February 2007 Entry

Posted March 5, 2007

January 2007 Entry

Posted February 8, 2007

This month I came up against a potential big problem which had the chance to scupper all plans, but may well have turned out OK.  I’m currently studying for a Masters degree (Human Resource Management) in my spare time.  The problem was that in June I have to attend a residential week that directly conflicted with turning up to the hotel in Kashgar.  However the academic in charge of the course has now given me the go-ahead to fly on the 13^th of June, saying that I can make up the three lost days at another time.  When it comes down to it, I can earn myself a post graduate degree if I am in a wheelchair, at the age of 80.  But I don’t have forever to run across the Gobi desert.  What I want to do is take advantage of my relative youth to achieve something I can always be proud of.  To be able to stand on the sands of the Gobi desert, look back over my shoulder and say “I ran that” is something that will last forever. 

However, at what point do you say enough?  At some point I will stop and appreciate what I have done.  I know that here are people in their 70s and 80s who still run, and run very well.  But I am not one of them.  I have enough bio-mechanical glitches to know that.  I suspect that making the decision not to undertake any more challenges might be more difficult than it sounds.  Most people who compete in these kinds of challenges are not exactly the kind of people who look up the ladder and say “I’m happy where I am”.  They are the kind of people who say “This view might be good, but I know it’s going to be better if I keep on climbing”. 

Also this month I’ve found out that the other friend who ran Toronto with us has now signed up for the Polar Race, which sounds like an utterly brilliant experience.  Waiting to board the plane to Toronto, three of us were discussing how we could get onto it, how we could afford it and even how well we thought we could do (down to arguing about who would carry the shotgun issued to scare off polar bears).  It is a lot of money, but the chance to say you have stood at the North Pole is not something to be sniffed at.  Although I have to admit that I did then come up with an alternative.  There is a company that offers skydiving over the North Pole.  One 50 second skydive as opposed to several months of training and fund-raising followed by a seriously arduous trip across the ice. 

In terms of training, things have been very up and down this month.  For the first half of the month, I got out and spent several hours on the roads with some weight on my back, day on day, eating the right things to recover and getting plenty of fluid through me to flush out my muscles.  Everything seemed to be going very well.  Then, at a race over some steep hills and on some deep mud, I slightly twisted my left knee.  Although it was by no means a serious injury, it was irritating and would have been too easy to go out on it and do something worse.  After a few days of whining like a 12 year old girl, I went out again and after about 25 minutes, my legs were feeling sore and very heavy.  Afterwards, I made sure I had plenty of fluids and got the right fuels inside me and did some recovery on the bike the next day.  Following that, I did a competition with some friends – two hours orienteering on foot, three hours on a mountain bike and then another hour on foot in the dark.  By the end of it, although I still felt pretty good and my energy levels were fine, as soon as the ground started rising, I slowed down very quickly.  But I took a lot of comfort from the fact that I had been out three days on the bounce, with aching legs that I had managed through eating and drinking, and still been able to get up and run again the next day. 

After that, I took 6 days off, with no leg exercise at all.  I swam 3 times in the week to keep a bit of CV effort going, but other than that, just ate sensibly and kept the fluids up.  About 3 days ago I put on a backpack and went out and my legs felt very good, my energy levels were fine, and I was eating up the miles.  However, I now have quite a sore left knee.  It is in a different area than the twist, so there is a definite need to call 999 (or 911) and get the physio on the case.  I have no qualms about having the fitness, it is the bio-mechanics that are worrying me at the moment. 

I have also bought some more bits and bobs – most significantly was a Raidlight Sac from likeys.com – a Welsh based company that specializes in adventure race kit.  It was definitely the right choice – high up on the back, plenty of space, pockets everywhere and a handy bladder pocket on the back that makes filling the bladder much more convenient.  With the help of a friend who has a few items from a previous Atacama Crossing veteran, I now have pretty much everything. 

December 2006 Entry

Posted January 9, 2006

A couple of days after I wrote the November entry, I went for a gentle run around the nearby woods (it was Sunday after all).  When I got back, the sole of my right foot began to feel sore.  It resisted massages and hot and cold treatment so after a couple of days of no improvement later I went to a doctor.   The doctor (who seemed to be hoping for something a little more meaty) blithely informed me that I had probably tweaked the ligament in my sole and it would settle down in 4 to 6 weeks.  The urge to throttle him and knock his supercilious head off the desk was enormous.  I do not have 4-6 weeks.  I am going to need every spare weekend I can get to make sure I am fit enough for this.  Luckily, I am a typical male hypochondriac and the damage was actually far less than I had thought.  7 days of rest and hot/cold treatment (hot pies and chips, cold beer) later and there has been no pain.  I am swimming and cycling daily and have just included the step machine and the elliptical walker. 

A couple of days later, the top of my left foot started to feel sore after my weekly long run.  Once more, hot/cold packs and rest (not too difficult over Christmas) seemed to do the trick and there is little discomfort left.  However this is extremely irritating as I have lost about two weeks worth of training.  I suppose it is lucky that this has almost perfectly coincided with catching a cold (and huge quantities of festive eating).  Again, the natural (male) hypochondriac in me is coming out as I sit and feed my self-pity, annoying all those around me, grumbling about not being able to go for a run and feeling my muscles going soft and soggy. 

However, all of this was outweighed by the best news of the month: a great friend confirmed his intention to enter the Gobi March.  He is one of the friends I ran my first marathon with and will make a huge difference.  He and I can kick each other when we need it and watch each other’s water and food discipline.  Both he and I want to do this for the same reasons (I think).   We also have no qualms about telling the other when to stop whinging and start running; the reasoning being that we will (hopefully, probably) be at low ebbs at different stages.  Also we can get up to some high jinx in Beijing or Hong Kong on the way back. 

The next thing to do is arrange to meet all those people I know who have already done an ultra.  I have about 5 or 6 people I know who have done one of the Racing the Planet series and of those, 3 or 4 are entered in the GM.  They will hopefully be able to answer all those niggling questions (where did they get their kit from, what food did they try and then choose, what blister kit did they take etc) I seem to wake up at four o’clock in the morning asking myself.  Although asking myself those kind of questions at four in the morning is particularly daft as I am relatively sure that I should be asking myself during the day when I can actually do something about them.  One girl who did the Atacama Crossing scared me witless with her training programme that looked more like the sort of thing astronauts do.  Then again, someone who did the Sahara Race made me feel far more confident with what seemed like a relatively gentle programme.  I think I am going to resign myself to the fact that I will swing from confidence to terror and back again on an almost weekly basis prior to my taper.

November 2006 Entry
Posted December, 2006

This month was spent writing a training programme.  One of the things I was acutely aware of was that although I had been fit enough to run 26 miles on a given day, I needed to be fit enough to be able to run for several hours and then do it again the next day.  Also, running a road race is very different to running on several different terrains.  Running once and then going home, having a meal and sleeping in a bed is a world away from running for several hours (unsure of exactly how long you will be running for), stopping in the middle of nowhere with limited facilities, eating a boil in the bag meal and sleeping in a tent on a foam mattress.

I now have a basic training programme that increases mileage steadily as well as improving my body’s ability to recover and go out for another long run the next day.  Each week sees an increase in overall mileage run over two then three then four days.  Interspersed with these are what I am calling my Dirty Weekends.  I am planning to go onto the South Downs Way or find an area where I can clock up some good off-road miles and do some back to back long runs, over rough terrain, with weight on my back.  I have a lightweight one man tent and can pack enough to survive one or two nights on the trail.  Not only does this get me doing back to back distances, it gets me off familiar tracks, puts weight on my back and forces me to look after myself in less than perfect conditions.  It also gives me the chance to try some different kit, foods and foot care techniques.

On top of these I am trying to develop a bit of all over condition.  I am swimming three times a week, working on the rowing machine and doing core strengthening exercises as well as some physiotherapist prescribed exercises to manage a problem with my running style.  Hopefully this will all help with the weight carriage – I want to try and build the weight on my back slowly to prevent my running style from changing and developing different problems.  Hopefully a little experience in the military on weight carriage will help, but the total weight, the design of the packs and the need to run rather than walk makes it a very different skill. 

I am about 2/3rds of the way through John Vonhof’s book Fixing Your Feet.  Some of the horror stories are pretty nasty, and some of the treatments extreme.  Having never had much of a problem with blisters, my methods of dealing with them are limited.  Also, I have always had the choice of whether or not to run the next day, which I am certainly not going to get on the GM.  Again, experience in the military will help but I am still aware that I have relatively little experience of having to treat the blister and still put the shoes back on and keep running.   At the moment I plan to wear trail running shoes (Salamon or Inov-8) with injinji socks and maybe some Hillys over the injinjis.  But I have yet to really put my feet under stress. 

One thing that does worry me is the heat.  The UK is not well known for high temperatures and I am going to have to work something out to simulate the weather conditions.  

A couple friends have done some similar races – two friends from university did the Atacama Crossing last year, and a friend from the regiment did the MdS two years ago.  So in the New Year I will be trying to get what information I can from them.  Hopefully they will be able to sell me some kit as well!  What I need to do get a training partner and pool some resources and knowledge. 

October 2006 Entry
Posted December 2006

Having finished my first marathon in late September, I spent a couple of weeks feeling fairly proud of myself.  Chatting to friends, I started to itch for something a bit more challenging, and googled adventure racing, checked a few sites and then found Racing the Planet.  One of the things that appealed to me was the 4 races, culminating in the Last Desert.  I read a few of the competitors journals and thought how their starting levels of fitness and the concerns they had were broadly similar to mine. 

I put my deposit down on the Gobi March, in a frenzy of confidence in myself, to then immediately question my ability to go from first road marathon to desert ultra-marathon in 8 months.  A friend had just put his deposit down on the Atacama Crossing and in typical male bravado, I was not to be outdone. 

One of the main questions was why.  This is not an easy one to answer.  The closest someone has come to answering it was one of your journal writers in his September 2006 post – “After hours and hours of sustained physical discomfort and exhaustion, the state of a runner’s mind can begin to shift and slip. Especially when racing, many ultra runners experience visual and auditory hallucinations, and/or exaggerated mood states”.  At the end of the Toronto Marathon, in the final 3 or 4 kilometres, I experienced some of these exaggerated mood states and felt the effects of the endorphins washing around my system.  The combination of pride in having achieved something that I had been far from being able to 6 months before and the physical effects of the race gave me the desire to do it and feel it again.  A second marathon would not be progress, so I had to look for something else.