January 2017
The Australian Day Ultra ( http://australiadayultra.com ) is less then 2 weeks away which means it’s taper time. Of course the taper should start today but I reckon I can fit in one more 30k with the boys tomorrow before I ease of the distance and try and remain sane as I grapple with the usual hunger pains without the exercise. This is then compounded with the 3 days carbo loading, I wonder as I’m running an ultra do I start carbo loading earlier ? Hell, should I beat eating a muffin right now as I type this post ? I would ask my mate Jon who is also running the ADU but I worry that his answer will always be ‘to eat’ , regardless of the question !
On the subject of nutrition I still haven’t totally worked out my plan. I think I’m going with the Comrades ( http://www.comrades.com ) diet of a gu/carbo-shotz every hour. It got me through three Comrade campaigns in a reasonable fashion and at least this time I don’t have to carry them as the ADU is a 12.5 loop so I’ll have an esky of goodies at the side of the track to delve into every 6.25k if needed. Carrying 10 gu’s using a belt sounded like a good idea but in practice it was a disaster as the weight of the gu’s made the belt jump up and down on my back. I only realised this at the start of the race and as you can imagine I wasn’t that excited having 89k ahead of me. On the bright side the more I ate the less of an annoyance the belt became. At around 80k I hardly felt it, albeit at 80 k I could hardly feel anything, truth be told.
Reading articles on ultra marathons there really is a wealth of information on all sorts of different diets and I’ve posted a few lately on this site as I study different approaches. I feel the best way forward is to eat when I hungry and stay hydrated. The race starts at midnight so the sun won’t be an issue initially but after the sunrise this could all change if we run into a Perth scorcher. A hot morning will certainly add to the challenge of the event as I’ll still have around 30-40k to run, and as I mentioned in a previous post when you hit the wall in an ultra you could still have 30k to go.
Hydration wise I’ll be alternating between one small drink bottle of water and then one of electrolytes for the duration of the event per lap. (probably 600ml an hour) Before the race of course I’ll carbo load (muffin time!) and that also includes drinking water and electrolyte drinks a lot, so normally at the start of the race I’m hydrated enough. (For a marathon of course, I’ll need extra for the ultra.) Maybe some flat coke on the last lap or some red bull to give me a final boost. I’m lucky to have an ‘iron stomach’ so have never suffered any issues but then I’m normally done racing in less than 3 hours so maybe the extra food, combined with another 5 hours of running, may become an issue. This is something that will not become apparent till about 60-70k I suppose. ? About the same time as hitting the wall. It seems that around the 60-70k mark things will become clearer and no amount of blogging is going to help my cause now. On the bright side whatever happens there’ll be a post in there somewhere.
Great article here on hydration worth a read :- https://www.hammernutrition.com.au/info-centre/hydration-what-you-need-to-know/
Training wise I’m still running twice a day but taking it easy bar the progressive hour run on Thursdays. Probably manage another 160k week this week (100 miles) before dropping down next week by about 40-50% and then just a couple of slow 10k’s the week of the ultra. After that a week or two of blogging and then straight back into half marathon training for my one of my favourite races the Darlington half, before possibly having a tilt at the 50-55 year old age group Australian record for the 50k at Bunbury. (assuming it is AURU registered; if not could be off to Canberra. ) Then the races come thick and fast for the rest of the year, no rest for the wicked, racing is what keeps me quick, the fear of returning to the pack keeps me honest and the fear of slowing motivates me to go faster. There must be a quote in there somewhere…..
Finally I need to share the T-train’s approach to ultra-marathons . To quote Tony ‘eating is cheating’ ,now I can remember saying this as a young man during many nights on the ‘pop’ in sunny Penzance but never in an ultra. The T-train being the T-train has his own ways of doing things and the running community may go one way the T-train normally goes the opposite. That being said he just ran over 125k for a 12 hour race a week after racing a marathon so he is doing something right. I have yet to read anywhere his ‘eating is cheating’ mantra on any running website , no matter the ultra ones, so feel he is in a community of one, just the way he’d like it. I’ll keep an eye on him in the race and let you know if I catch him cheating.
Part of running is establishing a training program that works for you. For a running tragic like myself this normally encompasses running twice a day , every day, minimum. Add in a progressive run with the boys Thursday morning, with the obligatory Yelo muffin as reward, a long run with the boys Sunday with a Clancys pancake as reward and at least one fartlek somewhere in the week and you have a routine. Repeat this for a minimum of ten weeks and you have a ‘foundation stage’ which becomes the springboard for your target goal race distance.
Lydiard called this the base conditioning stage and was all about developing your aerobic capacity. Lydiard believed that although every runner has a limited anaerobic (speed-building) capacity, that limit is largely set by one’s aerobic potential—the body’s ability to use oxygen. Thus, the aerobic capacity that you develop determines the success of your entire training program.
The foundation of Lydiard-style base conditioning is three long runs per week. These are steady runs done at more than recovery effort. To determine your pace, choose a relatively flat course and run out at a strong pace for 15 minutes, then run back. The goal is to return in the same time or slightly faster. If it takes you longer for the return trip, you paced yourself too fast. The objective of these runs is to be “pleasantly tired,” says Lydiard. Running slower will produce positive effects, but the results will take longer. Do not run to the point of lactic-acid buildup.
An ideal training week during this period includes a two-hour run and two one and one half-hour runs. On the other days do short, easy runs; one run with some light picking up of the pace; and one 5K to 10K tempo run (below lactate-threshold pace). Decrease the times and distances if you don’t have the mileage base to start at such high volume, then build gradually.
The foundation stage needs to become routine and runners need to be able to go-through the motions daily, weekly and monthly to get through this stage before tailoring their plan to their goal race. As a runner you need to be able to know daily what is expected of you and reach each daily goal, with the end goal always in sight. Personally I need to have a goal to work towards and as soon as I achieve that goal I’m onto the next one.
My year consists of normally 3-4 marathons, (Perth, City to Surf, Rottnest , Bunbury (sometimes) ) 4-5 half marathons, 4-5 10k’s , a smattering of 5k’s (mainly park runs) and at least two ultra’s ( 6 inch marathon and the Australia Day Ultra). Having so many races in a year has two main benefits. First it helps me maintain my 80-20 Matt Fitzgerald training regime. The 20% running at pace is normally taken care off by adding a bib to my chest and racing. Secondly I always have a goal to work towards and it’s normally on the horizon pretty quickly. This helps keep me motivated, not that I need much encouragement truth be told. Another benefit, or a curse?, is that I’m always training for a specific race which is normally on me pretty quickly. There really is no time for the odd day off or a down week when I just ‘wasn’t feeling it’.
This is when routine comes into play, when I can run though the sessions in a ‘zombie’ like trance and just ‘get them done’ . Ok maybe not quite as bad as zombie like trances but I have the ability to know what is expected, not hit the snooze button on the alarm, and just get out of bed and put on the trainers. Adding group runs to the routine is a big motivator as you don’t want to let your fellow runners down and for me it’s the social side afterwards that make these runs more enjoyable than the solo run. (No one likes to eat muffins and drink coffee alone do they ?)
Another option is to join your local running club. As well as meeting like minded people you will also get to work with coaches who will help you be the best you can be. Here in sunny Perth we are lucky to have the Running Centre overseen by Ray Baugh, an ex-top duathlon champion. ( http://therunningcentre.com.au )Raf has put together a team of coaching superstars who live and breath everything running. Their passion is infectious and this certainly helps entice you from the bed to the track or park.
The last thing you could do of course is to meet runners over the years in changing rooms all around your local city, band together, get the same tops with a professional design and then run together every lunchtime. The St Georges Terrace Running club can normally be found outside the Woodside building most weekdays at midday. After the obligatory pre-run banter, normally involving either weight issues, injuries or the latest stock to lose money on, we scurry off on one of our many loved running routes before skulking back just before 1pm and returning to the pod where we busily upload our lunchtime run to Strava. Now that is a routine I look forward to every weekday….
For the first time ever I ran over 200km in a week (made 206.2k in the end, thanks Strava.) , beating my previous best of 190k. Could have probably got another 10k but was forced out by my Wife for a meal one night and couldn’t fit in my second run for the day. The sacrifices us runners make, didn’t Karen realise I was on for a record week, do you think she cared ? Anyhow mission accomplished and I gained entry to the double century club. Maybe I’ll start a website and sell medals for runners who can prove they’ve ran 200k in a week. ? Funnily enough there are websites similar to this which actually sell bling for cold hard cash. ( https://www.virtualstrides.com/philosophy/ and http://www.fullmedalruns.com) These sites apparently donate proceeds to charities so I suppose they are doing some good but these ‘virtual medals‘ for some reason just don’t sit well with me. Call me old fashioned but to me you have to earn bling by actually entering a race, turning up at the race and then running the race. Maybe I’m just old fashioned.
Right back to the point of running 200k in a week. First of all it was to prove I could do it and really I only decided on day 7 of the week to give it a shot. I was running my go-to ‘old faithful’ 10k when, feeling good, I decided to add another 10k with a view to maybe adding a final 10k in the afternoon and giving me a 192k total. Of course once I started to do the maths I knew it was on and turned my 10k into a 34k which was the most I could have run as I was unprepared for a long run with no breakfast and no hydration. As soon as it started to heat up I was in trouble and managed to ‘borrow’ some water from a couple of houses on the way back which had taps at the front of their properties. Believe me when I say I was running in an area where borrowing water would be considered a risk but desperate times call for desperate measures, luckily I live to tell the tale.
Thus Sunday afternoon I ran the 4k I needed and added another 6k as I was again feeling good and had the wind behind me for the first 5k (thus the return journey had to made into a strong headwind, when will I learn?) A 206k total for the week and the double century box had been ticked. Will I repeat this ? Not sure, I’ve read a lot of material where it looks like 100-160k is about all you really need and anything else has negligible benefits but comes with a high injury risk. Most, if not all , of the 206k’s were slow and easy and I’m finding I’m avoiding the faster runs due to fatigue, although the fatigue is not as bad as when I use to run quicker all the time. As ultra training I can see the benefit of these 160k+ weeks but for the marathon and shorter distances I feel you can get away with 100-160k but add some pace work. I’ll certainly be dropping down the mileage after the ADU ( http://australiadayultra.com ) and am looking forward to some good old fashioned mona fartlek and tempo runs.
First though I have the impending 100k race in less than 3 weeks. Weekly distance I’m very confident I’m doing enough but still not really done the ‘long time on legs runs’ that I know I should be doing but just haven’t the inclination. It really will be a case of finding out at around the 70k mark if my cardio fitness as well as a good nutrition and hydration plan is enough to get me to the finish. That reminds me I still haven’t got a nutrition and hydration plan sorted out. Maybe I better get onto that this week ? How difficult can it be with my mate Google as my co-pilot?
Actually looking at the graphic below, a screen shot from Strava, there seems to be a few photos of me and the boys doing more eating than running. Maybe my Yelo Muffin and City Beach Pancakes is the nutrition plan I need ? I wonder how many muffins and pancakes a runner can digest, while running a 100k, without doing serious damage ? What is the tipping point for the number of muffins a runner can ingest before they become an issue and start to do more harm than good ? Probably around one I reckon, more’s the pity. Maybe I could blend then into small Gu like packets ? No, it’s back to Google and ‘proper’ ultra diets, remember I’m old fashioned.
