What can we learn from our races where it all goes wrong? 3 lessons I learned!
Some races are one time events, some change course so drastically from one year to the next that for all intents and purposes they are different beasts. Others remain constant year on year. Short distances on road can often be compared like for like, but road marathons and in my opinion all trail races each have their own characters.
Particularly ultras.
I’ve been running marathons and ultras on trail and road for 3 years properly, so I’m now at the stage where I’m running some local races for the second time. This poses a couple of problems. Firstly, the pressures on to beat your previous time or ranking. Secondly, there is room for complacency thinking you know the course well enough or that it seems easy now with the passage of time.
Round the Rock Ultra, a 72km route around the island of Jersey. Roll back 3 years and I walked a similar course in 19hrs, I wondered if it was possible for me to run it… At the time the thought was massive! Surely not possible, those runners at the front must be half machine! Nevertheless I started training, and training, and training until 12months later I was lining up on the start line as a runner. My objective was to complete the race. I finished in 10hrs 30mins. I felt like there was room for improvement on that time, I decide to try for under 10hrs next year.
This year I lined up at the start line as a runner for a 2nd time, sub 10hr in mind. I finished 11hrs 30mins… Somethings wrong here! This shouldn’t be! Heres why:
The first section is road for about 10k then 30k of trail then alternate road and trail for the remaining ks. The key is to not go too fast on this bit so you have enough left for the trails. I went too hard… Lesson one, pace correctly.
In race nutrition is important! Last year I used a combo of bars, sweets, and salty stuff at aid stations. This time I was using gels with bars. Oh gels. Thinking I had tested them enough on long runs, I thought that the miracle Gü would have me floating over the walls as they came. How wrong was I! I quickly found myself in a situation where after my 2nd gel, the idea of more was sickening! Repeated bonking followed for 20k over the most undulating trail terrain. Reaching an aid station in a very dark place I considered retiring ungracefully. But after some savoury food and a large quantity of coke I cracked on, basically aid station hopping on coke and crisps! Lesson two, choose better in race food and test it!
Equally important, or possibly more so is pre race care. Getting a good nights sleep, eating a good dinner and good breakfast. Tapering properly leading into the event is key, you dont want to stop the training runs too soon and loose strength, but then again the body needs time to recover form training fatigue. Lesson three, leave the socialising on Friday night and sleep if its a 6am start time!
By analysing our own performance in a healthy way we can tune our habits and techniques to improve. These are just my own lessons form a particular event, I would be interested to hear any of your ‘learned the hard way’ tips!
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Stay tuned!
Fun Once Its Done 