Race to the Stones 2021

 

In this first photo (above) I am in the Field of Dreams, possibly the most iconic location along the section of The Ridgeway that comprises the Race to the Stones route.  As a friend pointed out, it very much looks like I just ran here with the attention of arriving to say 'hi, I'm here!' on Instagram.  Which in a way I did, I had viewed images of the locale on the RTTS site, and on Google Earth recon missions so many times, that I was elated to actually be there in reality.  Field of Dreams is The Thing Itself.

In the second photo I've just finished the race and have a genuine smile on my face. I was very happy to see my wife Diane who had just arrived moments before I crossed the finish line.  A woman behind me was sobbing and laughing at the same time, and I could see the crowds of people waiting behind the COVID line as we approached.  I held my Loki Micro Trail Pro poles (see photo below) one in each hand to highlight (if only to myself) how important this gear choice had been. These poles were a key element in my pacing which towards the end I would characterise as a 'fast walk', on very uneven and unforgiving terrain.  The chalkland ruts in the final leg of the race are notorious and 'vicious' (as a friend so aptly put it). Having the stabilizing influence of this light comfortable bit of kit was wonderful through the whole of the second day of the race (I was pole-less on the first day). 

The first day was also amazing in its own way, and it was really different, a real contrast, to the one that followed.  I was the fourth person out of the start gate at 6:30am on Saturday in a field near Lewknor.  It was dry and cool, great conditions, and I saw a couple of people I knew, and I waved and smiled, with only slight nerves running through me as I spaced myself next to the other starters.  I paced myself out to the 1km marker where marshals and race supporters cheered us on as I sarcastically remarked "one down" to the 1km marker and the cheering people standing next to it.  I had a good chat with a pair of similarly-paced (approx 10 min mile) runners about how good the conditions were, and about how nice it was to be on the trail, pacing, and not going off too fast.  At this point, and throughout the entire race I was being passed by runners going faster than me.  I was never passed by a walker.  By the end I managed to finish in 171st place (fourth page down on the Weekender page), a result with which I am most pleased because it reflects not only my goal of completion, but also a fine finish for someone not really out to compete.  Scrolling down the pages later I saw a LOT of DNFers and 'dash' finishers (a dash next to your name meaning what, I not quite sure).

The photo above shows my posing after several lovely cozy fun hours with my wife at the basecamp, a couple of which were kind of miserable with rain, but luckily we were under a beautiful dry tent, and I spent a good deal of time stretching, eating (a massive burrito filled with chips, salad, sour cream, and lovely cooked veggies), showering (I was the first person into a pristine shower stall over in the 'quiet' yellow tent section, which I LOVED, because it was ACTUALLY quiet ALL NIGHT).  During the dry hours we watched Wimbelodon on a truck-sized television next to the chill-out tent, sitting in chairs we'd had stashed in the back of the car for just such as occasion.  In the photo above I'm sporting my RTTS sweatshirt featuring a yurt-sized hood. The next day I wore my 'official' RTTS running shirt despite it allegedly being bad luck to do so.  

In a way it's amazing how well I could walk by the end of the first day, given how brutal it had been, especially Grim's Ditch.  I had read up on this feature beforehand but it is impossible to see at the resolutions available on Google Earth.  It's an old fortification or jurisdictional/parish boundary that runs for several kilometres roughly east-west, and it is filled with tree roots and a lot of non-flat slippery or single track sections with very little recent trimming.  Because of the mostly single track aspect of it, and because it is early in the race, it is very easy to get locked into the pace of the dozen or so people directly in front and behind you, like a moving queue.  This for me was the most challenging aspect, and after Grim's Ditch I never really went very fast again, though I'm proud to have maintained a good pace anyway.  After about 18-20 miles the fast part of my race was over.  This does, I realise, amount to starting off too fast, which seems bound to happen regardless of best intentions, given how excited and fresh one feels to be starting one's race after six months of training and a really good taper. 

The other best decision (aside from pacing myself and using poles in the second half) was my choice of shoes. I chose to run in a pair of newish (<100 mile) Asics Gel Kayano 26s and not to switch to trail shoes for the second day.  Sticking with the Asics was definitely the right choice because I have never done significant training time in trail shoes, and because the majority of training was done in the shoes in which I actually ended up running the race.  The poles, however, were virtually a new addition on race day, so why did these end up working?  I had actually used poles on some long runs at one point back in 2020, perfecting my so-called Nordic walking technique, which I did use a bit on race day until it started to give me blisters.  Before those blisters could even set in I changed my technique to more of what I might call a 'back stab' technique which I'd seen another guy a bit older than me using at the start of that glorious second day.

I actually feel like I made a friend with him, and we chatted for a good half hour.  I had actually seen him before, in 2019, and vividly remembered having been asked by him that first time if I was running on fresh legs (which I was: in 2019 I did day 2 only, coming in at around 5h 30, and managing 10th place for that day). Turns out, having chatted to him a bit more and being a bit more companionable this time around, he's a lifelong runner who has switched to ultras and staged races now that he's mostly given up on marathons.  He will be running in Iceland as training for some 300 plus mile sled-pulling staged events finishing up in the Canadian Arctic at Tuktoyaktuk, NWT.  This chat at the start of day 2, on the glorious route that it represents, in the brilliant sunshine along towards Uffington White Horse and that whole landscape, was the highlight of the race for me.  I loved Grim's Ditch and its mud/guts/glory aspects; and I loved Field of Dreams; but being able to bond and relate and find out about someone else's journey was the winning moment and a breakthrough.  It was also really funny how announcing at one point like it was a big deal that I was actually going to run, I then ran for around 10 miles leaving my friend behind, only to have him continually thereafter pop up several places ahead of me (not too far mind you), but without him seeming to ever break a sweat.  It was funny, and is part of the reason why I was still smiling right at the end (after passing my friend again, him having beaten me to the Avebury Stones themselves on that funny little jog at the end where the race cruelly makes you double back around to reach the finish line). 

In the map above, Grim's Ditch is the straight section with the hard left-turn at the end, moving from top right to the left across the map.  Below you see my completed second section from the Strava map. Many people complained about day 2 but I think it is both more beautiful overall and more forgiving.  It is only hard because the very last section is rutty single track and because you're exhausted. 

My take aways from my first 100k?  Well, first of all, I'll be doing it again!  I will probably do the weekender again next time because I love the vibe at basecamp, and loved spending time with my wife there to just get a big boost, and relax and enjoy the summer a bit.  

Second, I love the landscape and will seize any opportunity to experience it again. There's something magical about the area, and not just because I'd read Pratchett's The Wee Free Men just before my run. The whole Ridgeway feature is packed with history and beauty, with friendly people and adventurers, with the most beautiful cows I ever seen (like cows from heaven), with the hardiest looking grains and soils and bedrock the most sensuous-smelling vegetation and just solid foundation-running I can barely formulate into words. It is a holistic and unforgettable life-changing world-shaking experience that I will try to do as many times as I can again before I die.  It might sound weird to say that, but it is truly something to measure oneself by, and it brings to mind thoughts of mortality at times in part, well, let's be honest, because you feel like you're dying!

Third, it's a great run and love setting up the kit, being prepared, and just running out there in my carefully chosen ensemble right down to the socks I'd picked up at the last minute at the running store and that brought me as much comfort as anything when I was sore.  Mostly I remember feeling good to be honest and I was lucky to be able to recover from this run really quickly too.  Part of the 'great-runness' of it has been recovering with a big juicy steak on Sunday evening; managing somehow to stay up for the England-Italy match later that same day (was it still the same day somehow?); going out for another big juicy steak on Monday the next day, and by Tuesday feeling ready to run again.  I am lucky, but I also prepared well and didn't overtrain.  My max training run was 24 miles; my best training run was a 20/14 mile back to back.  These things (and just shy of 1000 miles training over 6 months) got me through.

Fourth, I have to say I love posting stuff post-run, and I'm all about the kudos.  With that I'll go reminisce and scroll a bit more, and think about signing up for next year! I can't wait for RTTS 2022.....

5 years' running

July 2021 will mark 5 years since I started running.  I was 46, a 'master's' runner, when I began my couch-to-5k program with Runnymede Runners at Windsor Great Park. It was a pretty big group that met at the Savill Garden car park 3 times a week to alternate run/walk in a big long line. If you got to the front during the run phase, you'd curl back around in the opposite direction and go to the back of the line until it was time to walk again. This was repeated as many times, on as many days, as needed, to get to the point where you were running the whole 5k.  I was pleased in those days to do an easy 5k in 37 minutes, noting to myself that it wasn't hard if you just paced yourself.

Now I'm 51 and I feel like I've come through a big string of personal bests and fitness improvements that were massive, but also due to my age that I'm angling back down to where I was at the start of the c25k journey, noting often to myself these days that 'I'm just glad that I can run'.

In 5 years I've overcome IT band pain, runner's knee, Morton's neuroma, and shin splints, all of which felt fairly major, and took me out for at least one three week period at a time.  Each time I got back to running I told myself 'I'm just glad that I can run, no matter what the pace, it's the fact that I'm running that matters, because it feels so good.'

So, in a way, not much has changed.  For example, during today's recovery run, in which I honestly felt that I could not have run much faster, I did about a 12 minute/mile pace, about the same pace as my first 5k.  The difference now is that I labeled today's run a 'recovery run' because yesterday I did a 'lactate threshold interval' run, in which you maintain your 10 mile race pace for 12-14 minutes during a 10k run.  It was tough but very do-able, and my pace alternated between 7 minute/mile and 10 minutes/mile.  

Earlier in the week I had done some intervals at the track.  A couple of days before that I did some long very slow running around Swinley Forest in preparation for my upcoming Race to the Stones. Now I'm doing ultras and have both marathons and half marathon races to run by the end of the summer.  And I'm supposed to be racing 5ks every so often on some Wednesdays with my now exclusive club Bracknell Forest Runners (though I'm still bolstered by lots of kudos from by old running buddies in Runnymede).

Strava tells me I've done 1220 runs to accumulate 7500 miles in my 5 five years.  

But it still really just boils down to that one truth: 'I'm just glad I can run'

Still Running: Why do I run?

 I'm reading Goddard's book Still Running, and it is making me think about why I run (and about why I am still running).

The book is written by a lifelong practitioner and scholar of Zen Buddhism, and it includes reference lists for each chapter, mostly on Buddhism, but also citing Noakes (Lore of Running) and other rigorous scholarly works.  This is (for me, an academic) both reassuring and useful because if I want to I can chase up another book later if I want more on a topic.

Goddard covers a lot of ground, and she includes a practical exercise at the end of each chapter.  I was surprised to find almost all of these useful.  For example, she recommends a 2:3 breathing rhythm (I use 2:2, meaning 2 steps on the inhale and 2 steps on the exhale), and has a set of running instructions for both experimenting with, and choosing, an effective pattern.  I have come to my own 2:2 pattern after reading Daniel's Running Formula. 

Goddard also covers cadence, and the golden 180 number that so many others cite as ideal.  She is quick to note that 180 is bandied about as an 'elite' figure, and that we should work up to it, building consistency through our practice.  You don't need to be a Buddhist to appreciate this book, and you don't need to be a runner.  This an introductory text for becoming a (better) runner; it also introduces some fundamental concepts (such as breathing and mindfulness) in Buddhist practice and philosophy (as noted above, with references).

Sometimes (especially after an injury) I'm almost surprised that I'm still running. I've met middle-aged men who seem to be former runners who will often cite injury or laziness as a reason for not continuing with the sport.  For me, one of the biggest ongoing challenges to continuing to run is that the social aspect of it has been pulled away for over a year now.  One of my last 'social' runs was the Wokingham Half Marathon in February 2020. I ran a few times with a small group in August as well, but since then I've run roughly 1000 miles on my own.

As a cumulative fact I'd say this has been harder than being injured. Running solo has its upside but done too often it comes to feel like an overuse injury: non-acute but gradually noticed as pain over time until it almost comes to feel debilitating.  

Opportunities are starting to emerge to run in groups but the sad fact is that my last group run in August ended in acute injury: a shin splint pain that made me hobble home and that even three weeks rest failed to fully rehabilitate.  It took me until December to finally be able to begin to build up to 20 miles a week, and then very gradually up to 40/week and into an ultra-marathon training plan (from the book Relentless Forward Progress, the easiest plan in the book, in preparation for July 2021's Race to the Stones). 

But even now I manage the shin pain which has flared up again at times, in part by adjusting my pace on the fly and in the moment, something you can't really do when you're pegged to a metronomic group-paced run.  

So I keep running on my own, managing 20-45 miles a week depending on how I'm feeling.  Often it is slow going, but other times I surprise myself by doing fast-paced runs that feel easy.  It is those pacier/easier efforts with a small group that I really miss, and that I fear might never return.  

Even if they don't (and they will), I'll still keep running, and with Askwith and others, I'll practice slow running, running like a deer (visualisation), or maybe even blind running; in other words, I'll keep experimenting and having fun, which is another aspect of Still Running: it makes running fun again. 

Exercised

 This is about as good as books get.  Every observation and comment is backed up by evidence from scientific literature, ranging from the anthropological to the physiological. You get a book about running that also takes in a spectrum of other forms of exercise that allude to, contains, or border on that fundamental activity. Actually, I suspect, after reading this, that brisk walking is more fundamental, in the sense that it has a stronger basis in the evolution of human beings as hunter-gatherers.  This is made abundantly clear in Exercised.  Hunter-gatherers would have looked upon (indeed do look upon) unnecessary jogging as a ridiculous waste of calories.

If you are a Born-to-Runner, one who has read and internalised Chris McDougall's book about the Tarahumara, then there is a lot for you in this book, but don't expect your biases to be confirmed. As a rigorous scientist, everything Lieberman examines he does so with a sceptical and critical eye.  He expects you to do so when reading this book, but I could not find fault with it. Lieberman is himself known as 'The Barefoot Professor' in running circles, indicating the extent to which he internalised the dogma around all things McDougallish.  Though, of course, his own time in the field working with San, Hadza, Tarahumara, and other hunter-gatherer cultures are a more fundamental reason. He is critical of the Born to Run cult, and gives careful consideration and weight to running with shoes.

We don't get to running until around page 200, before which we are led systematically through myth-busting chapters on sleep (5-7 hours is ideal, and if you sleep more than 8 hours you are more likely to die young); rest (we were born to REST not RUN); laziness, for which we are also evolved, noting the amount of time our ape ancestors and our hunting-gathering fellow humans do actually spend resting (it is a LOT); sitting (slouching is just fine, and chairs are irrelevant); beds (we don't really need them); speed (humans are slow and ungainly runners, even Usain Bolt); strength (brawniness had its place in the past, but better is to be strong); aggression (humans are better at proactive than reactive violence); walking (you can lose weight by doing it BRISKLY; and 10,000 steps is a real figure in terms of health); running (it is basically a form of dancing, which is basically hopping from one leg to another over and over again), and many more myths busted.

After all the evidence, supported by clear and convincing graphs, has mounted throughout the book, we are given a tour of what happens when we age and don't exercise; versus a life lived actively. We note that many lazy people live long happy fulfilling lives; and that many exercists (his word for proselytising exercisers constantly urging us to exercise) don't. Lieberman takes these cases apart using both logic and evidence. The lazy longevity phenomenon is countered by pointing out that such people could have lived even longer better lives had they exercised; those marathoners who died young from heart attacks might have died earlier had they not been so active (I hadn't realised Jim Fixx and some of the others responsible for the running boom had led such nutritionally debauched lives before they became runners until I read this book).

The final chapter is a mini-book for the use of exercise as both tool and dosage for attacking a range of diseases from cardiovascular, to cancer, to mental health. Nowhere is exercise given as panacea, everywhere its role is precisely weighed up against other courses of action, and varying dosages and types, from cardio to weights (both of which are highly recommended, with the weight falling more to the former). 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise per week is the basic prescription for all, in a nutshell, with two days of weights.  He even gives a few pages discussion to running injury, and the running aspect will be quite satisfying to my readers who pursue this great endeavour.  Reading this book will deepen both your love and sense of purpose around the importance of keeping on with the exercise, however much you can do, in whatever form, for a happier and healthier life. 

Cadence, breath, rest

For the last four years, the rhythm of my life has been defined by running. I have come to think in terms of breath and cadence. I have completed two ultramarathons, three marathons, and more. I have found my distance (the half), and come through injury multiple times to run even better than before.

I am moving on from being a beginner as I enter my fifth year of serious running. It's time to quit making rookie mistakes (I tell myself), it's time to take rest & recovery seriously. This also has to do with my age. But Sheehan has put to rest the idea that age need be any significant barrier to achievement. 

My age requires to find that achievement, and rests, like silences in music, come to structure it. We become better in recovery when we incorporate it into our training regime. This occurs over multiple temporal scales and rhythms. At the levels of days (we stop running or we double run); weeks (we have rest days); and seasons (we, like Jurek, take a couple of months to do something else).

My right, and then my left, shin became sore to the point of prohibiting further running for at least a week. I went into self-rehab, and it worked, as it has before. I took it easy and made a comeback. If I've done it before, I can do it again. I've proven that. Now I need to prove that my running can withstand a significant rest.

Rest need not obviate the act of writing and reflection. One will still generate diary entries from the act of letting one's body lie fallow for a time, or at least of letting the muscles that have come to so dominate re-balance and settle into a different kind of harmony with the rest. I'll do chin ups, pushups, situps, leg-lifts and toe-crunches and then I'll fold the gains back into the field of myself.

Schoenberg and Bartok have ruled an atonal summer, a chaotic collage of plague and epic fail. The collage of myself has been similarly crimped, crying, and bombastic. What I need is a new kind of music more conducive to the rest and the recovery. Perhaps more Dvorak, more Bach, more Takamitsu. I'll listen to classical guitar, to Tarrega, whose lines run clean like those in fields formerly fallow.

The plan is, come November, to begin to work from whatever base I still have towards the Brighton marathon, with the Wokingham Half as a test run. This is what I did last year. If it worked once it can work again, but I need clean base, a clear slate, from which to spring into that endeavour. 

3100: Run and Become

This is the second documentary movie about running that I've 'made' my wife watch with me. The first was The Barkley Marathons: The Race That Eats Its Young (a review of which I'll save for another post).  This one is a lot gentler in its own way, though I suspect the average paces maintained by competitors in both races is probably somewhat comparable, given the terrain on the one hand (Barkley Marathons) and the distance on the other (3100).

The movie is structured around a race that takes place within a half city block in New York City (this was also described in Finn's book The Rise of the Ultra Runners, about which I've posted).  The main sections of footage involve various participants in the 3100 mile (5000 km) race that was started by religious leader Sri Chinmoy. Various (if not all) participants are followers of the pacifist movement inspired by Chinmoy, himself an inspirational runner and competitor.

Interspersed with footage from the 3100 race itself, which is a very subdued affair, stretching over days that last from 6am to midnight, kicked off each day with a silent prayer among the twenty or so participants this event attracts. On the surface, these people do not appear competitive, partly because the pace is so slow, but then again, they have to cover a LOT of miles.  The whole idea of pacing yourself goes to a whole new level.

Beneath the surface, there are at least several of the participants who really want to win. This plays out over days, with one racer gaining a few miles over another each day until, several days later, they are in the lead.  Other competitors simply want to finish, and we are given glimpses of at least two of these peoples' lives, through interviews that include key family members giving support throughout the race.

Interleaved with the main 3100 racer sections are three others: 1. Kalahari hunter/gatherers 2. Navajo runners in Arizona and 3. Marathon monks.  Footage from different parts of the world highlight how human beings have linked running to belief, religion, livelihood, and healing. These interlinked issues are given some historical positioning, but we also realise that running goes much deeper than that recorded in written history, back to when knowledge was transmitted orally, and stories about running intersected with stories of the hunt, of connecting with the gods, and of basic freedom.

These other sections break up the main story of 3100 miles in NYC nicely, but we are eager to get back to these stories as well. We see the main character, an incredibly humble man from Finland, going about his daily life back home, and then we see him, in a very similar way, doing very everyday things during the course of the race: eating, sleeping, setting a timer, chatting with people, and come to realise that there really is no distinction between running and not running: it's just a matter of degree.  Slow motion footage of his feet moving alongside the chain-link fence that runs beside much of the course make this point visually: it looks very much like fast walking, and indeed, as in all ultra-running, a lot of it is walked.

To summarise: my wife ended up loving this movie (just as she had with the Barkleys one), and we had a good discussion about it. I would have like to have heard more about the other three threads of information, but the movie is already two hours long, so I'll have to resort to my books about running to pick up that other information at some time.

Wokingham Half 2020

There I am, running as strong as I've ever run in my life, just having turned 50 years old three months previously, and in the middle of a long training block for Brighton Marathon 2020.  Wokingham Half Marathon was one of those races that lets you see what your new pace is, towards the 'big race' for which you are actually training.  As it turns out, and as we know from personal injury, one can never assume that things will happen in the way that we plan for them to. 

That was months ago, pre-lockdown, and once the Coronavirus finally hit in full force, forcing us all indoors with the exception of our 'daily dose' of exercise, my training plans all went out the window.  I went kind of crazy with the running, upping my miles for no good reason other than that my Race to the Stones had not been cancelled.  That took only a couple more weeks, so I put the big pile of ultra-training miles to one side (never minding the ill-advised 15 mile run I did in my Salomon cross-country trainers), bought a pair of Nikes, and started doing hill and speed work to gear up for the Windsor Half.

And then that was cancelled, but because I was running so well (I thought), I told myself to just keep going, and installed a regime of two runs a day, three to four days a week.  Right after a brilliantly-paced fast one around Martins Heron I knew for sure I had the dreaded shin splints some of my mentors have talked about on occasion.  And that, as they say, was that.  My fitness plummeted even as I continued to try to do (truncated) speed sessions, and finally I knew that I needed a rest to recover from whatever it was that I'd done to my body.  That or I'd probably end up with a stress fracture.

As the fitness tanked and I rested, I made sure to do ALL my rehab exercises every day, taking up to an hour or more to get through everything.  I found out through Hobrough's new book that I'd been doing my single leg squats wrong for years now, and I corrected that.  This turned my stretching sessions into mini-strength workouts, and I've been doing these since the 10th of June or so, the day after my last really good run around Martins Heron.  

I keep thinking back to Wokingham Half 2020 to remind myself I'm still a good runner, that that wasn't so long ago (though it feels long ago, being pre-lockdown), that my form holds, and I know how to breathe (3 steps per in-breath, 3 steps out).  I can still go the distance, having put in several 13+ mile long runs in the past few weeks.  Thinking back to Wokingham Half, though (and having never given it a proper write-up), what made it go so well?  Looking back at my previous relatively high fitness level from a point that is relatively low, I can say a bit more objectively, I think, that:

-Learning to run, and running at a higher level, is a fundamentally a social activity, like all learning.  I ran well because I ran with a club. The people I ran with kept it real for me, held me within my own limits, even as they pushed them further.  With the limits expanded, they became real.  Running totally alone as I have the last few months has made for a false sense of the reality of my limits, and this has been a direct result of having the social aspect (the running club) stripped away.

-Socially-learned running infused my body right down to the individual bones in my feet, and the pores of my skin. I had learned by watching others run, and had participated in the 'fast groups' and the speed sessions several times a week. I also did weekly long runs that included trail running in the forest, also in groups, but composed of differently aged individuals (usually older) on the Sunday runs.

-I decided to run fast.  I told myself that the way my feet turned over in a speed session, driving each foot into the ground and keeping up a fast cadence (180 per minute), was the way to approach this race. I had a strategy, and it paid off, because I came within a minute of my goal (1:30 HM).

-I caught up with, and maintained pace with, the 1:30 pacer.  This was hard at first because the pacer was way ahead, meaning I had to do faster than desired start of race pace.  Usually I manage to start slow, but often too slow.  This time it was the other way around, and because I beat my PB by two minutes I can only surmise that it worked.  With that said, the second half of my race was slower as I hit a bit of a wall brought on by taking in no nutrition during the course.

-I ran consistently, and this was tied to having confidence in my ability to maintain sub-7 minute mile paces over the full half marathon.  This was due in turn to speed work, as well as to my previous PB at the Windsor Half Marathon in 2019.

What will I do now that so many training plans have been junked, and now that my fitness has dropped and my right leg has rebelled?  

I'm trying to be patient, and I'm continuing to run.  My pace these days is good if I manage sub-10 minutes per mile.  Which is good, because I'm being forced to take it slow.  My body is telling me not to do what I did when I first got those Nike Pegasus trainers, which was just RUN FAST!  

I'm on a training plan for ultra, meaning that speed is less important, and that distance and endurance are key.  I'm moving relentlessly forward to the end of that training plan, and will run the distance if I feel up to it at that time.  The key thing for now is just to have some structure.