Thursday 11 February 2016

The Pilgrims Challenge 2016

My last blog post was supposed to be about the Pilgrims Challenge but by the time I'd brought you up to date with events since I decided to do the MDS again I sort of ran out of time so this time I'd better get straight on with it...

In previous years I'd travelled to Farnham on the Friday and stayed in a B&B. This year the plan was that Perry - one of my future tent mates I'd met at Druids - would drive us there on Saturday morning. Unfortunately Perry was having trouble with his Achilles tendons and decided, quite rightly, it would be better to miss Pilgrims and do the MDS rather than vice-versa. This wasn't a great problem as I knew that a few other runners were staying the night at the Premier Inn in Aldershot so I booked myself in there and travelled on the Friday as usual. It turned out that the Premier Inn was not only popular with competitors it was also where the XNRG team were staying so I felt I was definitely in the right place - if only I always felt like that during their events...

Anyway Friday night started out with dinner with Wendy and Alison, who I'd first met properly in the previously mentioned B&B the first time I did Pilgrims. They are doing MDS 2017 and, while I was only too happy to discuss the MDS with them over dinner, I was slightly worried that they were taking my advice so seriously they were taking notes! After I left them another friend, Dean, arrived with his mate so I obviously had to have a beer with them which meant I probably got to bed slightly later than I expected. This turned out not to really matter as a combination of beer, tea, coffee and my age meant that regular toilet trips rather broke up my nights sleep anyway.

Saturday morning and my blog has now at least reached the day of the race. Breakfast was consumed in my hotel room, porridge and a beetroot cereal bar as mentioned in my last blog. A bottle of Lucozade took the taste of the beetroot away and I was ready to go. XRNG always have three start times for their events.  The first start is for walkers and slower runners, an hour later there is the 'main' start and an hour after that the 'elite' start. Despite my heroics at Druids I was still on the 'main' start. The reason was that on the entry form the criteria for the 'elite' start was that you can do the 33 miles in less than 6 hours. Given I'd never got within touching distance of 6 hours previously and that the second day last year took me over 7 hours I felt it would be optimistic of me to say the least to expect to take under 6 hours.I reckoned 6:15 would be  very good time for me and might be achievable - if I could avoid getting lost of course...

Alison kindly gave me a lift to the start and after collecting my number it was soon time for the safety briefing. I tried to pay attention, its difficult when you've heard it before and of course XNRG's procedures for dropping out, getting lost and medical emergencies are the same for Pilgrims as Druids. However I feel I should treat the Race Director with respect and at least listen to him. Actually it is always a good idea to listen as there may be useful information about the course, things like there being a brand new shiny finger post directing you along the North Downs just after St Martha's Church - that's pointing the wrong way...

You know you are running an ultra in Surrey when the day starts and finishes by crossing a golf course... This was the third time I'd run Pilgrims and as far as I could remember it seemed to be the driest underfoot. The promised rain wasn't really happening either although the wind was. Fortunately it wasn't completely against us and quite a lot of the route is fairly sheltered in amongst trees - however the exposed hillsides proved interesting. 

Obviously I can't run an ultra without making a few errors and in my defence my GPS did say I was still on the correct route which was kind of correct, I was just 20 feet above where I should have been... Apart from this slight error I arrived at CP1 in 1 hour 18 minutes and very little drama. A quick drink, a nibble of something - I can't remember what, I'm fairly sure it wasn't a marshal - and I was off again. Things were going well and I was entering my favourite part of Pilgrims - apart from the climb to St. Martha's Church its quite flat (compared to the following stages) and very picturesque. As I'd been paying attention at the briefing I wasn't fooled by the incorrect sign, the large green and white arrows XNRG had put up helped too - although apparently that wasn't enough for everyone...

West Hanger Nature Reserve led on to White Down Lease and the numerous WW2 pill boxes there, which are probably my favourite bit of the Pilgrims Challenge - apart from the finish each day obviously. I arrived at CP2 just over 3 hours after I had started and had completed well over half the course. However I still wasn't expecting to finish in under 6 hours as I knew the hardest bits were still to come.

The run through Denbies Vineyards is pretty much entirely down hill on very well made tracks and tarmac paths. however you can't really enjoy it as you are very aware that all this down is going to leave you at the bottom of the infamous Box Hill.

Box Hill is 263 leg sapping steps to the top. What goes up tends to go so after passing the trig point across one of the windier sections of the route it was down to CP3, which was slightly off the North Downs Way by Betchworth Station. As I didn't know where the trains from Betchworth went I decided to continue on foot along the NDW.

Up to now the route had been surprisingly unmuddy - for the Pilgrims Challenge anyway. That was about to change however and the blue and orange of my running shoes would change to the more traditional grey/brown over the next few miles. However mud was the least of the challenges left...

My brain seems to have an interesting self defence mechanism in that it is capable of completely blotting out certain difficult parts of ultra-runs from my memory. This meant that I at least wasn't worrying about the huge climb up Colley Hill... It's about the same distance and gradient as Box Hill but without steps, just a very long track. Fortunately when you finally get to the top it isn't far to CP4. After CP4 it is (mostly) downhill to the finish less than 3 miles away.

I finished Day One in a truly astonishing 5 hours 46 minutes and 21 seconds! This was enough to put me on the 'elite' start for Day Two and significantly faster than I'd ever run Pilgrims before.

I'd like to thank the charming child that discovered he could use a corner flag to switch off the school boiler and tell him how much I enjoyed a freezing cold shower. Apart from that the afternoon/evening passed off very pleasantly and I slept much better on the school hall floor than I had the previous night in the Premier Inn - possibly due to less (no) beer.

Day Two was the reverse of Day One. However it had rained overnight and so it was a bit more muddy and slippery. Fortunately I'd chosen exactly the right footwear, my Inov8 Xtalons allowed me to fly down the muddy slopes and paths and provided plenty of grip for the uphill sections. I saw many people struggle for grip but my Inov8s barely missed a step. In fact it they were a bit too quick on one occasion as I went hurtling down a hill and completely missed the turn on the right... Fortunately someone called me back and I was able to check out the grip on the uphill climb back.

I was making a concious effort to conserve my energy until I'd completed what was in this direction the climb through the Denbie Vineyards. Last year I was basically wrecked by that point and spent the last 20 miles shaking my GPS as I was convinced it had stopped working as the distance to the finish  was decreasing so slowly. This year I felt in a much better state. However I had gone through the first two CPs quite quickly and not picked up any food. I was starting to feel slightly short of energy so I had Shot-Blok and made sure I picked up plenty of cocktail sausages and pretzels at the next CP.

My run to the finish was fairly uneventful - obviously I had to miss one turning on the way but again someone kindly called me back. I finished in 5 hours 53 minutes and 24 seconds - I'd gone from not believing I was capable of running sub 6 hours to doing so on two consecutive days! Total time was 11 hours 39 minutes and 45 seconds, 23rd overall and second in my age group.

I'd have to admit I hadn't been entirely looking forward to the Pilgrims Challenge. I still had a few after effects from sciatica and I spent the week leading up to the event convinced I was getting man flu. Also I'd really not enjoyed Day Two in 2015. However this year everything seemed to go right, nearly two hours faster than last year and a massive 61 places higher. I've never run a race in which I was happier with my footwear, the Inov8 Xtalons won't suit everyone but for my narrow feet they were perfect. The fact I wore Sealskinz socks had nothing to do with the fact they sponsored the race and again they won't suit everyone but they certainly made putting wet shoes on on Sunday much more pleasant!

So where does this leave me for the MDS? There is no doubt over the last 6 months I've achieved some results I wouldn't have believed possible a year ago. However there is still much work to do before the main event and some difficult kit decisions still to be made. Hopefully I'll get the decisions right, keep working hard, stay free of injury and hopefully I'll arrive in the desert in good condition ready to give the MDS my best shot. If you want to know how I get on with all that just keep reading my blog and all will be revealed... 

Tuesday 9 February 2016

Back to the Desert...

It's been a very long time since I last posted anything on this particular blog page. To be honest I didn't think I would be posting here again, I created a different blog for my post-MDS exploits which sort of petered out as I felt it was getting a bit repetitive - did long race, got lost, didn't die, met some great people, thanks to the organisers, that kind of thing.

However as some of you already know I've signed up for the 2016 MDS, which is getting ever more imminent. I wasn't going to blog about this time but it would appear a couple of my friends are having trouble with insomnia as they asked me if I'd be blogging about it this time and actually seemed disappointed when I said I wasn't planning to. I suspect it will be quite a different blog to last time but we'll see how it goes...

OK so last time everything went quite well apart from slightly shredded feet and an inability to enjoy industrial quantities of granola every day. The granola thing looks quite easy to fix - I can now get beetroot cereal bars. Now I know that most of you wouldn't consider this any sort of improvement on the granola, however I'm only having one per day and they are only 60g as opposed to 150g of the aforementioned cereal. I wanted to take beetroot last time as I'm a firm believer in its ability to increase endurance, unfortunately it was only available in concentrated liquid form which would have been too heavy to take for every day. I had one at the start and took one for the long day, which - possibly coincidentally, possibly not - was my best day of the race. I did try the beetroot bars at the Pilgrims Challenge last weekend (of which more later...) and I do think it is vaguely feasible to eat one per day without actually being sick - although the bright red spit when I cleaned my teeth did worry me until I realised it wasn't blood, just beetroot. I will be taking some form of pleasant tasting, yet to be decided, cereal bar to make up the rest of my morning calories so hopefully the breakfast issue is sorted.

The shoe issue has taken a  bit (lot) more time (and money) to try and resolve. I'm fairly certain my problems last time were largely due to my narrow feet sliding in the shoe. Problem is, wide toe boxes are currently very fashionable in the running world, manufacturers love to tell you how their shoes let your toes spread and increase your proprioception. Unfortunately in my world 'proprioception' translates to 'massive blister on the ball of my foot' and I certainly don't want to increase that! Salomon Sense Mantras turned out to have a plastic heel cup that tries to cut the knobbly bit off my ankle if I run more that 6 miles in them, Inov8 Terraclaws are wide and fold onto my toes in a way that promises all kinds of interesting blisters, Roclites are better, Saucony Zealots are lovely but probably still slightly too wide - as you can see I have a large collection of not very suitable trainers!

I bought a pair of Inov8 Xtalons while I was injured and, as they are very much a soft trail shoe, didn't wear them all summer. However I have used them since and they are amazing. The precision (narrow) fit is great for me and I really enjoyed running Pilgrims (which I will get onto) in them. However I'm not sure the sole is ideal for sand. I've also got a pair of Salomon Sense Ultras (which don't have the homicidal heel cup) which are also narrow - however concerns have been raised about their durability in the desert...

As you can see the shoe question is still open although the field is narrowing - much like my feet. I'm also not completely settled on my back pack yet but I'll leave that for another blog and finally talk about... the Pilgrims Challenge - but not before I take you back a bit further and recap a few significant events from last year...

Obviously the most significant event was me entering the MDS. Being injured is a terrible thing as it gives you a lot of time to sit at the computer and send inadvisable emails enquiring about the possibility of a place in the 2016 event because you got so swept up in following friends on it this year...

Anyway after some excellent work by my physio I was back on the trails and managed to complete the Stour Valley Path 100km event in August. hopefully it won't be the fastest I ever run 100km but the main thing was I finished and was an ultra runner again.

The next ultra was the Tolkien run - 6 hours to run as far as you can/like. I managed 10 laps for a total of 38.5 miles and to my amazement was told I'd won the event - apparently I was the only person stupid enough to do 10 laps... This was followed by a top 10 finish on the Saltmarsh 75 and a new personal best at the (much improved) Chelmsford Marathon. This was despite the fact that 12 hours before the start I was half way through my second bottle of wine... My string of improbable results concluded with an age group win on the Druids Challenge which saw me collect my first - and what will almost certainly be my only - actual trophy.

There were a few other events and I had (and still have a bit) a few problems with sciatica but that brings things more or less up to... the Pilgrims Challenge. However blogs are supposed to be fairly short and concise. I know mine never have been but I do seem to have rambled on a bit so I'll end this entry here and next time talk about... the Pilgrims Challenge.