UltramarathonMike

This whole 10K thing is making me exceptionally nervous, I see 30 minutes of running as a warm up before everything clicks into place and starts working, unfortunately thats most of the 10K out the way.
I’m not in my pace or comfortable until after that 20 or 30 minutes have passed… still, nevermind!

Last night I finally managed to get a run in with a friend, James, we have been talking about getting out for ages. We took a loop of the Westwood and managed to avoid the rain.
It was typical of a “getting back in” run for me and I certainly couldn’t have gone any faster, but it did the power of good and got me loosened up for tonight.

Tonight was the usual club run and again we took in a loop of the Westwood (in reverse) and feeling good I set off with the fast lads and managed to mostly keep up till I cut the route a little round the Westwood (I only wanted 7 miles tonight). After a relatively slow half mile I felt I was on for picking up the pace again, and enjoyed a really good run back. I stuck in an extra bit as I was feeling so good and chatted with a few others who I had overtaken as we finished off.
All in all, things are looking up for this 10K if this keeps up.

Amazing how a few miles can loosen you up and get you going.

I have written about this a little before on here but the other I week I finally had the pleasure of meeting the man himself, Chris Carver, and chatting through his plans for his incredible ultra run which he has planned and is to be doing on May 23rd.
I’m not sure the word incredible does it justice as Chris is going to be running from his home town of Otley to London in one single nonstop stage, all 218 miles of it.

I am going to be helping him out a little and running with him through one of the night stages. It was clear from the meeting that the level of planning that has gone into this is immense and very few questions remained as he has pretty much covered all the bases. With the experience Chris has under his belt, his planning and his evident natural ability at ultra running (141 miles in 24h hours! 8.5hrs in the Round Rotherham 50!) it’s well within his grasp!

Chris is doing it to raise money for the cancer charity Orchid and more information can be found on his blog (which will be updated by his wife, Fay, during the race) at http://run-to-london.blogspot.com and his donation page is http://www.bmycharity.com/V2/otleytolondon. Both the cause and awesomeness of the challenge deserve a donation.

It’s exceptional stuff!

At some point in the near distant future this section of the blog will become the main feature and the MdS section will come to its natural conclusion. It’s not there yet though, and I have more articles and thoughts to put up.

In the mean time what’s next? Well after my minor misdemeanour in the Woldsman (more on that at some point!) I am now back training and have some goals back in my sites.
Next month I have the Wharfedale Half Marathon (perhaps the marathon?) and then the Swaledale Marathon, but in the mean time I have bitten the bullet and am actually doing a 10K. This will be the smallest race I have ever done, the other being the Ferriby 10.

With a good summer of training behind me after the MdS I am really looking forward to getting some better ultra results at the end of the year, perhaps sooner if something comes along!

But in the mean time let’s see if I can run a decent 10K time… I might have to put in 20k to the start line to warm up!

After that something big is poking its head over the horizon … brrr.

Recently I got my sticky mits on a HTC G1 “smartphone", to the none geeks out there it’s one of these phones that does all sorts, like browse the web, send email tell me where I am using GPS and listen to endless Rolf Harris … all through the comfort of a large touch screen and qwerty keyboard.
Zombies, however, don’t come as standard.

But using the mashed up delights of Google maps, the inbuilt GPS chip and a good dose of imagination, one programmer has come up with “Zombies, Run!".

The main premise is that you set two parameters, amount:

• Controlled Outbreak
• Early Local Infestation
• Late Local Infestation
• Total Pandemic

and speed:

• Night of the Living Dead - 2mph
• Resident Evil - 5mph
• 28 Days Later - 8mph

and your safe zone on the map. When your location is determined, the local area is populated with zombies, as you move around and near zombies, they pick up on you and chase you, you have to get away and back to the safe zone (the start point).

I can’t wait to get out and go on an hour or so of unpredicatable farklet training around the local area changing my speed and direction to avoid zombies… genius!

More information on Zombies, Run!, can be found at http://www.zrli.org/zombierun/

I have been glued to the London Marathon today keeping an eye on many of my friends who are running today.
Sadly only Ian Broadly managed the sub 3 so many were going for, but he did put in a tremendous performance getting 2h51m.

Also running is my MdS long day buddy Gilly who is looking like she is coming in strong for a sub 4hr performance, which is tremendous for a post MdS race. Ivan is also running in full MdS gear!

It’s certainly got me thinking about my desire for a half decent marathon time this year.