Having intended to start a running blog for some time, mostly as a motivation for my training. The idea, of course being, that even if no-one reads this blog, that my promises to train and my aims for upcoming races will be floating around in cables and tubes somewhere on the interweb, and having the potential to fill me with shame should I fail to do justice to my self-set goals.
So without further ado....
I am entered in the Tarawera Ultra 100km (http://taraweraultra.co.nz/) on March 16th. Baring injury or Mayan apocalypse, I will be running this race. I aim to complete it in 13 hours.
No backing out now.
I've run 2 ultramarathons now. The first was this year's edition of the above Tarawera Ultra, where I ran the 85km race. The day before Rachel and I attended a talk by Stu Mills, an ultramarathoner originally from the Hutt Valley, now resident in south England. Last year he represented the United Kingdom at the World Ultramarathon Championships in Ireland. I took two things away from his talk:
The first was to start a blog, then all your promises to train and aims for upcoming races will be floating around the internet, and fill you with shame if you fail to do yourself justice.
The second was the concept of positive race energy. It's far too hard for me to explaing, but essentially it was the concept of mental preparation being just as important as physical preparation. Go into a race knowing what to expect, full of positive focus, you are far more likely to come out of the race happy with your result than if you go in counting the kilometres down and waiting for the end... A far more eloquent explanation can be found on his blog http://ultrastu.blogspot.co.nz/.
I went into the race the next day trying my best to adapt to this strategy... for the first 60km I had the time of my life, loved it etc... then things started to fall apart. Fortunately at 70km my beautiful wife and pacer for the day Rachel turned up, and had the grace to torture me through the next 14km, before complaining when I tried to leave her behind with 1km to run until the finish! But more about that race later.
My second ultramarathon was the two day Round the Island 69 mile race around the Isle of Wight in June/July of this year. This race I found a lot harder: it wasn't as scenic, the weather wasn't as nice, on the second day my legs hurt, and I found it especially hard to keep up my positive race energy. However, on the night between the two stages, again I attended a talk by Russel Secker. This man is seriously impressive: he had recently run the Trans-Europe footrace, essentially a race that does what it says on the tin, starting in Bari in south Italy, and finishing at the North Cape of Norway, lasting 64 days. With no rest days. His talk left me with two messages:
The first was to start a blog, then all your promises to train and aims for upcoming races will be floating around the internet, and fill you with shame if you fail to do yourself justice.
The second is no matter how tired you are, try and look on the positive side. Even when you've been running 61 days in a row, you are above the Arctic circle, it's just started snowing, and you are wearing a stolen rubish bag to try and stay warm.
I also bought his book, Running Across Countries (http://www.amazon.com/Running-Across-Countries-Russell-Secker/dp/1448668123). It's a really good read if you like reading about people pushing themselves to the edge of their physical limits.
Anyway, all this leads me to saying that I'm starting a blog, so that my promises to train and my aims for upcoming races are floating around online. Maybe if someone reads this, you can try and hold me to those promises and aims!
But before Tarawera, Rachel and I are due to finish another ultramarathon... in three weeks time Rachel is due to finish 9 months of enduring another lifeform living inside of her, and we will become parents for the first time. I'm very excited! So I'll be fitting my training around a new set of responsibilities as a dad on one hand, but will have an extra crew hand/pacer on the other... I'm really looking forward to it!
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