Running Solo

Well. It's all been pretty rubbish. I've been very unwell with yet another bout of tonsillitis, things really haven't settled down in my new job, the kids are having a nightmare getting to school most days, I won't get paid until the end of October...

And then the fella dumped me.

Plans for A100 are all in the bin. If I can make it to the start then I'll give it a go but with the aim simply of getting round. I've been too unwell and lost far too much weight to be fit enough to try to achieve what I wanted. Running it with no friendly face waiting for me at the finish will be so hard but I've run plenty of races alone before. I just hope I don't kill myself driving home afterwards.

It's completely floored me; the plans I'd had for the coming months are all in tatters and I feel adrift and lost. I have been trying to think ahead to next year but without knowing how much A100 is going to take out of me it's not easy to plan races. These days it seems so many races sell out so quickly and I don't want to be under pressure to enter things if I'm not sure if I'll be fit enough to be on the start line. There are lots of races I'd like to do, but there are also now quite a few I'll never be able to run.

I guess it's probably just as well I've been ill and that it's now taper time too because otherwise I'd be out there literally running myself into the ground. Running has helped me cope with bad times before but now every step on my local trails reminds me of what was, of a time when there was light and love. Healing, if it comes at all, is going to be painfully slow.

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...

An Imposter

Quite a bit has been going on over the last few months. As far as running goes I've had two dreadful sessions up in Snowdonia where I discovered my vertigo is a significant problem and that anything involving even slight exposure, high up scrambling or very steep technical descents leaves me unable to move through fear and dizziness. I was moving slower than an arthritic tortoise in those Welsh mountains.

So OCC loomed huge and terrifying, confidence levels were at zero because of Wales and I was so scared I seriously considered not going to Chamonix at all. Even when I got there thought I wouldn't bother registering for the race and I'd rather jump off the Christ the King to make it all stop. The railings around Christ the King are too high for a short-arse like me to climb so that bit didn't happen.

But I did register for the race.

In the few days before OCC I wasn't nice to be around. I was consumed with fear, doubt and the feeling that I was an imposter which always settles on me in my visits to Chamonix. I'm not a mountain runner and I felt a fake being there at all. There was also the matter of making sure I was ready for crewing duties the night after my own race. The fella didn't seem too concerned about running CCC other than wondering if his knee would play up, after all he'd basically done it all before last year at UTMB. But I was unsettled because of the lack of prep I'd had for it. I take crewing very seriously because you have the potential to make or break a race for your runner. Ultimately of course it's down to the runner but if you get stuff wrong as crew you can really mess things up. So I was stressed because of fear, stressed because I felt under-prepared as crew and stressed because I felt I hadn't been able to properly focus on my own race. A perfect storm of messy stuff really and it's taken its toll in various ways.

However, 4.15am alarm on 29th August followed by tea and coffee then head torch on to walk to catch the bus to Orsieres. I was anxious about walking unfamiliar roads alone in the dark but Paul had heard me get up and walked down with me before heading up for sunrise on Brevent; I was even fretting about having to use my head torch before the race as I knew I'd be finishing in the dark with a nasty technical ascent and descent- suppose the battery ran out and the spare failed?

Horrid bus journey on narrow switch backs up and down and  I arrived at Orsieres in daylight. There were almost 2 hours until the race started and it was hard to know what to do. I wandered about a bit then found a church near the start line and popped in to ask St Jude Thaddeus to look kindly on me. An early morning service was happening so I stood and listened to the singing. Although not religious now, I suppose I will also be a bit of a superstitious Catholic and also hearing prayers sung in Latin is a sound of my childhood so oddly reassuring. I felt a little more peaceful when I left and found a spot to wait for the race to begin.

The race started and I let everyone hare past me. Although I wanted to be near the front to avoid too long a wait to begin the first climb I knew if got my heart rate up very high straight away I'd be toast so I gently plodded along to the sound of cowbells, cries of "Allez allez" and "Courage!", and the noise of thousands of feet. All I could think was somewhat akin to Arthur Dent: so this is it, I'm going to die.

Huge queue to begin the first proper climb. It was so frustrating because the ascents are my strong point and I hated losing so much time knowing that so many people would overtake me on the downhill. I found a few places to pass people but the queues and pushing and running poles shoved in my face were unfortunately the story of the first 2 big ascents. 

The sun was out and it was already warm. La Giete is a lovely ascent- pretty steep and awkward underfoot in places but I was never scared by being too close to steep drops. There were gorgeous black cows and the magical clonk of cowbells. One cow was quite friendly and came up and nuzzled me as I went past so I stopped to stroke its forehead and it followed me for a short while after that.

About halfway up to La Giete

I'm not going to write about each checkpoint or much of the race in great detail- most of it is already a fuzzy memory because of the mental effort I needed to sustain to stay safe whilst trying to cover such terrain as fast as I could. However I do remember getting to the top of the first proper climb grinning wildly and saying loudly "That was easy" which made the spectators there laugh. It wasn't easy but it had been nowhere near as difficult as I'd expected and the sense of relief that I'd completed the first ascent was enormous. 

All the descents except the final one from La Flegere have got muddled in my head but I remember doing ok, running quite a bit although often rather faster than I wanted due to the pressure of people right on my heels and trying to push past- I wasn't trying to stay in front but rather I was so scared of being pushed over. This is probably a good place to mention that the feel of OCC was that of a city road race. People had no pole etiquette, there was a lot of running too close to others, a bit of elbowing going on and it was crowded most of the way round. Other than myself I didn't hear a single runner say please or thank you in any language to the volunteers. As a race experience it wasn't much fun.

A lot of the Swiss side of route was really quite pleasant with a lot of runnable bits on the descents. I hated the interminable zigzags into somewhere (probably Trient) and had to sing to myself to get through them but mostly I was just waiting for it to get really hard and have to negotiate steep bits on my backside. 

No recollection of where this is or even of taking the photo!

I kept staying well ahead of cutoffs and I kept being able to run far more than I'd expected. It never took much time to get through the checkpoints but I was careful to eat something at each one as after the first 3 or 4 hours I wasn't finding it easy to eat on the move- I just didn't really want to eat anything I had with me. Fizzy coke was going down well though!

Reaching Vallorcine felt like an important point- I was familiar with a few stretches from there and somehow I got there about 3pm, 35km into the race and around 21km left to go. This was way way ahead of the schedule I had in mind. However I really didn't feel complacent- I didn't trust how well it was all going.

                                            

At some point my fella messaged me and said he'd come out to Argentiere to see me. OCC has no crewing because it's such a short race but people can come out and spectate. However I saw lots of runners receiving aid and support from friends and family all along the route. It's cheating- don't do it. Anyway, Argentiere appeared. It was still daylight and although I was finding the heat quite intense I still felt ok and was looking forward to seeing my fella. I couldn't see him as I went into the aid station, nor as I left. He wasn't there. 

I didn't give myself time to be upset although I did feel angry. I used that to power me up the first nasty, gnarly part of the ascent to la Flegere. I stormed past people and it looks like I made up a lot of places on that stretch. But my heart rate got higher and higher. The fella phoned me but I couldn't really talk as breathing was now painfully hard and I was starting to feel a bit rough.

La Flegere is the most tortuous climb because once the gnarly bit is done you're out on a wide gravelly track which is a ski slope in winter. It goes on and on and is really pretty steep. You can see where the check point is yet it doesn't get nearer as you don't approach it directly. This was the low point for me. I felt so sick and tired and my heart was pounding as though it would burst out of my chest. I saw people stopping, bent double over their sticks and all I wanted was to curl up on the bare gravel and die. I didn't want to finish, I felt too dreadful. 

A quiet voice spoke to me: just keep moving, get to the check point, you can't stop before then.

I kept going although at times it felt as though I was barely moving at all. I fell into that checkpoint and burst into whole body heaving sobs. 

A guy next to me asked in broken English if I was ok- was I crying because happy or sad. The only kind words I had from a fellow runner all day. A volunteer made me drink some noodle broth from a bowl made of the bottom of a water bottle. She said it's good if you feel sick. It tasted awful- but I dutifully sipped at it. I phoned my fella then, told him I was in a bad way and that he shouldn't hurry to the finish line as I was going to be hours away yet. 

But I realised I was at la Flegere in daylight. It was around 5.45pm and I was there about 3 hours before I thought I would be. Ridiculous. Quite impossible. I must have missed part of the route or else my watch was broken.

I was suddenly beginning to shiver from sitting still so after a little more broth and some fizzy coke I set off. Maybe in Chamonix they heard me roar as I took the first few steps. I really bellowed. Probably caused an avalanche somewhere. Certainly I scared the runners nearby. 

The first tiny bit of that descent is really nasty. Just a few metres, but it's super steep and loose stones and gravel. A lady nearby didn't like my gingerly edging down so she rushed past- and fell over. That bit negotiated it was quite gnarly but mostly through the woods and a little more comfortable underfoot. A couple of times the trail seemed familiar but I put it down to fatigue. Earlier in the week I'd tried to recce the last bit and followed the trail part way to la Flegere, but it didn't match my GPX of the race route so I gave up. But then I saw a sign saying 'La Floria'. It was familiar! I knew all this bit and I knew that it really wasn't going to be too awful as long as I wasn't silly and tried to run too fast. It's an endless descent and if you want to run you really need 100% focus as it's rooty and stony and uneven.

I could hear the finish line even though it was still about 3 miles away. I ran every bit I could. Down the landrover track, over the foot bridge, I'm by the river. Now I'm running along the cordonned off bit. The streets are packed with people and they are all watching runners coming in. The shouts of "Bravo" and "Allez!" and the cowbells are faint and distant in my ears even though it's all around me. I keep running. Running and smiling. Running, smiling and mentally giving the finger to the Alps. 

You don't take a direct route to the finish- you loop around the streets first. And then I turn the last corner and it's there. I am actually going to finish this race, I'm not last, I'm running not crawling, I leap over the finish and am on my knees sobbing. 

OCC and all things Alpine are done. I'm through with that place and the whole UTMB thing. I'm a fraud there, I don't belong. The place and those races have taken too big a toll.

I won't be back, but for a moment you could hear me roar.

   

Midsummer malaise

Midsummer has been and gone, plans have been made and ditched, job applications sent and rejected.
I've been in the exam hall pretty much full-time which is exhausting even though I enjoy it.
I'm making myself go running even though I don't really feel like it. The loss of desire to run is such that I have put in my diary the date by which I need to withdraw from Autumn 100; I'm not sure I have any business on a 100 miler race this year.
It's hard going at the moment.

On a positive note the results from my last DXA scan show there is some improvement in my hips although my spine continues to deteriorate albeit more slowly. My GP says keep running as it seems to be having a beneficial effect on my hips at least.

I've stopped thinking about trying to focus on this year's races. OCC is now a day out in the mountains rather than an A race to seriously prepare for. I'm such a long way from being physically or mentally in the right place there's simply no point in having any goals other than to get round.  Instead I'm looking ahead to next year: perhaps 2020 is time to attempt some challenges rather than enter races. In light of which I'm off to some mountains to assess whether something I have in mind is achievable. Hopefully a couple of days away from everything and doing something challenging will help reset mind and body too.

onwards and upwards

It's never easy

I meant to write a lovely post about Eco Trail Florence. I started it but just couldn't seem to capture what that race meant to me. All I'll say is that it is a fantastic event, lovely route, well-organised, good aid stations and a joy to take part in. I didn't race it, just bimbled round and took in the sunshine and scenery.

Here's the Eco Trail in no particular order:

Since then a lot has been going on. I've struggled to recover from recurring tonsillitis, left my job and  discovered that osteoporosis makes me unemployable. I do have casual work to do until the end of the exams season but something regular needs to turn up soon.

Training hasn't gone to plan at all. Motivation and focus seem to have disappeared and although I'm keeping things ticking over I'm not in great shape. That's despite an intensive 6 week block of strength work. OCC is preying on my mind- it's looking like I'll be going into it somewhat under-cooked- and compared to how I prepared for A100 last year, I'm just not in the the zone at all for it. Mileage is well down compared to last year, and other than the 50 miles of the Eco Trail race I've run nothing really over 10 miles this year. Although it's nice once I get out on the trails, running more than about 6 miles feels much harder than it should.

I increased my strength work and tweaked my diet to try to shift the extra fat that's accumulated since A100 but it doesn't seem to have worked so I might as well try upping the mileage again and see what that does. A bit of me is thinking that it's a losing battle against age and hormonal changes. Women younger than me complain about how bad periods really affect their training; this is far worse because it's all the time. I'm tired, unfocused, struggling to maintain fitness; I don't recognise this new body or feel like it's me at all.

I don't know how things are going to turn out for the rest of the year. Watch this space.

A leap into the unknown

Quite a bit has been going on since the last post. So here's a quick catch-up:

I quit my job.

Work has been a struggle for a long time. If I'm honest, from the very first day I started working in secondary school. I moved into secondary as I had made a poor choice with a primary school job and needed to move on and start afresh before the wheels came off. Anyway, I've stuck at secondary for three and a half years. In all that time I have never come home feeling like it's been a good day at work. That is not a sustainable way of living, especially when the salary as a TA is way under what even a single person can live off let alone me bringing up 2 kids. So after an awful lot of soul-searching I've jumped. With no job to go to. Which is, quite frankly, terrifying.

I have several ideas of what to do next so I'm applying for jobs as well as deciding on some courses that might allow me to turn doing things I love into things that will earn me some money too. At least it's exam season coming up and there will be invigilating which should see us through until July if nothing else works out.

Running.

As far as running goes, the roller coaster continues but I suspect it's been like that due to the enormous stresses caused by the work situation. My weight has been all over the place, I haven't been eating well or recovering well from training sessions, I've developed a few slightly concerning niggles and now ended up 6 days out from the first big race of the year very run down and with viral tonsillitis. This week I've run twice, 8 miles in total.

The lesson there is that you absolutely MUST include the 'bad' stresses from life, work etc with the 'good' stress from training. Both raise cortisol and both need adequate recovery. If you're using one form of stress to mitigate the other load of stress then eventually it's all going to go wrong. And so it has with me. Lesson learned.

Ageing.

I'm also facing the stark reality of having to completely rethink how I train in order to be as fit and healthy as I can whilst the inevitable changes of age begin to make a significant impact. The really tricky bit is how to find that balance between staving off the midlife fat and weight gain (which you do by shorter, sharper, harder workouts) and maintaining/ improving endurance so that I can continue to enjoy running ultras without losing lots of muscle and becoming fat and slow. I may need to dump the goal of a sub 24 100 miler this year and instead just focus on a new plan of attack for training.

Injury.

My fella has spent the start of this year injured. Whilst it's been understandably miserable for him I've also found it really hard. We don't run a lot together but being unable to run together at all has really affected me and taken away some of the enjoyment of a long Sunday run. Usually I have no problem training alone, often I prefer it, but without his company to look forward to some of my longer weekend runs have been very hard going. He's just back on his feet now and we're supposed to be running a 50 miler together this coming weekend. With the state we're both in it could be an interesting race...

Times they are a changin'

I'm not especially a Bob Dylan fan but right now times are most certainly changing in the Runningstitsch household.

Something isn't right with my training- I was really enjoying doing lots of strength work and getting some muscles but the last couple of weeks I've struggled to train at all and have just been generally exhausted. Even my appetite has gone wrong and I'm not managing to eat enough. So despite the fact- or perhaps because of the fact- that I have a 50 miler in less than three weeks, I've decided to ditch any semblance of a training plan and just take it easy. No pressure to run or lift, just do it if I can and not worry if I can't. Let's see what happens at the Eco Trail and then reassess in April.

This year has also begun with several DNS. One down to logistics, another because I'd had such an awful week at work I simply couldn't face the preparation, three hour drive, then running 50k in a storm the three hours driving home again. That's not like me- usually a race is an escape, a chance to get away from all the stresses and enjoy being outside with no distractions.

So I've reached a point where I find myself taking stock and looking for a new way forward. I think I have found one but it's a big risk and it could all go horribly wrong. But life is too short to be this unhappy and dealing with so much stress, all for an income that doesn't quite pay the bills. Being poor doesn't scare me- I've never had loads of spare money- and I'd rather be poor but happier with what I'm doing than where I'm at right now.

In many respects I look at my life so far and see failure after failure, never living up to expectations or potential. There have been so many mistakes. But one thing I've got right is that I've always kept trying. If something doesn't work then I'll see if I can change it or if not try something else. I guess a bit like running ultras- stuff happens and you just have to find a way of managing so that you can get to the finish.

But it's spring and even though March has definitely come in like a lion, there are flowers in the garden, seedlings on my window sill and there's still a pair of stinky muddy trail shoes by the door, so all is not lost.

(You really don't want a photo of my trail shoes 😁)