Go Hard

Even after many years in endurance sports I still have a lot to learn. That's part of the appeal. Last week's Great Ocean Walk 100km served up plenty of lessons. As the ability to move like a normal person has returned I look back on the event and see what I can use to improve. The best thing I learnt is I can push myself harder than I knew. My mind can be strong and I have the ability to override a lot of my body's defence mechanisms. This can be a double edged sword, and I hope I do temper it with enough wisdom not to do any harm. I believe I can take away an improved ability to get more out of myself in select moments. It is the muscles and connective tissue that seems to be the most susceptible to fail. While there are plenty of other potential weak points, the muscles can just stop doing what you require of them. Smashing the legs early by going out too fast or running in a style that creates big eccentric loads is a good way to disrupt the muscles. I rediscove...

The Great Ocean Walk 100km (GOW100) chewed me up and spat me out. I went into this race deliberately low on training kilometres to ensure I arrived at the start healthy. I wondered if I was under done, but better than being over done. I believed I had done my due diligence and had a good idea on what the course was like. I went in with the plan to respect the distance and course. Turns out I was way off. This is how the day unfolded. Start Apollo Bay to CP1 Blanket Bay 0-20km In contrast the the lead up weather we were lucky to have mild conditions with some slight winds. A rarity in the area. First light reached as we assembled around the starting anchor. I made sure I could hear Andy give his final pre-race words. Inadvertently this put me at the front of field as everyone else assembled behind. The countdown began and no one moved forward. I'd commented to my family that I wouldn't go out crazy fast like I've seen others do. Go ... Cruising over the gr...

About two weeks of taper for me, some may say three. The lack of definition is because I really haven't been doing big kilometres, so there isn't a significant change in my training. Instead, the running has gradually morphed into being more race specific while ensuring I am not breaking my body down. The specific training is slower than almost all my other runs. It has included carbohydrate depleted runs, plenty of power hiking, hill techniques (finding a comfortable way not to blow myself up on the early climbs) and down hill tolerance. It all adds up to some fairly slow kilometres in the training log. I've spent most of this time feeling like I haven't done enough. Which might be the case, but I have made sure I erred on the conservative side so as not to aggravate older injury issues. I feel like that has been achieved. The question is have I trained to the level I need to achieve my goals? Only race day will answer that. I have a few goals tabled out for the ra...

I took the weekend for some race simulation two weeks out from the GOW100. How do you simulate a 100km trail race? The obvious answer would be to run a whole lot of kilometres over similar trails at around race pace. However, I didn't quite take that approach. I didn't think it was going to give me quite what I needed, and based on my training this year had too big a risk of leaving me flat for the real race. I didn't want to grind my body right down, but I needed to create ways to replicate some aspects to know how my body would respond and train the mind. Acclimation versus acclimatisation. The simulation involved two days worth of work. On the first I day I went with the concept of condensing 12 or so hours into 3 hours 45 minutes. For gear and I wore my race kit, packed the race pack with all the mandatory gear (including the adverse weather kit) and used my race nutrition. I kept the opening pace at the same effort level I planned for race day and turns out my paces ...

After 9 years of blogging I lost some interest in it. As a result I haven't put up a post since the start of July. Doesn't mean I haven't been running. In fact, I've been pretty happy with my running lately. Coming into the final weeks of preparation for the Great Ocean Walk 100km (GOW100) has sparked my interest into putting a few more words back out onto the net. Training over the last couple of months has been reasonable. I've definitely missed a lot more sessions than I planned, but in the mix have been quite a few good runs. I was getting pretty nervous as the clock ticked down to the GOW100. Luckily I had a confidence boost a couple of weeks ago. Taking part in a relay team at the Surfcoast Century 100km was given the 3rd leg, 28km kilometres of hills in the Otways. I ran well and impressed myself with how quickly I was able to move through some of the rougher sections. It had me feeling like I might actually be on track for the GOW100. Only a couple o...