TNF50 Race Report

My friend Mitch recently wrote:

...never race 100 km. It’s like a marathon, but instead of the pain lasting for 12 km, the pain lasts for 36 km.

On completing the Six Foot Track Marathon, my friend Brendon said:

 That is the hardest thing I've ever done.

He later confided that the only reason he didn't cry was because he didn't have the energy.  He did do it off the couch though, and that's enough to make anyone cry.  Mitch is doing is 120 mile race later this year, and Brendon, having recently completed the Canberra marathon in a stellar time of 3:08, is in training for the Melbourne marathon in October.  So why do we do this?  It's a question I had plenty of time to ponder while I was tromping along for most of Saturday.

I was placed in the second of four starting waves (with about 187 in each wave), based on my finishing time in the Six Foot Track in 2011.  This meant that the organisers thought I was likely to come in the top 25-50 % of the field.  I headed out nice and easy, my plan was to try and arrive at the Jamison Creek (at about 36 km in) with a bit still left in the tank.  My intention for the first 6 km was to try to stick to about 5:15 - 5:45min/km.  After less than a kilometre we came to a relatively modest uphill, and while I cruised up, I was surprised to hear one lady puffing away like an asthmatic in a dust storm.  It was, I couldn't help thinking, going to be a very long and very painful day for her.  After a fairly cruisy 6 km loop, I rolled back down the hill towards the start, and was even more surprised to have someone fly past me panting away like a dog in Summer.  I guess maybe the excitement of the situation was getting to people, but these people had results that suggested that they too were going to end up in the top half of the field.

As I went back past the starting point, I gave Megan a wave on my way past, and headed on off at a steady but reasonable pace of about 5:30min/km.  I knew I could hold that pace on road and flat trail almost indefinitely, and my aim was to try and keep there or thereabouts until the top of the Giant Staircase.  Although I was pretty certain I was going to do better than top 25 %, I didn't try to get into the first wave because I was worried that I'd hold people up at this point.  I'd "run" this part in training, and knew that I would be taking it slowly.  I was worried that I'd hold others up, and didn't want to be rushed.  I needn't have worried, however, as there were plenty of others slower than me.  Once we got down the stairs, the pace picked up a bit, and I think we were cruising along at around 5min/km pace for a few kilometres.  This was a little faster than I would have liked, but I was feeling good.  Somewhere around the 9.9km mark I lost satellite signal on my GPS due to the surrounding large cliffs.  Coming up the very steep and narrow path from down in the valley, there were very few places to pass people, so it was just a matter of trundling along at whatever pace, then nipping past when it was convenient.  I hit the 10km point at 1:00:17, which put me in 94th position, which seems pretty good looking back, given that there were about 180 people in the first start group.

The course profile made it look like the the next few kilometres would be fairly flat, but it was actually fairly hilly and technical single-track.  I was starting to worry a little about how my pace was going through this stage, and having lost my satellite signal for a while, I didn't really have an accurate picture of what it was.  At the 13km drinks station, my GPS said about 11.7km, so I knew I was the best part of 1.5km off.  There were some nice sections of road in the 15-19km section, but I felt kind of tired through here, and was mainly in the 5:20 - 6:00min/km zone.  I'd chatted to a guy who told me to look out for the EdinBurgh Castle section at around 20km, as it was a lot harder than the course profile may suggest, and he wasn't wrong.  Luckily I'd run a large amount of this section as part of a 16km Running Wild run in February, so I had some idea what it was like.  A few kilometres later we hit some nice open firetrail, and I started feeling pretty good.  I was passing people quite regularly here, including a nice old bloke who let out an excited whoop as we passed the 25km point.  Half way.

Not long after that we came out onto a long section of sealed road that ran a good few kilometres, mostly flat or downhill, leading to Queen Victoria Hospital and the 28km aid station.  A ran along for a while next to a guy who was wearing basically a normal backpack, so he had to take it off to get at his drink bottles.  He also had a little thing of sunscreen clipped to the outside of his pack with a carabiner, which would have annoyed the shit out of me.  We chatted about times we hoped to do, and he said he was aiming for sub-6 too, but he said he thought our chances were long gone.  I wasn't so sure.  We hit an uphill section, and I cruised on, he caught me not long after on a long downhill section - a pattern that would become familiar over the next 12km or so.

Mitch had told me about a week before the race that Gatorade was pretty much the worst thing ever, but I'd had no issues with it in training.  For some reason though, the Gatorade I was carrying in the front bottles of my pack tasted like ass, so I made the decision at the 28km aid station to pour one of them out and replace it with water.  As I left the aid station, I felt a bit of a twinge in my right calf.  It felt a little bit like when I sustained a small tear last year, giving me some worrying moments, but once I got back up to speed, it seemed to sort itself out.  I left that aid station in 59th spot, with 3:13:33 down.

From looking at the course profile, I knew this was where I needed to make up time.  From this point onwards, the course was basically 8km of downhill followed by 14 km of up.  Lots of up.  The section after the hospital was all wide firetrail, meaning that it was a great place to pull back some time.  At the 30km point, I knew I was a good deal below a 7:00min/km pace, but still not as fast as I'd like - closer to 6:00min/km would be ideal.  As the road went on, it went from flat to just downhill, and in all there was almost 5km of downhill, varying from steep to very steep.  At about 33km or so I felt like I was still only about a third of the way to the valley floor.  Although it was fast, it was also tough on the quads, and my plan was to try and pull back time without trashing my legs by going too much.  I think I got passed by four guys in this section, including old mate from earlier with the sunscreen on his bag.  They clearly had no worries about saving their legs as they thundered by.  One guy remarked that he'd never thought he'd wish for an uphill, and I said that I thought he'd get his wish before too long.

I hit the Jamison Creek, the turnaround point from down to up at about 36km, on almost exactly four hours.  That mean that to keep the dream of sub-6 alive, I needed to average about 7km/h for the next two hours.  Easy on flat terrain, but not so much when about 1,000m of vertical gain are involved.  The uphill necessitated walking, and I could see all four people who'd passed me on the way down toiling along up what I could see was a very, very big hill.  From this point on, I was basically the Terminator - no one was even close to moving as fast as I was.  I passed three of the four  guys who'd gone past me within a few hundred metres, going past them like they were standing still.  While they were puffing away, I was feeling strong and fast.  The guy who'd wished for some uphill was moving pretty well, and we both passed a few others before I reeled him in.  I gave one guy a friendly "How are you going, mate?" and he replied, "Not nearly so well as it looks like you are!"

At 40km, I was on target, and remember feeling strong.  The dream was alive.  I wasn't sure how much water I still had in my water bladder, but I did have at least 500ml of water in one of my bottles.  The other still had Gatorade, which still tasted like ass.  At 41km, I reached the final aid station, and what was also theoretically the mandatory gear check.  While there was no one there to check gear, there was a guy trying to fill a water drum from a large tank with a teapot.  I poured out my remaining Gatorade, refilled my bottle with water, and headed on.  A group of four guys had just left the aid station in front of me, so I asked if they'd had gear checked, and they all said no.  I headed on, walking the hills and running the flats and downhills, still able to get up to about 5:30min/km on the flat sections.

At 45km, 5 hours and 15 minutes had elapsed.  With 45 minutes left, I needed to average 9:00min/km.  The dream was still alive.  At 4km left, I had 38 minutes left.  The dream was still alive  At 3km left, I had 29 minutes.  Maybe I could do this.  With 2km to go, I was at 5:38, meaning I had 22 minutes to cover the final section.  Around this time I lost satellite reception again, so I'm not sure how fast I was going, but it felt pretty quick.  The last kilometre had a vertical gain of about 200m and 900 steps.  Having run it in training, I knew, even when I hit the "1km to go" sign with 14 minutes left, that I was still up against it.  It was absolutely brutal, but I pushed on.  According to the timing chips, I covered the final 5km in the 12th fastest time, and passed 17 people.  As I hit the top of the steepest stairs, I lurched back into something approaching a run - everyone I passed was walking.  As I emerged into the final stretch, I saw Megan standing on the side cheering.  I wasn't sure if I was still in with a shot at sub-6, but I didn't stop, I gritted my teeth and charged on, completing the final 200m in what felt like a sprint.  As I stopped my watch, it was on 6:00, with no seconds visible.  Although I didn't know it at that stage, my time was later confirmed at 5:59:59, scraping under 6 hours by the barest of margins.  Even when I thought I'd gone over 6 hours, I was stoked.  At the time, the website said that I'd come 29th overall, but it was later confirmed as 30th out of 712 finishers. 

So, why do we do this?  Because the satisfaction of training, formulating a plan and executing it is immense.  Even if I'd missed going under 6 hours, I would still have been incredibly happy with how I did.  Ultimately, I did this race as a qualifier for CCC in 2015, and I don't really see that I'll do that many more ultramarathons, assuming I can do that one race.  But knowing that when push comes to shove I can grit my teeth and get it done is a very good thing.

TNF50 - thoughts and lessons learned

In four days time I'm going to do my second ultramarathon, The North Face 50 in the Blue Mountains just outside Sydney.  I thought I'd resurrect my blog to put down some thoughts on my training and goals for the race, similar to what my friend Mitch did here.  You should also read his race review here.

My approach this time was a little different in that I also incorporated a fairly considerable strength training component.  Conventional wisdom has said for some time that weights for endurance athletes should be low weight, high reps.  More recently, some people such as Mark Twight and Alex Viada point out that that structure of reps and weight best trains muscular endurance, which is probably best trained with sport-specific training (running, in my case).  The idea that it's rarely harmful to be stronger is gaining some popularity - although there are obvious caveats, which I'll discuss later.

Anyway, my training plan was based around two nights per week in the gym and four runs per week.  The run length for each session was based on the length of the long run to be done on Saturday, on the long run length was calculated based on building up slowly to a 40 km long run four weeks before the race.  During the week, Saturday was the long run, Tuesday was a hilly or fast run (sometimes Fartlek, sometimes intervals) with a distance approximately one third of the long run, Thursday was a run half the length of the long run and Sunday was a recovery run (not always done), one quarter of the length of the long run that week.  Despite the inclusion of weight training in this plan, running was always the priority - so where I had to miss a session for whatever reason, I always made sure I got my run in.  The long run, and building a good distance base, was always the most important part of the plan.

The weight training portion used a bastardised 5/3/1 progression (you can find some information here and here), based around squats and overhead press on Monday and deadlifts and bench press on Wednesday.  In the scheme of things, my lifting is never going to set the world on fire, but I did get my deadlift up to 125 kg for a triple, my squat to 95 kg for a double, my bench to 65 kg and my press to 47.5 kg.  As I say, not hugely impressive, but if my aim was to get huge and just strong, I would have been both training and eating a lot more.  Rather, my aim was to get stronger without necessarily putting on a whole bunch of weight.  I'm not sure exactly what I weighed when I did my previous ultra, but I think I usually hovered somewhere around about 65 kg or so.  Now I hover around about 70 kg.  My buddy Brendon, who recently did a 3:08 marathon, weighs about 63 kg at about the same height.  Anyone who knows him will know that it's certainly not my arms where I have the extra weight on him, it's mostly on my legs.  I feel that it's a huge advantage having stronger legs for trail ultras, especially in one as hilly as the North Face.  I can stomp up stairs like the Terminator, and where the stair sections are so long that I have to stop and walk (almost everyone walks in trail ultra), I can keep on trucking pretty fast.  The other thing that I've gained is much, much better core strength.  As a climber, I liked to think that my core was pretty strong, but it probably never really was - at least not compared to now.  Deadlifts and squats help build serious strength in both the abs and lower back, and this helps me maintain form longer when I'm tired.

One of the potential downsides of strength training is that you get heavier.  Mark Twight says "You have to carry the engine", and simply being huge is not what you're after.  As I've already discussed, I'm probably a little bit heavier than what's ideal, but I think there are payoffs.  Not least of which is that I just feel like I'm less likely to get injured.  One unforescene downside of bigger pecs was increased nipple chaffage.  The only remedy for that that I found is bandaids, and that's not compatible with a very hairy chest.  Too much information?

The other potential drawback is that training with weights takes away time that you could be running.  In his Reddit AMA, Alex Viada talks about the importance of cutting out "junk miles", that is just going out and running relatively short distances at sub-tempo pace.  Again, I think the advantage of being less prone to injury that lifting can give you makes up for any loss of overall weekly milage - nothing affects your ability to train more than being broken.  

I think the plan worked quite well.  I do feel a little bit underdone, because I developed a bit of an Achilles issue after my 33 km run (theorettically two weeks before my longest training run), six weeks before the race.  This necessitated taking a week off, and meant that I did 26 km instead of 40 in what was meant to be my peak week.  I followed that with a solid 25 km of trails around Manly Dam the weekend before last though, and felt strong and fast.  If I were to change anything, it would be how I programmed my deads and squats as my milage increased.  When I got to a point where I felt that lifting too much might compromise my running, I dropped the weight by about 20 % and just switched to a 3x3 rep scheme.  I think that this wasn't perfect, but I didn't find that muscle soreness affected my ability to do quality running training.  I'm not as strong as I'd be if I was just lifting, but I don't fell I'm going to be much slower than if I was just running.

My A goal for the race is sub-6 hours, which equates to an average pace of a little over 7min/km, which sounds slow as shit until you see the course profile.

There are some serious fucking hills in that badboy, and sub-6 hours is probably going to be about the top 10-15 % of the field.  My basic aim is to try and get to about the 36km mark at an average pace of 6.30min/km, which will then mean that I can average about 9min/km for the final 14 km.  My B goal is to go sub 6:30, which according to the organisers is likely to put me in the top 25 % of the field.  My C goal is just to finish the thing inside the cutoff time.

I'm planning to carry 12 gels (Gu is my preference), a bag of jelly snakes and sour squirms, and a bag of biltong for protein and fat.  I will also have a litre of Gatorade and two litres of water.  People on Cool Running suggested topping up on liquid at the 28 km aid station, but I'll see how I'm going.

In terms of how I feel, I'm a lot more confident about this one than I was coming into the Six Foot Track Marathon.  I feel like I'm better trained and much better prepared.  For those who are interested, I'll try and put up some thoughts on how the race actually goes.