit of a boost, but I was also tired, sore and ready to stop.

I think if I didn’t have a deadline, I could have done some more laps. But maybe not too many more: my right hip was sore in the same way that eventually forced me to stop running at Endure24 two years ago. It was definitely more sore at this point back then, but still noticeable enough that I think it would have become an issue down the line.

The end

I completed 11 laps which is officially 73.77 kilometres. Garmin measured less distance which I attribute to GPS in the woods. That’s not quite as far as I did at Endure24, but the longest I’ve done being out on course the whole time (if you discount the short breaks between laps).

At this point, I waddled off home, grabbing as many juice and ice lollies from the shop as I could. I felt grim once I got home and had to sit on the balcony for a bit to avoid growing up. Standard exhaustion/dehydration kind of stuff.

Congratulations to Keith Robson who finished 32 yards. Thank you to all of the organisers and marshalls for putting on a great event! And thank you to the people who brought the ice pops and the chips: it truly is a team sport.

Last year, Toby organised Hyde Park Harriers’s first Around The Park, Around The Clock, a backyard ultra that consists of 5km loops that take place on the hour, each hour, for 12 hours. While this makes it somewhat easier than other backyard ultras, there is obviously no such thing as an easy ultramarathon.

This year it returned in the same format with ten of us taking on all 12 loops and many others joining us for many of them and the accompanying club picnic. Well done to Sam, Jon, Chloe, Robyn, Jed, Curtis, Rich G and Toby for completing all of the laps.

The weather was slightly kinder this year. There was no heavy rain at the start and it as a touch warmer, too, ending in a pleasant summer evening but without any sunburn.

Thank you to Naomi and Steve for the photos.

Last weekend, Hyde Park Harriers ran our first backyard ultra. I say Harriers, for legal purposes I need to make it clear that Toby technically “organised” the event and that we all participated at our own risk. And a lovely job he did, too.

In the “standard” backyard ultra format, you run a 6 km loop every hour and anyone who does not make it back to the finish line for the next hour is eliminated. The winner is the last person standing. The winner normally turns up around the end of the third day after nearly 500 kilometres of running.

As this was our first one, we made it a little easier: it was a five-kilometre three laps of Woodhouse Moor course and time-boxed to 12 hours. People could drop in and out as they wished but around nine of us completed all 12 laps (or 36 laps, depending on what you count as a “lap”), resulting in 60 kilometres of running.

It was raining pretty heavily at 8 am when we started but despite the weather, a large group of us kicked off the running. As the day wore on, it became warmer and less rainy which was much appreciated given we had 20-30 minutes to cool down between laps. My cumulative time was just over 5:48, so I was averaging around a 29-minute 5k. More importantly, my hips held up just two weeks after Outlaw.

Well done to everyone who took part and thank you to Toby for organising, everyone who brought food for the club picnic that took place in the middle, the good people who watched our stuff at base camp and Tim for letting us use Coffee on the Crescent as toilet facilities.

The Cabot Trail is a 298-kilometre loop road around Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia. It’s also a Conqueror challenge that I recently completed running around. This one took me around three months to complete which maybe suggests I have not been running as much as I usually do. Too much cycling!