The Marathon des Sables

It’s a big mileage bonanza this week, I’m having a fairly large mileage week this week, it should be around 91 miles at the very minimum. It’s not too easy to fit it in with the usual bustles of weekly life but it does feel good to do it. So far it’s been mostly on the road (28 with a pack) and I must say … I feel good!

To make it better a few us “MdS class of ‘09″ are meeting up for a couple of nights and a couple of training runs in the glorious town of Pontypridd, Wales. The honorary member of the crew, Andy, has done the route finding and the organisation. I take my hat off to you, sir!

I have been busy of late with kit choice and bar glueing on my gaiters I am almost good to go, courtesy of Dan the backpack is on its way over from Oz.

It’s all getting very exiting!

The winter kicked East Yorkshire up the arse again, dumping a good few inches of the fluffly white stuff this afternoon. Causing a few problems along the way.

Anyway, it arrived too late to foil last nights plans, whereby I managed to knock off a rather brisk 17 miler (with pack) after work. It comes to something when you are doing 17 milers on the way home from work! The upped pace throughout really is showing the positive effects of the speed training.

Other than that I am really just spending more money on kit and getting myself generally over excited! With the size of the snowman in the garden now I think it’s still going to be there when I get back from Morocco.

Well - I guess it was, no, I’m sure it was. 8.3 min/miles gas been my previous 13.1 miles or under flat road speed … in fact usually a little slower than that and certainly never any faster.
With all my ramblings about speed training and adapting my training I was hoping today to push myself and see what I can do so I was aiming to slip around and hopefully under 80 minute mark.

The conditions were good for racing, although too cold for hanging around in race gear at the start, and the expected rain/snow had passed or had held off. I had been told the course was a little hilly in the first half and we (me and Mr. Caville of the skinny legs) set off. The course went up and down as the wolds do and at around the four mile mark I was just starting to loose Neil and his lightweight frame at the top of the climbs who’s lightweight frame gives him a wee bit of an advantage.

Anyway I passed the 5 mile mark in 39:51 which made a sub 80 minuter possible only by a scraping. So I dug in, thankfully there were some good flat sections and miles ahead (at least comparatively speaking) so it was definately time to pick it up and make up the time. Managing to keep Neil in my sights and seemingly 20 seconds in front I managed to keep my pace well.

The finsih line appeared, sadly it was at the top of a hill. I managed to get a few people I had been keeping in my sights on the way up and finished in a rather good 77.44. Neil has come in just under a minute earlier (well done … but, Git!)

To pop in a few clinical statistics the breakdown was:

• Total - 77:44 mins
• Average - 7.74 min/mile
• 1st 5 mile split - 39.51 mins
• 1st 5 mile split average - 7.9 min/mile
• 2st 5 mile split - 37:53 mins
• 2st 5 mile split average - 7.5 min/mile

Speed training in some form or another should be a part of every ultra runners training toolkit. As pointed out in the physiology tests I have had, it is certainly something I should be concentrating on more, at least more than just a tempo session most weeks.

The virtues of hill reps, intervals, tempos etc have long been extolled by experts, professionals and amateurs alike but they do still remain ignored by a good percentage of runners.

Finally, for various reasons I am now able to attend the Monday night speed sessions with the running club. So I popped along in what felt like the coldest evening of the year (it wasn’t it was just icy, wet, windy and felt that way) I ventured out to start some speed work. How I coped wasn’t a surprise to me in that I recovered quickly but couldn’t maintain my fastest speeds beyond the 3rd rep or at the end of a long hill sprint. What I was surprised at was that my top speed was actually … well, not bad. So with some continued commitment to the sessions I am certain that even at this ‘late’ stage in the game the benefits will be reaped come March.

After a slowish 20 something miler (road … uck!) on Saturday today is a rest before a nice run with the club tomorrow, a recovery run on Thursday and a walk in the Peak District on Saturday.

With the talk of the cold weather recently in the news you would almost be forgiven to think that the Gulf Stream had switched off or the UK had been towed north of Norway and is squatting on Longyearbyen. It’s been cold, but that’s cold for the UK. Yesterday was frozen, below 0C, overcast and windy, so it didn’t thaw out all day and the ground was like concrete.

I decided to try out my new Petzl E+Light out so went out for an afterdark 10 mile off-road run. With the cold wind blowing and the layer of hoar frost over everything it was quite beautful in the glint of the torch light. The frozen churned up solid mud did occasionally make it a little tricky underfoot and I was caught out by the occasional solid molehill.

The E+Light is a great light espcially for it’s tiny size and does a more than satisfactory job running with. I have heard about sand in the mechanism guffing it up but bar a sand storm at night I think it will be fine. So far, many have said this is THE torch to take to the desert.