After thoughts on OCC

A few bits and pieces have come to mind since writing my race report. So here are some more ramblings.

🌄Altitude:
For some reason this year I really struggled with adapting. Last year my first little run around Chamonix was hard, but that's all it was. I just felt slow and heavy. This year I struggled to get my breath at anything more than walking pace. Arriving on the Sunday I didn't get out for a run or hike until the next day and it was just horrible. I came back really quite alarmed at the difficulty I'd had breathing and was very concerned about how I'd manage at nearer 2000m during the race. I went out again on the Tuesday and again found running extremely hard going. I might have got up to 1400m for a short while but that was it. It felt like this race was going to be a disaster.

👟Kit:
Shoes have been a nightmare ever since Inov8 changed how they size their shoes and trying to find a trail shoe that is wide enough, grippy but not too aggressive has taken up far too much of my time. A random visit to the Climbers' Shop resulted in my introduction to the La Sportiva Akasha. It's like a more comfy version of a Roclite really- pretty much an all-purpose trail shoe that will see you through most things except proper mud. The sizing is a bit weird- the shoes come up short so my size 5 feet are in a 6.5, but the fit is great and I really can't fault them at all. I finished OCC having kicked  a few big stones and all my toes (and nails) are intact! No blisters, no hotspots either.

Race pack/vest was interesting. I'd managed to get all the normal conditions compulsory kit into my Salomon Sense Ultra 8 but I was concerned that if we had a call for cold weather kit or to take additional water I wouldn't be able to get it all in so I bought a 10l pack from Decathlon just in case. I went out with it a couple of times with kit in to see if it would be ok and it seemed fine as long as it was fairly full- unfortunately Decathlon don't do female-fit packs and I find that unisex ones can be a bit too long for my already short torso.
The day before the race, packing for registration and the kit check, I kept missing the pocket in the Salomon pack when I tried to put my phone in. Only it turned out I wasn't missing the pocket- an entire seam on one side had just gone! Seriously unimpressed as that pack has only done 3 races and a few training runs and it cost a small fortune. I am so glad I had the Decathlon pack with me! It was fine through the race and it even just about held those rather long 500ml Salomon bottles.

🍪Nutrition:
Nutrition didn't go to plan at all. I was fine for about 3-4 hours eating from my snack stash but after that I just didn't really want to eat. However I've learned the hard way that if you get to that point you just have to force food in, even if it's only a bite or two at a time. So at the CPs where there was food I'd eat a piece or two of fruit; I tried some kind of cake but I really didn't like it and the cheese looked all sweaty. Once again it was the sugary goodness of full-fat fizzy Coke that saved the day! Interestingly I didn't see other runners eat on the trail at all- I know OCC is only a short race in terms of distance but a lot of runners will have taken more than 8 hours to finish and if you're out that long then surely you need to eat more often than the couple of aid stations where snacks were on offer.

Mental stuff:
Mind over body they say. They also say that running an ultra is as much about the mind as it is about physical fitness. In this case I don't know what the truth is. I definitely hadn't done the training I'd hoped to do and although I felt reasonably strong I was not happy with the lack of miles and hills. Because of the Wales disasters I had zero confidence in my ability to tackle a mountain race. And yet I still finished. You could argue that I must have felt a least a bit ok about it all because otherwise I wouldn't have been on the start line and I guess that's a fair point. But I felt like I had to show up and at least try. I have failed at so much this year and the idea of failing by not even showing up and having a go really didn't sit well with me.
I honestly had no goals other than to see what happened and try not to die, fall over on a descent and break something or fall off a mountain. I actually didn't care if I came in last although I thought it would be a bit sad to have put all that effort into finishing and then come in so late no one would be there. As the race went on and I kept finding it a lot less technical than I'd dreaded, I did relax a bit. I still had to spend 99% of the time focusing on my feet and not falling over but it was a relief to find I could actually run!
At the end, I seemed ok. Endorphins, the utter astonishment of finishing in daylight and a good 3 hours quicker than I'd expected kept me going for a while as did knowing I had to crew the fella next day in CCC. But mentally that race took so much out of me. I didn't really have time to recover because of crewing the next day and night, then the disastrous 2 days of trying to get home and then being straight back into the kids, school, uncertainty about work and an emotional maelstrom of things.
I don't think my mental state before the race was what made the aftermath so hard- it's so difficult to explain what it's like to run but be in fear of every step. I heard Hilary Allen talk about her return to running after her horrific accident at the race in Tromsø and she mentions very early on having a run on some nice smooth road whilst her brain screams at her constantly: don't fall over, don't fall over. That is the reality of every run for me, particularly anything vaguely technical. I can't describe how exhausting that is. Maybe I could try to retrain my brain and thought patterns. But the reality is that although working hard to get strong has seen improvement in my hips, my spine remains fragile and continues to deteriorate. If I don't concentrate every step and end up falling over I might not walk again or worse.

Well, whatever crap this year has thrown at me (and there's been rather a lot of it) although I've not got the training done that I would have liked, I think I'm mentally ready for the next race in a few weeks. In fact at the moment I feel like I'll welcome the inevitable pain and darkness. I've never run an ultra with a goal in mind (other than finishing) so it's going to be a new experience and I know I'll have to deal with some tough times if I want to achieve what I have in mind. Let's see...