I keep thinking I'm getting a cold, feeling a bit clammy, hope it's nothing apart from nerves. Nerves, hahahaha, 4 weeks plus to go and nerves!
It's going ok this week, should have 80 miles on the board since Monday by tonight, knackered but bound to be. On track for around 150 by Sunday night.
Anyway, I was thinking about training for ultras, and how there are a number of different ways of going about it. A guy called Chris Finill will line up at Tooting, he is 55 and has a stellar running CV, with some amazing ultra performances, has gone over 150 miles in 24 hours! He only runs 40 miles a week, but very high quality I think - that obviously works very well for him. A lot of ultra advice online will emphasise quite high volume, but also talk about including tempo runs and some speedwork, and they go on about differentials, how it will be much easier at a slower pace etc. - I think most people sign up to this school of thought and it works great for a lot of them.
Then there's me.
I'm doing big mileage, all of it slow, I have rarely been under 9 minute miles in the last 12 weeks, maybe half a dozen times, and only then in the last mile or two of 29 mile road runs. Most of the running I've done has been between 9.30 and 10 minute mile pace. Occasionally I have been 10.30 to 11 minute pace if I have been doing a very long run and things haven't been going my way. And the slowness doesn't faze me, I don't fret about it, indeed I think the 10.30 pace long runs where it's been a struggle are precisely the ones that will pay me back big time in the second 12 hours at Tooting.
I'm going my own way in training, doing the old experiment-of-one stuff, because I've been running long enough to know what suits me and what invites injury for me. We're all different and off-the-peg schedules ignore that - some people thrive on speedwork, others get injured. I'm not fast nowadays, I can do a parkrun in 21 and bits eyeballs out, but can maintain that pace for a half-marathon if I train for it, my strength is my strength, if you like. We all know what our strengths are, if we've been running for a while. I think, work on your strengths, not your weaknesses, and play to your strengths. So, I can handle volume, but speedwork and high intensity I'm not totally comfortable with, if I add the two together and increase, at some point I will get injured - this much I know.
Ok. So my aim is a 24 hour track race. Last year, off the back of training for an off-road ultra where I peaked at 95 miles a week but averaged more like 60, I came 5th with 122 miles. The winner did 144 miles. I was 17th at 12 hours, on 63 miles. I did 35 miles for the first 6 hours, with a 2 minute walk break every half hour, then switched down to a one lap walk break which I maintained for the rest of the time - a lap equated roughly to 4/5 minutes walking.
I thought about this a lot before I started my schedule at the beginning of June. It's an event where nothing happens quickly. An average pace of 10 minutes per mile won last year. Strength in the back half gains you stacks of time and distance. At first I thought I would have to start a fair bit faster to improve significantly but, when I looked at the splits, I decided I didn't need to speed up much, but instead train to be stronger from 6 hours to the end, to stick to 2 minute walk breaks for as long as possible, hopefully for the entire thing. In short, I needed to condition my body to run slowly when deeply fatigued, and to keep doing that, and to mentally get to a place where I knew I could run again and again at a slow pace when completely knackered. As that is exactly what I will need on the day. To my way of thinking, 16 hours in, when my body is screaming at me to stop, the memory of numerous 30 minute tempo runs isn't really going to be of much use to me, but recalling plenty of 29 mile road runs whilst deeply fatigued might just be what will help me grind it out. You have to go your own way in training, as in life - be true to yourself and do what is right for you.
And the way I decided to do that for Tooting was to run high volume at a similar pace to what I expected to run in the event. So that's what I've been doing for the last 12 weeks, and here we are now churning out 150 miles of Plodville, Arizona in 7 days.
The theory is mine own! I like it, it makes sense to me, it has a simple logic.
We'll find out whether the theory works or not in 4 weeks' time!
Ham and eggs. Ham and eggs. The chicken's involved. The pig is committed.
Salute the pig.
