GUCR Race Planning

After a nasty trip on my 18 mile road run from London yesterday evening I have taken the opportunity to rest today but slightly irritated as I was planning to do a back to back.

Allowing no opportunity to be wasted I have spent some time this evening getting my GUCR race plan together along with post codes of check points, alternative stopping points along the way and predicted pace times (yeah right), the latter I know will go out of the window towards the end but can be a good guide to my now official support team, Gemma and Sam.

After my meeting at Profeet last Wednesday Gemma knocked me into shape with her very obvious expert planning skills which has made me up my game so to speak. Along with that talk and my visit to Birmingham the day after I am now highly motivated, a bloody nuisance that it came just before I knocked my foot, tomorrow is another day.

Ordinary People...

doing extraordinary things.

Wednesday evening saw a crowd of London based runners from the Long Distance community meet up in a running shop called Profeet who hold talks and lectures on interesting subjects in sport. Wednesday night was about The Spine in which competitors have 7 days to complete 268 miles of the entire Pennine Way from Edale to Scotland.

Duncan and I stood outside munching a cold sausage roll looking into the shop thinking it was still open for customers and he pointed out a lady looking at some running shoes mentioning that she was so obviously a runner by her physique, of course she was for that was Clare the first lady in the 2011 GUCR with some ridiculously fast time. We entered the shop and mingled with the other attendees, "Oh that is James, he ran across America" or "That is Allan, he ran 45 miles with a broken leg" were heard possibly to Duncan's amazement. In the cold light of day this does sound strange and on the edges of sanity to the uninitiated  but quite "normal" to the practised ultrarunner or endurance sports person.

The talk started with Gary and Allan telling us about race prep for such an ordeal, tales of injuries, friendship, cold, hunger and elation having to travel such a vast distance in winter conditions. The talk was sobering stuff with cautious tales of possible death by falling off ledges, sink holes  or hypothermia all scary stuff but totally awe enthralling.

After the talk it was time to go to the pub and catch up over a few ciders and meet new people. The picture above shows a fun picture of a lady who got frostbite during the Arrowhead race in America caused by the pressure caused by holding her poles. A morbid fascination took hold to hear about how it happened and realised that this lady was an amazing character, an eco-warrior and whom I passed in a 50km event when she decided that dragging a tyre behind her was a totally normal thing but when you heard that she was training for the North Pole marathon it did seem reasonable....or not!

So hearing these stories I have decided that running 147 miles at the GUCR is totally normal, isn't it?

Epic Night Run

An invitation to Bhundu to go on a Night Run was met with the Facebook response:

"Great! I'm spending my evening knee deep in mud with a lunatic. Why oh why can't I have normal friends?"

I know these comments are in jest such that when I turn up to his house he is bedecked in night trail kit with leggings and triple layers with me feeling somewhat under dressed in shorts and my trusty OMM smock, the whole point of the run was to see if we could see the International Space Station pass over...the more important point was to go for a nice night run.

Arriving in Knockholt, we jumped from the car, clipped on our race vests (holding spare head torch, compass, map, phone and first aid kit), tightened our Vibram Five Finger Monkey Feet and ran up to the North Downs Way (NDW) and turned East. Within metres, Duncan and I were hooting with laughter, the mud riding over our Monkey Feet and us slopping and sliding through the mud.

Never under-estimate the NDW, the wind was blustery, the sparkle of rain in the torches, the mud just ridiculous in places such that looking for a path ahead was useless leaving us to navigate by memory and reading the terrain.

It was pretty obvious by 4 miles that the chance of seeing the Space Station was zero as the cloud rolled over but being who we are Duncan I stopped in an unknown field, somewhere near the 0 Meridian and watched a cloud point West and our necks set at 54 degrees and saw.......NOTHING.

Unperturbed we carried on, dipped off the NDW to run road telling him we were looking for an aptly named Monkey Puzzle tree for this was the marker for our return.

As is with these runs topics drift in and out from serious to plain bizarre, from work to wigs and wheelchairs, there are hoots of laughter and dredging of sad old memories. Ever so often a stoical barefoot runner is allowed to curse a clinker, there are hand signals, calls for caution and yelps of "Clear" all this through the misty spotlight of a head torch.

Path SR297

This is a staid designation to an OS map path just off the NDW, one that we decided to run at whim and when we say run we took it at pace a drop of 32 metres over 570 metres, not much normally, but in the current conditions, the ground soft, slippery, the added issue of fallen branches and the rain and wind we howled down the path with me talking to myself repeating "On ya toes Jerry, On ya toes Jerry, On ya toes Jerry..." and raised up on my toes allowing the Monkey Feet to find the way and then a joyful call to reduce the speed slowly to allow us to duck around a fallen tree safely to the road.....exhilarating is not the word, just FANTASTIC.

We returned, strong of heart and sinew, still regaling tales of cartwheeling cats and wigs thrust aside by a careering wheelchair.

Why the frog?

This is the little chap we met at the end of our run, caught in my headtorch who called out to be admired.

Tired...very tired

Sunday evening and I feel tired, very tired; the Delightful Mrs S shouted at me as I lay slumbering on the sofa to stop snoring, my sleep so deep that I bubbled out of my crazy dream dazed and confused.

Looking back at the reasons it becomes very clear:

6 days in a row at work with the addition of lecturing all day yesterday makes a 7 day week. Add into the mix that in the same period I have run 55 miles (89 km) and then a 300 mile (480 km) car drive today.

I am so pleased I have a week off now, one I plan to sleep, eat properly and when the mood takes me some good Monkey Runs on the North Downs. Hard work makes the down times fun.

A Cartload of Monkeys v A Cete of Badgers

As I walked into the office this morning, coffee in hand bedecked in running kit I was met by:

"What the heck have you done to your ear Jerry?"

Having taken the lift to my floor I saw in the mirror that there was a smear of blood on my jacket and dried blood on my ear and neck. My reply was:

"It is OK, I was attacked by an Urban Badger!" 

Let's go back 3 hours Dear Reader, I was not too pleased to the fact that I had to attend work on Sunday morning to assist in an upgrade, not the work, just the fact it was Sunday and my running day. Such was that I decided to combine my run with the commute to the office taking an extended route via Greenwich, London Bridge and Brixton, work and then take the train home, a princely 18 miles (29 km).

The planned route would take through a local wood which I soon discovered was flooded in sections so I took a detour through the undergrowth and then out onto a grassy meadow, my Monkey Feet having a hard time keeping me upright but I was soon out on the road for the next 16 miles. The weather today was perfect for running, cool, the sun was out but the wind on the exposed river was tough but the constant dipping between residential and office buildings created shelter. It was such a nice day that I was somewhat surprised to find that I had churned out the miles in such a solid way even if I had stumbled on cracked pavements and stubbed my toe on concrete blocks, I was in fine fettle when I popped into the coffee shop with the barista pointing to the blood on my jacket and I told her it must have been a badger and so the white lie remained until my entrance to the office now embellished to include "Urban" Badger!

As I left the office a colleague approached me and said "How many badgers was it Jerry, it must have been a lot with a cut like that?"

Between you and me Dear Reader, it must have been caused by a thorn when I ran around the flooded woods earlier on in the run which caused a 4mm cut on my earlobe!

Going around the bend

Thursday night as usual is track and I had all the intentions of running to the track, that is until on running past Rob's house I spied him through the window bedecked in running kit so like a big softy knocked on his door for a lift, after all my lower back was a little sore.

On my warm up lap I swore under my breath when I recalled the message on Facebook:

"Spoken to Ken at Norman park. Track is fine for training on."

 Speaking to Ken after the first 400 metres he admitted "Well, 370 metres is fine!" which was true, the driving rain and wind has flooded a 30 metre section at the 170 metre section of the out going curve.

I was really enjoying myself, my Monkey Feet and Injini socks working well in the rain and wind as I chatted and laughed with Paul but have been very mindful of my aching quads of late.

End the end of a very wet and windy run I mentioned this to my good running pal Mike that this was the case and he patted me gently on the small of my back and said "Yes and a bit of Lordosis as well I see" Jeez this bloke is good as recently people had mentioned my beer gut or that I appeared to be putting on weight even though I had lost some. Looking this up it appears I have all the symptoms with a very pronounced curve in my lower back, so it is exercise and stretching for me for a little while.

Getting there

My trusty Monkey Feet lie in the utility room cake in rock hard mud, useless until they get cleaned off so it was the turn of their stable mate my Merrells.

Tonight was club night and was happily dispatched from the house by the Delightful Mrs S who wanted some pamper time of her own with very clear instructions to collect my daughter from her work place, gone was my planned 12 mile run.

The run tonight was not much to report but I was very aware that secretly my fitness is slowly getting back when I found myself striding up a long incline, my pace unchanged from the previous flat section and outstripped the pack who were slowly dropping back one by one. Between you and me Dear Reader, it was a good feeling ;-)

Equally, the final mile was a friendly tussle with a faster pace to finish up a nice training run.

As for the picture above, a preventative measure of a bag of ice and a bandanna to help with an Achilles niggle. 

Two loons go for a run

The aches and pains slowly disappearing in my lower back and quads saw me knock unannounced at Duncan's house this afternoon with the intention of seeing his recent procurement of a wheelchair to be pimped up and made into a Rugby chair, the other to see if he wanted a run later on in the afternoon.

I have to admit, I have put on some weight in recent weeks and the lack of running has not helped along with a rubbish diet and the unwanted injuries so today was just about the run.

Both Duncan and I have had bad patches recently both fighting the Black Dog in different ways but both have emerged from our dark phases roughly at the same time and today it seemed to be Duncan doing all the chatting whilst I happily listened to his tales of Australian artists and wheelchair designs.

As is well documented in any British trail runner's blog at present the mud in high and the recent storms making heavy going, Duncan in his famous Monkey Feet and I in my Mizuno Evo Ferus were soon seen on trudging out the miles, laughing and screaming like two demented loons as we skittered and slipped down sodden hills almost on the point of out of control.

Running along the trails we just ran through the middle of the mud stacks as it was just too treacherous to go around. By the end of the run I had mud on my face, in my shirt, IN my shorts and you could not see the skin for mud on my legs.

Time to get the distances up and get some solid runs in but for now I will carry on smiling about today's run.