| GOBI MARCHTM 2007 Hamish Travers's Journal |
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Posted February 18, 2007
My objectives for the Jan month (around 15th to 15th of Feb) were to:
1. Run 170k 2. Increase my VO2 Max to 60, Body fat %9 and BMI to 24.1 3. Sort my hydration out 4. Set useful nutrition levels 5. Remain happily married 6. Spend time with the kids and 7. Still have a business.
The month was epitomized by a lot of trial and error with my training schedule, equipment and conditions. In Jan I outlined a far more scientific and on the surface (I think) reasonably coherent plan. In reality I’ve decided to focus less on the science and more on basics. What this means is retaining my measurement but including far more gut feel into the plan as well.
The gut feel is more around listening to my body when training in the conditions we’ll get in Kashgar and working off these as well. These include understanding:
So this is reflected in the training schedule in that I’m now running 5 days (then 2 off) in a row with my pack loaded to 7.5kg, distances started at 11km and have hit 15 / 16km per day in the last week.
The terrain has been a combination of sand (soft / hard), volcanic rock, riverbed rock, tarmac, grass / dirt, water (sea) and treadmill. The idea has been to run between 140 – 150 Ave. Heart Rate and around 6 min / km.
So I’ve ended up running 200km and found that I’m able to get up each morning and run without feeling really sore. Certainly by day 5 though the legs are feeling knackered and the enthusiasm has waned and the mental stuff starts to play a part.
I’ll remain as 15 / 16km until the end of Feb then move onto 21km per day in March.
April I’ll be looking at 25km per day (for 6 days) – only running two of the 4 weeks and then May 30km per day (for 6 days) – again only 2 of the 4 weeks.
This will obviously alter with the realities of life. The end goal is to be able to comfortably run for 6 days at 30km. I’ll be looking to run / walk at least one 80km day to build on the 60km Kepler run in December in terms of shear distance.
The stuff I have failed to nail this month has been the VO2 Max / Body fat% and BMI retest. So it’ll have to be included in the next journal entry.
Hydration
Last month I wanted to test a number of different hydration approaches:
1. Water bottles on my straps of the pack (these sway big time back and forth, and aren’t comfortable), I definitely need to get them attached properly to the straps. I’ve bought Raidlight holders and bottles, purpose built for this type of event, so they should work. Anyone who has used them before on a Salomon Raid 300 pack, I’d appreciate a chat as to how you secured them properly. 2. The other approach is a bum bag on my front, with a bladder inside, I’ll be able to get this out quickly without taking my pack off and refill, as well as carrying my daily food / Meds etc. Haven’t run with it yet so will update as to how it’s working over the next month. 3. The other approach I’m going to try is using a Smartube (I have picked one up) with screws on to the top of the 1.5L bottles that the RTP folks hand out. Very quick and easy, simply replace the top and you’re away. The issue I think I’m going to have is that a 1.5L bottle of water weight about 3.2kg, if you put that on one side of your pack after a few hours you are going to seriously notice the imbalance. Again if someone knows a good way to tie these babies onto your front (I’ve seen competitors doing it in the MdS). Speaking of which the MdS in conjunction with New Balance have just launched a purpose built back and front pack with would be perfect for our needs. Around 80 Euros. Check out http://www.darbaroud.com/detail.php?pub=89&langue=en
So I’ve done a little more on sorting these out and ended up with what I believe to be a good solution.
I’ll start with the second approach the bum bag with a bladder inside. This hasn’t worked for two reasons
The first approach using the Raidlight bottles attached to the Salomon has in reality not worked, the design of the bottle holders is set up for the Raidlight bags and just isn’t held tightly enough to the straps. I also found it a pain in the arse having pipes slapping me in the face as I ran.
The final approach involved a big change in equipment and I ended up buying a new back pack, the Raidlight Runner and R-Light front pack. The front pack has a sleeve to put a 1.5L bottle in and then you can attach your Smartube, it means only replacing the bottle and having little faffing around.
I like the idea of the Smartube, but it had a couple of significant drawbacks. When the 1.5L bottle is lying on it’s side in the sleeze on the top of the front pouch, as you consume your water and get to a lower water level around a 3rd left, the water is sloshing back and forth so much you end up sucking a bit of water and a lot of air, which fires water back into your throat and you end up coughing like hell. The Smartube is worth using when in 1.5L bottles upright. The other area I didn’t like was the amount of suction pressure you need to apply to get the water out through the Smartube, when compared to a camelbak bag it’s hard and over 6 days it could be a pain in the butt. So it has been put to one side.
I’ve ended up deciding on carrying a bladder in the back pack. The upside of this is that the Raidlight people have designed the bag so it has a dedicated bladder sleeve on the outside (middle) so doesn’t require taking anything out of the bag. It also has a zip at the top of the sleeve that allows you to access the wide mouth for refill without removing the bladder. The bladder has the type of mouth piece and water flow I’m use to, so it works well.
The other reason for purchasing the back pack and front pouch is to allow me to have all the stuff I need for the day in front (food, medicals, rehydration, music etc). This (I’m hoping) will mean I don’t have to open my back pack from start to finish each day.
Final note is the bag is bloody comfortable (far more so than the Salomon) and weights only 10 grams more.
Other equipment changes have also been pretty major this month, I’ve made the decision to change both my sleeping bag and mattress. You might remember that the bag was one of my seriously luxurious items (Mountain hardware Phantom 15) which would be warm to -9 degrees but weighting 1.030 grams.
I’ve done a bit of digging and calculating and think that a bag down to 5 degrees should be fine. I apologize now if this is a little geeky but it’s worth understanding:
So I’ve decided to purchase the marmot atom which weights 0.453 grams (5 degrees comfort) cutting my sleeping bag weight in half. I’m also getting rid of the Thermarest Prolite 3 and picking up the Pacific outdoors Uber mat saving me around 150 grams.
Nutrition
I’ve gone through a process of breaking down my food / electrolytes by the part of each day, understanding what I’m going to eat and what carbos, vitamin and electrolyte value is gives. I’ve also chosen specific food and weighed it to understand how much value I’m getting per gram of weight. Yes it would appear I’ve got to much time on my hands.
I’m not going to go into the detail (as I’ll bore you silly) but as food is the biggest part of your weight, it’s worthwhile doing, I’v managed to reduce my weight a reasonable amount, not by reducing carbs or calories but getting food with the most value for it’s weight.
Someone had told me competitors previously had removed their freeze dry food out of their original bags and put them in plastic zip lock bags to save weight. I’ve had a quick check and roughly each original bag weights 25 grams, each plastic bag 3 grams. Over 6 days 44 grams per day it’s a 264g saving – no brainer.
So my pack weight is around 7.5kg, but expecting it to increase to 8kg over the next couple of months as I add in stuff I’ve forgotten.
The other objective which is in reality the most important is my family. My wife and I went away for a couple of days of luxury to celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary, it was fantastic not having to run anywhere or do anything but chill and spend time together, so I’ve had a fat and happy week.
Good luck with the training ahead and thanks for all the emails, thoughts on the journal they have been really useful.
Feb / March objectives
1. Run 275k 2. Increase my VO2 Max to 60, Body fat %9 and BMI to 24.1 3. Sort feet & blister management out 4. Remain happily married 5. Spend time with the kids and 6. Still have a business.
P.S I’ll update my equipment list next month once I’ve got the new bag / mat in place.
Posted January 15, 2007 January is the month where my structured training build up to Gobi begins. I’ve had around 12 months to date of training with a view to enjoying the build up events and running with friends. My training has not been as well thought through as it could have been, but given the lead time to the race I thought it more important to mentally be in good shape by not taking at all too seriously, and having some fun. Training set up in January. Father Christmas left a Garmin GPS watch under the Xmas tree this year and I’ve now built my program around the information it can provide and my current fitness / preparation levels. I’ve also taken a fitness test at my gym and had a current fired up through me to understand body fat% and BMI. The other area that I’m concentrating on now is nutrition and hydration. So what I am trying to achieve within my program is to increase my endurance by increasing my VO2 Max / Lactate Threshold, building body strength and fine tuning my hydration and nutrition needs. My overall goal is still to finish the race and run as much as can be run. I don’t have position or time frame expectations. So I’ll take each one of these separately. I’ll say first off the bat that I’m not an expert in the science of running, but the theory and practice behind the metrics I’m training by are not rocket science, also if you respect them but use them as a guide then you stand a chance of benefiting from them. Heart Rates, VO2 Max and Lactate Threshold I’ve had my Max Heart Rate (MHR) set at 181 RPM, and off this, set training heart rate zones, that will deliver different results depending on what zone you train in and for how long. I’m relating my heart rate zone to my pace per minute. So simply you want your heart rate to go down while your pace increases (that’s obvious, so apologies for stating it). What I need to personally achieve is the ability to run at around 5:30 to 6:00 minute kilometers, with a fully loaded pack (9.5kg) with a heart rate around 60 – 65% of max. This means the muscles will be getting plenty of oxygen and there will be minimal lactic acid building in the muscles and I should be able to sustain a pace that is slower and more realistic than that in the more rugged terrain around Kashgar, knowing that I’ve been training at a faster / harder level. So the fitness test told me I had a VO2 Max of 58.7, which means I’m starting this six month period at a good fitness level. World class marathon & Ultra runners will have a VO2 Max in the 70s. I’ve got a BMI of around 23.9 and body fat around 9%. Which doesn’t mean that much to me, other than you need around 4% apparently to keep your organs going, so don’t let it get to low. Nutrition & Hydration The minimum calories that RTP allows a day is 2000. At a 5:30 pace (at 80% of my MHR) with my pack (7.7kgs at the moment) I’m burning around 750 calories an hour, so if we are running on average 36k each day, and I’ve slowed down a lot to doing a 10 min/k pace I still will need 13500 calories a day, and that’s just crazy. So I’m trying to work out in reality what carbos I can function on. A typical formula would be 0.5 – 1.0 gram of carbos per kilogram of body weight per hour 0.5 x 69 x 6 (for a 36k run) = 207 grams of carbos over the day (or 35grams per hour). In reality I’d need at least 50 grams per hour. So a good bar or gel per hour should be fine. I’ll still lose weight but will load Carbs, protein and fat at the end of the day. I’m also weighting myself before and after each run to see how much fluid I’m losing, how much I’m drinking and what replacement in electrolytes I need, or increase in fluid consumption. Training program.
The basis of my program is to create training periods every 11 weeks that cumulate into a simulation, which can be 2, 3, or 4 days over which I run each day for a certain period in the conditions we’ll get in the Gobi. I’ve broken the training into periods of different focus and alternate between Hard and Easy periods. I’m also breaking the training down by terrain to ensure I’m getting a mix of effects on my legs and especially feet. I found after running the Kepler Challenge that I finished with two small blisters on the end of my smallest two toes, and a hotspot on the ball of one foot. The biggie though was the lack of strength in my ankles, which need to have some work on them. I’m absolutely sure there will be a lot of river bed, rock and water around Kashgar, ankles are going to get nailed. I’m starting off the first training period fairly easily, and then will start to increase the length and back to back days. Most of the pack running and longer runs are attempting to run in and around 60 – 65% of MHR. I’m then having gym training sessions where I’m specifically working on increasing my anaerobic threshold (Cycling classes to mix up training, where I attempt to average at least 80% of MHR). The chart below shows intervals where I’m getting up to 90% of max over short periods and gives me a clear picture of where most of my heart rate time is.
As I said before by increasing your aerobic max and squeezing your anaerobic zone to the high end close to MHR, you can consume more oxygen, and run more easily at a steady pace. So I’m running about 45k per week now all with my pack loaded to 7.5k. By the beginning of Feb I’ll be looking to hit around 60k and be moving over the next month to around 70k per week. The peak will be at the end of March were I’m going to run the St James Ultra which is around 66 – 70k trail run with full load. Talking about terrain, if you haven’t had a look yet, check out Google Earth and Kashi / Kashgar, I’ve included the Lat / Long coordinates. There are a lot of rivers / streams running off the Pamirs and you can see the expanse of the Taklimakan Desert lower right of Kashgar. I also checked out the temperatures in and around Kashgar, they don’t seem to extreme, which is great (reference: http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/world/images/country/barcharts/TT002170_kashi.gif
Equipment Update I’ve updated my equipment list and the relative weight of each piece of equipment I’m taking. It’s still rough, and won’t finalize food until April (that’s a lot of freeze dry to try). But I’m heading for 8.5kg pack without water, at the moment I’m on around 9.2kg. There are a couple of ridiculously luxurious items (Sleeping bag down to -15 C 1.030 grams, Down jacket 0.450 grams), which are suggesting I’m kidding myself, but I’ve stripped away a lot already.
I’m testing a number of hydration approaches at the moment:
I’m also trialing a set of goggles that will keep the wind, dirt, grit out of my eyes. I’m expecting a lot of wind and dust in Kashgar. They are great lens but tend to fog up if you have a trailing wind, I’ll be picking up some anti-fog stuff, but they certainly allow you to retain moisture in your eyes, especially if you are wearing contacts.
In summary
Targets for Jan:
Distance: 170k Fitness retest: VO2 Max 60, Body Fat%9, BMI24.1, I need to get my Lactate threshold tested Hydration: Sorted Nutrition benchmarks: Sorted Relationship: Still married Kids: Still know me Business: Solvent
Happy training, any suggestions on my program, equipment, very welcome Hamish@twenty.co.nz. Equipment List for the Gobi March Clothing:
Eating:
Hydration:
Medical:
Night:
Storage:
Tent / Camp:
Other:
Total Weight: Current around c. 9.2 kg / 20 pounds Ideal / Target c. 8.5kg
Nov/Dec 2006 Entry It has been a month of premonitions…3 in fact that have largely come true. The first was that I would meet two people in December that I would grow to depend on and follow, who would lead me up a mountain and point me in the direction of a long path through snow, ice and rock. The second was that I would be running along a surreal path of moss laden track, much like running on air and not once but twice sprain my left ankle, be found by a very…hmmm…strong woman with a moustache, helped to my feet and offered a fist full of drugs. The last was that I would be introduced to a friend that strangely has been with me all my life, supporting me, and who I’ve found out, I’ve been taking advantage of, “now was the time for their revenge”. Now don’t get me wrong…I’m not as flaky as I sound, I don’t usually have premonitions, but these weren’t normal times, these were the days leading to the biggest race of my life, the one where all sorts of things start playing on your mind, pain, dropping off cliff edges, hypothermia, being eaten alive by the worlds most unforgiving sandflies….the list goes on. The month of the Kepler Challenge. A large part of the preparation for this 60km mountain run is mental, starting from the moment you hit the sleepy town of Te Anau. It’s full of hearty folk, who just smiled when I told them I was running ‘The event’. They would look to the mountains, breath deeply and exhale, as if they were a walking weather beacon, ‘She’ll be a good day for a run, plenty of snow, buckets of wind to keep you moving, but remember but one thing my boy, for every minute you make up at the beginning of the race, you lose ten at the end, pace yourself’. I heard this repeated 10 times over the course of 2 days, until I repeated it to some poor sucker who looked even more concerned than me. We were described in endearing terms as fresh meat, newbies and first timers. There is a mix of seasoned and hardened long termers, who have done it for 20 odd years in a row, right down to us, who had miraculously signed up in the 26 minutes it had taken to fill the event. So the alarm goes off at 5:00am, I’m eating Backcountry freeze dried baked beans, mash, bacon and egg by 5:15, boy it tasted good, but I wasn’t entirely sure what I was eating, and more concerned about what it was doing to my intestines. Decided to try this and the chicken curry the night before as part of the food preparation for Gobi. 5:45 I’m surrounded by two Santas at the start line, twins I think, with mountain running shoes on, if there is one thing that disarms a man at the beginning of a race is seeing someone dressed up like they should be walking the streets handing out gifts to the needy, not trying to overtake you on a mountain pass humming ho ho ho. The rest of the field looked like the characters out of the ‘Dirty Dozen’, long gnarly frames, drawn faces, nervous energy. 6:00am the gun goes off, except it’s not a gun but a home made potato firing bazooka, which makes a noise that is loud enough to release the nutters who are competing but not loud enough to frighten the other wild life in the surrounding marshes. It’s at this moment, the first five minutes when you are running through 1000 year old beech forest and along side a crystal clear lake that you remember why you are doing this, running in a line of people enveloped by positive vibes and camaraderie, realizing that even though you know no one, you know everyone. 6:15 The first premonition starts coming true, I’m running with two guys wearing the same Thermal tops, the connection is tenuous but it’s all it takes, I like their story, firefighters who have been training for exactly 2 weeks, planned for 3 months but ended up fighting fires in the US, they had been here before and knew how to pace up the mountain, 8kms of relentless thigh burning beautiful scenery and perfect single track. By the time we’d hit the top of the mountain the snow and ice had become deep and slippery, the wind gusting 50km and the views over the Southern Alps worth the wait. I’m stuffing jelly beans into my mouth and trying to drink at the same time, wondering why I’m trying to multi task like this when I’m going to be out here for 8 hours. My taste buds are still fussy, I can’t be that tired, the black beans get identified and spat out. 10:00 I’m freefalling or at least that’s what it feels like after running up hill for 4 hours. We’re coming down the side of the final ridge before the real race begins. I’m a bit of a short arse, so plenty of people are passing me, a couple lie or sit to the side of the track having pushed to hard and ended up mating with a beech tree, nasty. 10:40 we hit the bottom of the ridge and are engulfed by the sounds of birds singing and….the first very real thoughts that I have pushed the limits to far, the idea that I now have 30 more kilometers to run comes crashing down. I’m eating more jelly beans and have now discarded the black, yellow, blue, green and thinking hard whether the red have been good enough to stay. It’s a ploy not to have to move, but the party is raided by the 10 gazillion sandflies who have been waiting all year for this event and fully intend to suck some of that crazy blood to fuel their own motors. 10:42 I’m really really really really really struggling to run, legs sore, arms sore, back sore, ankles, feet, toes, nails, skin, it’s all sore. Mind gone….. 10:50 I’m still moving I think, and I know that premonition number two is going to happen, no way of stopping it, roots everwhere, bloody trees, leaves, dirt making me lift my knees, woooow was that someone passing me, how, they look fantastic, like they’re enjoying this ****. Wammmmmmm….aaaarrgh, ankle one gone, I’m lying on the track, get up, walk off the pain, feel sorry for myself.. curse myself for not doing any ankle strength work…..Wammmmmmmm….aaaarrrgh, I’m really lying on the ground now and don’t care if competitors trample me, it couldn’t hurt anymore than it is. 11:15 An angel appears with Governer Arny like arms and a moustache, she pulls me up with a flick of her arm and offers me a look of ‘you poor bastard you’ve still got 25km to run on that ankle’, do you want some pain and anti inflammatorys? I’m going to be sick I’m sure. It can’t end this way, all that mountain I’ve just endured, all those kilometers I’ve pounded out. I’m walking again, slowly, it’s ugly and I’m hurting, lots and lots and lots of people are passing me, all asking if I’m alright, all genuinely prepared to stop and help…I’m now talking to myself in a nicer manner, no swear words, we’re getting on better, I’m eating and drinking, my head starts to look forward. 11:35 I’m running again, well a very slow run, ok a jog, I’m jogging, but enjoying it, catching and running with people who had passed me, loving the forest again, soaking up the surrounds…doing my time on the track. 12:30 hmmm I’m feeling the last premonition revealing itself, my hip flexor (left side of course, the right side and I are on very good terms) starts cramping, getting really belligerent, it has well and truly thrown it’s toys out of the pram, I’m stuffing panadol into me, anti inflammatorys, anything that will negotiate to ‘play the game’ for a couple more hours. It’s working, the terms are tough though, no exercise for 3 weeks after this, none, no sneaky cycle rides, nothing, I’ve succumbed, I agree. The hip has flexed its muscle and won. 4:27 I’m not running I’m literally sprinting to the finish, I’ve seen the finish line, I’ve seen the can of beer waiting for me, I’ve seen the massage tent, it’s all good…. I’ve made it…..I’m searching for the Santas, they haven’t come in yet…I’m hoping they make it….bad PR leaving a couple of Santas on the track. The rest of the month has been taken up with recovering from the Kepler. I’ve done a couple of sneaky cycles, but taking it pretty easy over Xmas and will kick back into it early Jan. Final note if any of you competitors in any 4 Deserts event live in New Zealand and fancy a bit of a training run, let me know Hamish@twenty.co.nz
October 2006 Entry I have to admit that I’m currently not very focused on the Gobi March. It’s spring time in New Zealand and I’m sitting outside sampling a cheeky full bodied chardonnay from the South Island (think a cross between Julia Roberts and Zaa Zaa Gabor, all nice and friendly at the front of the palette and then a big explosion, you’re left breathing vapor and wondering what happened) and capturing the last of the afternoon rays. Coming out of an increasingly variable & extreme winter of storms, floods and snow it’s nice to see some blue skies and warm weather. I can hear the folks in the North America chuckling away at the supposed extremes of weather down here, given they pretty much invented the terms ‘Force 5’ and ‘blizzard’. But there’s a smile on my dial and I’m happy. The big event for the month was heading down to Tongariro National Park to find some terrain similar to what we’re likely to be served up in Kashgar. Having traveled in Pakistan and Kyrgyzstan a few years ago, the terrain is unbelievably beautiful, rocky and unsurprisingly there is a lot of water coming off the mountains. I needed to find mountains, rocks, water and be close enough to civilization that if the weather turned nasty I wouldn’t end up a statistic as seems to happen all too often. I headed to a run from Whakapapa village (in the National park) to the end of the Tongariro crossing around 24k, which climbs around 1500m from the village. I carried around 6.6kgs in the pack (not the pack I’m going to be using in the Gobi, but a smaller one I’m using in the Kepler challenge in a couple of weeks).
What I found was that after I had run 6 or 7 km to get to the start of the Crossing, I was totally and utterly shagged. The track was pretty much none existent in that area and I fueled up badly, not taking on enough carbos during the 1.5 hrs to get there. I couldn’t believe that I had to then climb 1500m starting with the Devil’s staircase below. Call me a wimp but that only meant pain and burning lungs. I stopped for a good refuel and then headed out.
The reward of getting up to the top of the staircase is three more ugly climbs but not before you get some seriously soul fueling views, I’ve attached a few to give you an idea of why I bothered. What I found was that I needed to slow my pace down even further than I had anticipated and be drinking constantly. This worked until I came across a group of Scottish tourists, average age 70, who had clearly bagged a few peaks in their day and while casting a hard eye across my legs encased in black tights (is that really necessary laddie I could hear them say), they asked me why I was running and hadn’t left a little bit earlier, planning they said and a good cup of tea was all that you needed on a good day in the mountains, hard to argue that one when they are passing me as I cramped up and stretched.
Some stuff I learnt the painful way from the run included strapping, which I didn’t do, I rolled my ankle on one of the 7 km of downhill, the weight of the pack and tiredness meant I was far more likely to roll my ankle, so I’m going to learn how to strap effectively when doing these runs.
Learning to run downhill is a biggie, I spend a huge amount of my time running on the flat or uphill but haven’t trained my legs to run downhill, the impact on the knees and quads over time is bloody painful, a number of gnarly off road runners have said that it’s the down hills that nail you. So I’m going to spend more time on this.
The rest of the month was spent on building up to the Auckland marathon, which I did exceedingly badly by running a 3:15 marathon on the Monday before the marathon on Sunday. I was happy with the 3:15 time but found the Sunday run a total mare (read nightmare). I ended up with lead legs and a slightly strained calf muscle, so pulled the pin at 21km. It was harder to stop than continue but in the end it would have been totally stupid to injury myself badly than ‘get a grip’ mentally and pull up with the big picture in mind.
I have a couple of niggles around my right knee and a tight ITB so ventured to a new Physio on Wednesday. She was one of these ‘take no prisoner’ types, and also the Physio for the Tongan World 7s team, so Skinny white guys aren’t her thing. Suffice to say she went through the process of checking my legs and deep tissue massaging my ITB (read pain and lots of it), before declaring that I was fine and to get back to it.
Finally thanks to those that have emailed me and offered very useful advice, shared their training and are getting excited.
This next month coming up I’ve got the Kepler challenge, so will give you a run down on that, I suspect I’m going to have a number of days lying in one spot.
The last word goes to the Sahara race competitors, who I’ve been (as I’m sure most have) following. Well done for a fantastic run and thanks for the interesting blogs.
September 2006 Entry What a month, I’m physically and mentally hammered. Kicked off the launch of my new business this month. So a lot of long hours and time in front of the computer. A fantastic tonic for that is getting out and running. I can handle around 2 days without a run before getting itchy and scratchy, then grumpy and finally unbearable. I’m sure a lot of you have treaded that fine line between having a husband / wife / partner and not!!!. So while I’ve been busy, the running has still managed to get some real estate in my schedule. On the 9th of September I ran the legend through the ‘Waitakes’ as we call em. Hills bordering the Wild west coast of NZ. 35km road / hill run. It ended up raining the whole way, but I was lucky enough to be trialing a new Icebreaker 100% merino wool top, so managed to stay warm in the 5% temps. Only downside was I now have one nipple shorter than the other due to rub. Does anyone know if they do prosthetics for this? I finished up with a time of 2 hours 53 minutes, so roughly a 3:30 marathon time in the hills (no pack). Found the hill work I had been doing incredibly helpful in nailing the long steep hills, but ended up getting passed by Iron women / men on the flats, kind of intimidating hearing pure muscle sliding at speed against tight lycra and seeing scary focused women eating you up for breakfast (no I wasn’t dreaming). The pack has seen a lot of fresh air this month, carrying around 10km of kitty litter and 1.5 kg of water. The kitty litter I’m finding does not sit that well in the pack, as the weight distribution is even, top and bottom, where as in reality I’ll have the heavier stuff in the bottom. The result has been more rubbing at the base of the back from the pack as the top pulls away slightly from the shoulders. The learning for me was to try and simulate the weight distribution in your pack from the start, so the pressure points on your back are reflective of what you will get in the race. I have been running 22km ‘soft’ runs with this pack weight and a week or so upped the anty to 32km. I’m finding that I need to eat on the move at this distance (a bar at 18km and then one at 26km). Have finished strongly (read not totally shagged), but suffer for a day after. The next day is what I call the danger zone. The day after a big run, you are sore, tied and weak. I have three kids under 5 and they can sense this vulnerability and seek to redress all the under arm tickles I’ve given them, by way of ‘body slamming’ me on the couch while I’m reading and then running away. I can’t chase them as I’m too sore…..A really good incentive to get the legs stronger, quickly. I used the term ‘soft’ runs above not because I think 22km is soft but more so because for the last month I’ve been running outside of the race conditions, on tarmac in 15 degree temps with a zephyr at my back, and the salt of the sea in my nostrils. Not exactly tough conditions. Over the Xmas period our summer, I’ll start full time into conditioning my feet and ankles for sand / rock / dirt / water. One of the other areas I’ve spent a bit of time on this month has been researching the race. I met up with a GM06 competitor Sam McCready. Sam and the other boys of the Troy’s march team did fantastically well in completing the race in a very respectable time. My hat goes off to them for all the hard work and commitment they showed in supporting their charity. Sam had some excellent insights into the race. Now before describing these to you, you need to understand that Sam is a fairly classic kiwi fella, not prone to building himself up or spinning any BS, understated would be a good description. So I was fairly sure that when he said to me “she’s very doable”, meaning the race! That I should be more worried than less, because a 5km run around the park is ‘very doable’, 250km over six days in 35 degrees of heat, cannnnn’tttt possibly be described as ‘very doable’ – can it!. So I was intrigued. As Sam and the Troy’s team hadn’t done anything like this distance, heat and location before. One of the questions I asked them was of the following factors which did they consider the most important in completing the event. Not ranked in order of importance:
Sam had been quick to say that mental preparation and toughness had been the most important factor in success. In the case of Troy’s march they had the incentive to raise a huge amount of money to support children in finding a ‘father figure’ to mentor them where they had lost their own dads. They were incredibly focused on completing the race as a team, nothing else mattered as much. I believe they had the mental preparation nailed and had completed the race when they signed up 4 months before the race. Powerful, powerful stuff. My challenge is to understand what level of toughness is required and how to build it. Which isn’t easy, to me the easy part of this event is running. I’d be very interested in any suggestions of how other competitors are mentally training for the event Hamish@twenty.co.nz, and I’ll post the top 5 in next month’s journal. The next two most important Food and then Fluid management. Sam had recounted a story or two of competitors last year not drinking or eating at regular timed intervals and suffering badly because of it. I guess it’s the simple things that matter. At number 4 in the list was body conditioning, then equipment, then routine. For the rest of the month of October I’ve got a marathon or two coming up, I want to try and carry a competition weight pack in the Auckland marathon. I’ve also got to start getting my distance up to around 60km in preparation for the Kepler challenge at the beginning of December, New Zealand’s premier mountain running event 60km through a world heritage park out of Queenstown in the bottom of the South Island www.keplerchallenge.co.nz Here are a couple of pics to give you an idea, I’m biased but I think one of the most beautiful places to run in the world. One area I have failed on this month has been purchasing kit, I’m only picked up an OR wind jacket. My folks are holidaying in France at the moment and there is a great shop www.raidlight.com, where I’m hoping to get both desert gaiters and drink bottles, it’s a French store, so I’m hoping they’ll practice their French and do some purchasing. The final entry to the journal goes to my father who is supporting us all in Gobi 2007 as a volunteer. He’s been in full on training for the event himself, mountain first aid, picking up his attendance as a marshal on mountain runs. He’s been to Kashgar before and the Sunday markets, which he describes as organized chaos. A fantastic location for GM07. Roll on June. Good luck for the month coming up, any questions feel free to fire them through to Hamish@twenty.co.nz
August
2006 Entry Some background December 2005 I rang my father in Wellington, New Zealand and blurted “Do you want an adventure?” being my dad and living for adventure, he immediately said “Yup”, “Do you want to travel”, “Yup”, “Do you want to go back to the Gobi”, “Woow, what to do?”, “I’m thinking of running 250 km across the desert for 7 days”, silence, more silence, then, “You’re maaaad…..yup I’m in”. So we have being planning our assault on the Gobi since then, me running, him as a volunteer to support all the competitors. The next challenge was persuading my wife. With 3 kids under 5 and me also starting a new business, I knew I was asking more than any sane man should, but I also knew she was an incredibly smart competent person who has always supported me. She immediately smiled when I told her and said yes on one condition, you do this you ain’t climbing Everest. I thought it a pretty good deal as I hadn’t ever climbed and didn’t have $80k to do it. The point of this is that I wouldn’t / couldn’t do this event without the support of these guys, point blank, so am very grateful for the opportunity they have given me to test my limits. The Other members of my team for Gobi are a group of guys from a company called the Performance lab www.performancelab.co.nz, they specialize in building athletic champions in many disciplines. They are thankfully also open to taking a novice and preparing them for an event as tough as the Gobi March. Having my first session with them in January 2006, my consultant “Will” was brutally honest when he said you need to understand what you are messing with, because this is an event you don’t mess with, it can hurt you – Bad. So over the next couple of weeks we prepared the first of our 11 week training programs. I think this is interesting because they introduced a number of key areas for me to focus on in training. For those reading this and running in one of the 4 desert events, in your preparations these may help: The basis of all my training is about “Simulation”, so simulating all areas of the event:
In short I was told to find out as much as possible about all areas of the event, be a sponge. The nature of the training has being about only training in the environment that you are going to find in the Gobi. Thankfully New Zealand being the small but geographically diverse country that it is, we can find most of the conditions needed within 2 hours drive from my home. Only the heat is a challenge, as we get up to around 30 – 32 degrees max in summer, so I have to get creative with a solution to simulate the heat, which I’ll talk about in the coming months. The other factor which has being very useful has being that fact that New Zealanders have gone mad for adventure racing, mountain running and multi sport events. There are hundreds of events occurring every year ranging from a couple of hours in the bush to ultra’s through World Heritage zones, it’s the combination of having hundreds of crap TV channels, access to amazing wilderness in a hour or two and having one or two good athletes competing and winning at international level raising awareness of the in particular adventure racing. So in short I’ve being in training for 8 months so far, starting from a “Zero fitness” base and have being taking things slowly in building up. I was meant to be wearing a pack on every run (even with nothing in it), but have decided that for the first 8 months, just building leg strength on the hills will suffice. So where I was up to at the beginning of August was running roughly 2 short runs (hills) of about an hour each (10 – 12 km) then one long run, last two weekends of July were 32km each and then the first two weekends of August were 43km each (first flat, the second hilly). I’ve now changed my routine to start carrying my pack (10.5kg), so I’m reducing my distance down to 22km and then a 2 hour hill / bush run again with the same weight. I have to say that the change from body weight by adding 10.5kg was fine on the legs but I found I was knackered (tired) by the end. The other things I found with the pack was the amount of movement on the back and impact on gait. By the end of each run I had visible wear patches on my shirts and had lost a fair bit of skin on my lower back and sides. By the end of the second run the weight felt better, so it’s a matter of just cracking on and getting use to it. Having said that I lifted our trampoline to move it, stretched to the tippy toes and damaged my calf muscle the afternoon after a big run, so I’ve being taking it easy for the last few days. Equipment So Far
Ideally / realistically I’ll be looking at carrying a 9kg pack without water. What’s coming up? In September (the 9th) I’m running an event called “the legend” www.thelegend.co.nz which is a hill / mountain run in honor of Arthur Lydiard, New Zealand’s most famous running coach and voted by Running USA as the world’s best running coach. He’s trained a number of Olympic and World champions in his time. The run I’m doing is one he used to use to train his champions through the hills in Auckland, suffice it ain’t a fun run, and comes with qualifying criteria and timing cut offs, but will be inspirational. I’ll also be spending time with a couple of Kiwis who completed the Gobi March last year, Sam McCready being one, to find out as much as I can about the event, and what experiences they had, I’ll give you an update at the end of September. I’ll also see how thing are progressing with the competition weight pack and my next objective is to start doing back to back distance runs, in this case just at the shorter distance of 22km over two days, then 3 days and see how things pan out. If anyone would like to ask me any questions about my journey so far, they are welcome to email me on Hamish@twenty.co.nz
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 ABOUT HAMISH TRAVERS Hometown:
I’m an “Ultra” virgin. I’ve competed in a number of mountain runs in New Zealand and the odd marathon, so this is off the radar in length and preparation. Equipment List for the Gobi March See January 2007 Entry, or click here. |
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