The week from Boxing Day to New Year's Day was very good. Boxing Day I managed 20 miles with Bracknell Forest Runners, including a whole new section of paths and trails paralelling London Road, taking in Ascot Racecourse and some other areas.
Overall, I got in 56 miles for the week. After the 20 miler on Monday, I took a rest day, and the day after that I went to the gym. Thursday I got back to running in a big way, with a 13.5 mile run following my course called "Trailrunners 8:30s" which 'satnaved' a run that I'd done with the BFRs a couple of years ago. It is the most 'traily' course I have on my watch. Actually I'd like to figure out a way to code all the trails, tracks, and roads in Swinley and then put together a scale of trailiness. But when I think about it, there's so much variation, that it's nice to have different kinds of trails put together to mix things up. All winding rocky single-track might get tiresome after a while. You'd want some springy pine-needly double (or triple) track roads thrown in just to make things interesting. Still I can dream of my 'master map' that's probably only exists in the minds of the veteran runners of Swinley that I follow around each week.
One of the best runs I did over the holidays was my Christmas Eve run, that followed a course of the first run I ever did with Bracknell Forest Runners. It's called "My First Forest Run" on my watch, and it's from 19 May 2019. It's in a tie for my favourite forest run, with the one noted above that I did on the 29th of Dec. Overall I think I did a pretty good job of pacing myself.
The long run on Boxing Day was at a brisk pace of sub 8:30 from Mercedes to Blacknest Gate, and then it settled down into some easy to moderate pacing, depending on who I'd latched onto going around Virginia Water Lake. I got going with a couple of people who are doing preliminary base training for their upcoming spring marathon efforts, and finished off with the north-of-Ascot section at another good brisk sub-9 pace. Overall the run came out at sub 10mm, and this included a little bit of walking I'd thrown in just to give it a kind of 'ultra' feeling.
I had also, on the 20 miler, tested out my recipe from Jason Koop's Training Essentials for Ultrarunning: his bacon-egg rice balls. I at five of these balls on the Boxing Day run, and they were excellent. Washed down with water they went down nicely, and provided a nice salty snack and some mid-run carbs to keep me going. Koop recommends water with food so that you can keep track of hydration and electrolyte consumption separately. I think I agree with this approach now that I've tested it. So the Boxing Day run was beneficial on many levels. It was an ultra training run of 3.5 hours, in which I tested both walking and eating along the way. I finished feeling quite fresh. This is a very auspicious start to my ultra-training plan for my Race to the Stones 100km run on 8 July 2023.
The two trailruns I did were of quite different pacing, but both were very beneficial in a way the long 20 miler hadn't been: they were trailruns (as opposed to the mostly road 20 miler). The Christmas Eve one was deliberately slow: 11mm+ pace because it was a day after a hard session I'd done to re-introduce tempo runs into my regimen. On the Eve of Christmas Eve I'd done a 'tempo/tempo/hills' run around South Hill Park, with 12/6/6 at tempo pace (7:30mm or faster) and four 90 second hill efforts up to Hilton. The day after that, any trail run was going to be easy, and I'm proud of myself for how evenly I paced Christmas Eve after that, all 11mm, with not a single mile under 10mm, and this for a 12 mile run.
The last run of the 56 mile week that just ended yesterday, was yesterday's group trail run at 10mm pace, and it was just so relaxing. We did selfies (see www.instagram.com/gwilymeades ) at Hut Hill and elsewhere, and I actually chatted a bit (or at least it felt chatty to me). On the Boxing Day 20 miler too, I had managed to keep up the flow of chat fairly well (for me anyway), and I think it contributed to an overall sense of flow for the run.
So, as I head forward into the new year, my priority is on recovering well, which, today, I've done. Sorely tempted to do back-to-back social trailruns, I held back today, and stayed inside, and read Aschwanden's Good to Go: How to Eat, Sleep and Rest Like a Champion. I can only compare it to other iconic, scientific, and easy to read books like Hutchinson's Endure and Epstein's Range. Good to Go deserves only the highest praise. I'm polishing it off in a day. You get all the scientific studies you could need, but wrapped up in excellent science writing narratives and participatory exploration of the the recovery techniques discussed. It's great, and all runners should read it. It's perfect for a recovery day.
The other one I've been reading, which I treated myself to as a feel-good (but not necessarily rigourous) read, is McDougall and Orton's Born to Run 2. One of the first things they recommend doing is taking a week off to explore various small 'exercise snacks' of various squats, deadbugs, and quick feet mini-drills to wake up and reconnect the bodies and brains of long-distance runners. It's a really different book from the first one, to which it constantly alludes, but the really nice thing about it is that it follows up with some of the 'characters' from the original Born To Run, and it gives you hands-on information, including crucially several recipes from Pinole Bars to Posole, energy gels and bars, special recovery drinks and meals, and all kinds of inspiring food ideas. It's also a training plan.
