Enough is Enough?

A couple of years ago I wouldn't have dared coming clean in January about plans for the year in case things went wrong. Well, things always do go wrong one way or another but the blogging spirit eventually overcomes the inhibitions so now I'm happy to nail up my colours and take the flak if the performances don't meet the ambitions.

Now I've always felt my plans were fairly modest compared with some of the keener ultra competitors - John Vernon, Jim D, Sue Donelly and Rob Apple to name just a few - but both this year and last I detected the mildest hint of a raised eyebrow at my gameplan. The ever wise Murdo tM put things in true perspective by directing me to Nick Ham's blog, with the comment "You're just a part-timer Andy!"

2011 Gameplan

Well, after two or three weeks of inactivity it's time to creak into action for the New Year. At the moment I'm working on the ten pounds or so of extra insulation that my daughter refers to as the "Christmas cocktail coat" and wondering whether I'll see the underside of an eight minute mile ever again, but I'm sure that's the same for many of us and deep down we all know that it will probably come good in a few weeks. Just need to get out there on the "Lance Armstrong days", face a bit of weather and pain again, and sooner or later the sun comes out.

The more rewarding part is planning the year's objectives. I decided I would do fewer races this year but it's like opening the chocolate box, with such delights available which ones can you possibly not go for? I guess my compromise is to start a bit later and get two or three months solid work in first, so here's the plan:

19 March: Hardmoors 55 (54 miles) After running this one in the rain, wind and fog last year I really wanted to see the view so I'm back. Jon Steele's "Hardmoor" series of races based on the Cleveland Way are well organised yet pretty laid-back affairs and deserve the increasing support they seem to be drawing.  About 50 entrants so far so it should be good. It won't be a fast race for me, first of the season, somewhere near the 12 hours I got last year will be fine.

10 April: Rotterdam Marathon. I lived in Rotterdam for over six years and still have a soft spot for the place, this will be my fifth start in the event. I enjoy city marathons and this is in my calendar so I don't neglect to do a bit of speed work in the first quarter of the year. Again it won't be a PB but I should be aiming for somewhere around the three and a half hours.

30 April: Highland Fling (53 miles). Couldn't miss it. This was my first ultra in 2007 and I've run them all since then.It's where I first started to meet all these amazing crazy people who think that turning out for fifty or a hundred miles on a Saturday is somehow a completely normal activity. Irresistible. If I can get to the start in good shape I'll have a good crack at it, 11 minutes faster than last year would get me under 10 hours, must be worth a shot (can't believe I've just owned up to that plan...)

18 June: West Highland Way (95 miles). Why do this one? If you have to ask, the family haven't talked to you yet. I'd like to finish in good shape somewhere around the 24 hour mark, but each year I've set myself  a sort of "process goal" on this one rather than the specific time. For the last two years it was to get to Lundavra in daylight which I finally achieved last year. This year I'd like to get to the Lairig Mor in a fit state to run along it - rather than the hobble that I normally do!

29 July: Lakeland 100 (104 miles). If it isn't already, this will surely become the UK's premier ultra. A rugged and very demanding but beautiful course, great organisation and lots of welcoming "village hall" checkpoints. Over two hundred entries into the solo event so far this year, the race director is predicting it will be full within the next month or so, in only the fourth year of running. Goal for me - completing the course is tough enough.

26 August: Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc(104 miles). The race that sooner or later every ultra runner will want to do to complete their CV. Having missed out in last year's ballot I have an automatic entry for this year. The whole Chamonix experience, with over 2000 starters this is not wilderness racing but certainly not to be missed. Just run up and down Snowdon, then Ben Nevis, then jog an undulating 10 miles; repeat 4 times and that's all there is to it. You have 46 hours  - 45:59 will do nicely, thanks.

15 October: Round Rotherham (50 miles). I've missed this the past two years because it has clashed with family events, but determined to go back this year because it's such a good course and enjoyable day out. No particular goals for the fourth quarter of the year, just enjoy it.

17 December: Tour de Helvellyn (36 miles). Haven't had confirmation that this will be run again, but after the success of last year I'm sure it will. A bit of a target to keep me in action before the Christmas rest again.

So that's it, seven ultras of various lengths and a marathon.  A bit less than last year's plan but still a full year, I'm really looking forward to it.

2010 that was

Well, all the stuff that has to be done before Christmas seems to be done, so an hour or so earned to think back over the year and maybe what I've got out of it.

I won't dwell on the individual races, I wrote about each one after the event and the results are over on the right anyway. I was pleased with some and felt I probably could have done better in others but that's par for the course I guess. I wondered at times whether I had signed up for too many but on balance it worked out OK. I won't deliberately target so many for next year but I won't artificially restrict myself either if there are events that look as though they're going to be fun.

What I have done though is to try and analyse one or two statistics, a thing that I'm not usually interested in but I'm glad I did it because I've found the results a bit surprising  - chastening, one might say. The basics for the 50 weeks of the year that I've recorded are

Total miles run 2050
- so average miles per week was 41; in reality a bit higher when active, as I've had several weeks off ski-ing, climbing, etc.

Number of runs 181
- so average number of runs per week was 3,6 -  a bit more if you allow for the "missed weeks" above, but it's clear that I still take plenty of days off!
- and the average length of run was 11,3 miles. I know this is skewed by the long races but I was still surprised.

As I was surprised by this mean length of run, I broke down the number of outings into bands:-
Length of Run        No of Runs
less than 5m           42
5m - 10m               80
10m - 20m             39
20m - 50m             14
more than 50m         6

There is no consistent correlation between the length of the run and the speed, because for example a 10 mile run might be a fast (?!) - paced outing around my local lanes, or a trip up Snowdon. So I looked also at the total miles run at different average paces:-
Pace (mins/mile)     Total Distance at this pace (miles)
below  7,30               37           (tempo pace for me)
7,30 -  9,00             626          (comfortable road and easy trail running)
9,00 - 12,00            558          (mixed trail and hill, just about still running)
above 12,00            829          (hills and rough country)

Now even though over 340 miles in the last band came from just 4 events (Heart of Scotland, WHW, Lakeland 100 and UTMB), I think these two tables show that:

(a) I'm a jogger who runs occasionally, rather than a runner!
(b) I like getting out in the hills and enjoying the day out rather than doing specific training
(c) The amount of time I put into higher aerobic stuff is pretty pathetic
(d) I don't get out as often as I should
(e) I'm not going to improve unless I change my training habits.

I need to think about this over a glass or three of red wine during the Christmas holiday - do I want to carry on what I'm doing, and carry on enjoying it as I do now, or should I respond to the "could do better" prompt?

Another takeout from the year in a different area is that after 4 years of running ultras I think I'm now finally convinced that age (not a subject I like to dwell on too long!)  is not all that relevant.  I used to feel that I had to make the very best of each year because I might not get another chance, but now I'm much more of a mind that if you keep going you can keep going.

Whatever, I've enjoyed every step of the year (well, maybe waiting for the bus in the downpour for the TDS that never started wasn't so great, but you get the picture..) and I'm looking forward to next with some excitement. I'll post my plans next time.

To all readers of my infrequent and sometimes random ramblings, have a great Christmas and New Year. See you at the races!

Ending with a Whimper

I was really looking forward to my last event of the year, the "Tour de Helvellyn". Reccied the bits of the course I didn't already know, waymarks in the GPS just in case, bag packed and up at 5am, leaving a generous two and a half hours to cover the 140 miles to Askam, register, and start at what I guessed would be first light at around eight. The forecast was for a cold but clear day and the race organiser said on Friday night that it was looking good for the event. There was an inch or so of snow on the car as I left the house but once out of the village the roads seemed fine apart from a seemingly unnecessary 50mph limit on the M56.

At 7am I was in the vicinity of Wigan, barely 40 miles of the journey done, sitting on the northbound M6 which had become a carpark. There were stationary trucks everywhere.  I found a radio station which told the story, the road had been blocked since midnight because of a fair bit more snow than expected and a jacknifed truck. Eventually we got going again but it was 20mph stuff with the road congested and constricted. I had no chance of making the final start time of 9am, let alone my chosen one of 8. I reluctantly bailed out at the next junction and drove slowly home, to spend the rest of the day hanging doors in the kitchen.

The race was a great success, 50 starters, 37 finishers, a fine day out by all accounts.

The following day I made my weekly trip over the Pennines to visit my mum in Sheffield; there was barely a scrape of snow on the road the whole way. That's life.

But the year wasn't all bad, review in a few days.

Chewing the Fat and the Need for Speed

Clearly titles for two posts here; I've been thinking about both recently but eventually realised that they really are related so you get the double helping. The result is likely to be one of my lengthy ramblings but I'm hoping to draw some conclusions relevant to the middle-to-back-of-pack performer like me, so if you're interested pour yourself a G&T (or whatever other aid to thought you favour) and hang in for a while.

Since I started in 2007 I've covered a bit of ground and learned a lot. I've started 21 ultras and finished 18 of them. I know that I can run a fairly creditable 10 hour race and an acceptable 24, but I'm useless at the longer 30+ hour events. I don't suffer from sore feet or aching muscles, I just run out of steam. I was convinced this was a nutrition problem, don't eat enough during the event, run out of fuel. I've spent the last couple of years trying to find ways to cure this, what do you eat after you've just stuffed in your twenty-third gel of the day and nothing at all seems even vaguely palatable. I think I've tried everything, nothing works well.  I've finished several races on nothing but chicken noodle soup and coke for a marathon or two, worrying all the time that this isn't enough to get by on.

I had an inkling that there might be another way after this year's Lakeland 100.  Reading the winner Stuart Mills' report he seemed to cruise round on a few cups of coke and a handful of Jaffa Cakes. I asked about his nutrition strategy and he replied with a really interesting blog entitled "Race Nutrition - is More Always Better?" Now Stuart's a scientist and argues a detailed case but the main points I took out were (a) in ultras you run at a low enough intensity for fat rather than carbohydrate to be your prime fuel source, and (b) don't waste valuable liquid in digesting carbs - use it to keep hydrated for running! He also said that he did the majority of his training without eating. It raised some discussion in the comments of course, and I guess because it was so opposite to everything I thought I knew that I was pretty sceptical myself, after all Stuart's a class runner, probably anything works for him. I had also heard Joss Naylor talk about "going 50 or 60 miles without anything to eat or drink" but again this is a special character, his rules are not for the rest of us.

But then I entered the Lakeland 100 again for next year, and race director Marc Laithwaite started sending out a series of training articles. The first ones were pretty obvious, along the lines of "if you're going to take part in a race with hills, over uneven ground, carrying a rucsack, then you have to train on hills, over uneven ground, with a rucsack", etc, but then the third one a couple of weeks ago was on nutrition. Marc seemed to be saying pretty much what Stuart had advocated, but it was put together in such simple language that it had a big impact. I was impressed, and recommended it to John Kynaston who also found it interesting and put it on his blog. John's blog is widely followed so it immediately caused some debate, which I'll come back to in a moment. What Marc's article basically said was

- when you run an ultra, a percentage of your fuel is going to come from stored fat

- the longer you run for, the higher this percentage gets

- you can't substitute carbohydrate for fat beyond a certain point, because you can't absorb it fast enough

- to get more efficient at burning fat you have to practice

- when you practice this, you go slower and you don't feel great, but it's training so just get on with it, it will pay off.

For a simple player like me this makes great sense, a bit of an eye-opener. I'm certainly going to give it a go.

The arguments against are mainly of degree, ie it's not that simple, everyone's different,  and of course you need a certain amount of carbs for optimum performance, etc. That's fair, but it shouldn't stop you trying to get better access to a huge store of energy you already possess.  The other disadvantage put forward is that the training might be unpleasant - one comment on John's blog talked of  ".......the thought of turning enjoyable long runs into dispiriting hungry plods...".  Well actually I haven't found that so far. In the past two weeks I've tried two 16 mile runs and a 20 miler all on the "no breakfast, no carbs en route" regime.  What happens, for me at least, is that for the first couple of hours everything seems normal, then I do tire and have to slow down, but by then I know the end is not so far away. I'm sure it's purely psychological at this stage but it seems to get easier each time and I'll start pushing the time/duration out progressively in the new year.

The other mental leap I think I've made in taking on board the fat-burning principle is that as I build confidence in it, I don't have to worry about not eating much in the later stages of a race. I'm sure in a couple of my DNF's I've actually thought myself out of contention by convincing myself that I couldn't possibly finish on the fuel I was taking in (the rational engineer overcoming the passionate ultra-runner!) Stuart again presses that it's not just 50% of ultra-running that's in your head but "a lot more than that" - if you start off with the absolute conviction that you will succeed, then you will. So maybe the confidence that come what may, the fat reserves will get you home, is a big barrier removed.

Andy Dubois, another runner whose opinions I value not particularly because he is another trainer/sports scientist but because of his sub 23 hour completion of the Hardmoors 110 miler in truly appalling conditions this September, strongly advocates sticking with carbs in both racing and training on the grounds that when you run on fat alone you simply don't go fast enough - remember the Seb Coe quote "long slow runs make long slow runners"? - and if you train slow, you'll race slow. But a key (for me) observation he makes is that "......unless I run at 10 minute miles or slower, I need carbs after around 90 minutes.....". Think about this. I never run faster than 10 minute miles in a 100 mile ultra unless it's downhill. We weekend warriors at the gentlemen's end of the field should be wary of getting too caught up in the area of debate that applies mainly to elite athletes.  But I believe Andy does have something of a point relative to the masses when he talks of training at speed, and this leads me nicely into part 2, if you're still with me.

I hate speed training, if you follow my ramblings you'll know that already. All that sweaty effort, continually out of breath, not my style, we go running for fun don't we? I stopped running 10k's and don't really enjoy half marathons, no time to chat or admire the views. But when I started running a few years ago I had an ambition to do a 3.30 marathon so a certain amount of speedwork was called for. I did my tempo runs, my Yassos and so on. Apart from being unpleasant it tended to give me niggling injuries, hamstring pulls, calf pains, you know the sort of thing. Eventually the spring of 2008 saw me break the 3.30, I did it again in 2009 to prove it wasn't a fluke and I thought great, that's it, no more speed training for me. I still enjoy marathons so March this year saw me trundle round a very flat Barcelona course in 3.37, a satisfied medal collector. I enjoyed my summer of ultras and long slow training runs in the hills.

By the end of August I was feeling tired, and I hadn't felt any sharpness at all in my last two ultras. I took a month off running in September to recharge the batteries and take stock. I began to think a bit about speed.

On the UTMB site there is a series of videos called "Get Ready For" which gives training advice. In the one entitled "Improve Your Speed" I was amazed at the recommended tempo training for a race which for me had always meant walking up a lot of big hills and shambling slowly down the other side. There was a discussion on the WHW forum, I forget the actual thread but contributors were comparing effort and enjoyment and someone referred to "an enjoyable plod over the hills"; it hit me quite sharply, that's what I do, enjoyable plods over the hills. I started looking at other ultra-runners training paces where I could find them on their blogs, they were nearly all doing some significantly faster runs than I was. So when I started running again in October I gradually introduced some speed once a week; not long distances, maybe 3 or 4 miles in the middle of a six mile outing; it didn't seem too bad, but even that small amount seemed to have a dramatic effect on what I considered a comfortable speed for a cruisy 6 or 8 miles, it went from 8.30 miles to 8 minute miles in a couple of weeks. In the Snowdonia marathon at the end of the month I got round in 3 hours 40, the equivalent of way under 3.30 on a flat course. A lesson learned ,a bit of speedwork does hurt, but the reward to effort ratio is very high. Three years with a good physiotherapist and a bit of discipline in stretching and core exercise seems to have cured my propensity to niggling injuries, so speed has to stay for me. I copied one of John K's workouts recently doing alternate 6.45 and 8.15 miles, something I wouldn't have contemplated even 3 months ago; I think I might even have enjoyed it!

So where does this leave this very average ultra runner. Well, our lessons are hard won in this game, but all the more valuable for that. My plans for the future will now include

1. Learn to burn fat. It may not be the whole answer but it certainly works in my head. I won't be forcing down carbohydrates in races any more.

2. Get the heart rate up with some speedwork once a week. Then when you need that burst of energy, it's there.

My final outing of the year next weekend is the inaugural "Tour de Helvellyn en Hiver", 36 miles over what looks like being a pretty white landscape with a fair bit of up and down. Looking forward to it.

Snowdonia Marathon

Ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine, a hundred - come on wimp, time to start running again. The rain seems to be relenting a bit even if the hill isn't. Creak back into action, overtaking people now, everyone else around still walking, a marshal shouts encouragement, how far to the top I ask, about four hundred yards, that's OK, I'll make it now, no more walking then downhill all the way to the finish, way to go.

The Snowdonia was apparently voted Runner's World favourite marathon a couple of years back, rather strange because it's a bit of a toughie. Not as hard as Beachy Head, judging by Stuart Mills report a week or so a go, but still plenty of up and down. You're unlikely to get great weather in the hills at the end of October either, so it must be the scenery that attracts people, and although it's pretty well on my doorstep I still find it a great place to go running. I last did the race in 2006 when I was getting close to 3.30 on the flat and came in at 3.57  -  that's what the hills do to you.

At 11pm on Friday the weather forecast was good, chance of precipitation light, but this is North Wales of course so by the time I turned up in Llanberis on Saturday morning to check in, it was uniformly grey and sheeting down. Competitors huddled in the Community Centre, cars, bus shelters and other sources of protection, until about 15 minutes before the start we all braved the couple of hundred yards up the road to the line. The weather was improving, the organiser assured us, so about half of us stuffed our rainjackets in our belts and off went the hooter.

A gentle mile or so along Llyn Peris is a good warmer-up, then the first bit of work has to be done. From Nant Peris to the Pen y Pass about three and a half miles further on, the road rises 800ft.  I walked bits of this last time but I must be a bit further up the field because no-one around me is walking and I definitely don't want to be the first to start. I'm breathing heavily at the top of the pass but not worried because I know there is a long downhill coming. I don't look at my watch until half way in marathons these days, just go with the flow seems to work best for me, and from Pen y Pass down to Beddgelert over nine miles further on there's a lot of flow to go with - a thousand feet of descent with no appreciable uphills and great views - just enjoy it while you can! One section goes off road for a couple of miles down a steep, stony but wonderfully runnable jeep track; the road runners hesitate, the trail guys accelerate, I overtake a lot of people. Then gentle roads to Beddgelert, chat to a few people, easy running, the rain comes and goes. Beddgelert affects us two ways, it's half way, the good news, but signals the start of the next hill, the bad news. I look at my watch at half way, 1.45, faster than I was expecting but I won't keep up this pace, the hills are harder and longer in the second half.

The rise out of Beddgelert is about 500ft in three miles; not too steep, but not steep enough to excuse a real slowdown; you've lost the freshness of the start but still need to keep something for what is still to come, gruelling stuff, probably the worst part of the course mentally for me. But then it's done and we're onto the undulating country through Rhyd Ddu and along the peaceful Llyn Cwellyn, the newly-built Welsh Highland Railway tracking us to the right, no trains in evidence today. Time to take in some gels, and drinks from the friendly youngsters at the feed stations, the shouts of "isotonic!" always trigger thoughts of G&T for me, no, put that out of your mind, there's a way to go yet. And so we approach Waun Fawr.

Waun Fawr! If you've done the race before, this name has been at the back of your mind since the start. Well, one way or another I suppose, I passed a girl a few miles back who said "Can't wait for Waun Fawr, then I can have a nice long walk!" At Waun Fawr, 22 miles in,  the course turns right and rises 700ft in two miles. As I turn the corner the rain turns to hail, typical. But deep down, this is what we come for, no options now just head down, grit your teeth and keep going. No need to save anything, it's downhill all the way from the top of this one. I run as far as I can, then move to 100 steps walking/ 100 steps running. This tactic is seeing me past a fair number of people. I'm sure the real athletes at the front run all of this but around me most of the field is walking, all my hilly ultras must be starting to pay off! It finally flattens out around the 24 mile mark, then a bit of level ground, then the downhill.

   

This must be one of the best marathon finishes anywhere. It's the steepest slope on the course, a jeep track giving way to a narrow lane, stony and a bit muddy today, but nowhere that you can't just let go in a full-on blast to the bottom. At the very bottom of the hill it's a right turn into Llanberis High Street for a crowd-lined final two or three hundred yards to the finish, brilliant!  I finished in 3:40:19 which allowing for the hilly nature of the course I was pretty happy with. A great day out and a first-class well-organised event, I'm sure I'll come again.

I've just noticed that the next race I had planned, the Doyen of the Downs near Brighton has been cancelled, so I'm looking forward to what will be the last one of the year for me now, the new 36-mile "Tour de Helvellyn" on 18th December. I'll have a couple of easy weeks then get myself off up to the Lakes to find out what the course is like.

Less is More?

You can tell it's darker evenings and the season's drawing slowly to an end  -  we all stop writing race reports and get philosophical, so here's a bit to shoot at if you like. It's not time yet for me to reflect on my year, still two or three outings left, plenty of time for the post mortem over the remains of Christmas, but I was interested in a comment on John K's blog a week or two back. He thought he had compromised his performance in the races he values by doing too many events overall; this year he ran five ultras where previously he concentrated on three. I guess those of us who also did several could all wonder the same thing.

It's difficult to find any accepted wisdom on this. I looked in the oracle, Doctor Tim Noakes' "Lore of Running" and found the following passages:  "My advice is therefore not to race marathons competitively more than once every four to six months. In fact, for the elite runners, it is best to race only one marathon every year," and "To reiterate the point I made earlier............I suggest that you race an absolute maximum of two marathons per year, or one marathon and one ultramarathon.........ideally there should be at least four, but preferably six, months between these races." And finally "Although you may be able to race two marathons per year, runners who wish to race ultramarathons regularly for more than a few years should limit these to one per year, with the possibility of running one other long race three to four months before, or four to five months after, the ultramarathon."

So a few points to JK's corner; but I think we should put the Noakes advice into some sort of context, in particular
1. I think he's generally focussing on athletes at the higher end of the performance range. I guess a two and a half hour marathon takes a bit out of you whoever you are,
2. It was written at least ten years ago, and thoughts on what is possible for the average runner must have progressed since then, and
3. By "ultramarathon" he is normally referring to his local Comrades event which is around 56 miles and although it has some hills it is on non-technical ground. So overall he's talking about races which are not too long and are run, in our terms, at a pretty fast pace.

I think the last is an interesting aspect because it prompts the question of whether a long or a short race (assuming both are endurance events) takes more out of you, so let's divert to this for a minute or two. I checked the best times I have done over the standard road distances in the past two or three years and they look like this:

Marathon 3-17-51
Half Marathon 1-33-57
10 Kilometer 42-35

If I plug my marathon time into a standard comparison calculator, my predicted half marathon and 10k times come out at at 1-34-55 and 43-03 so I think my actual times represent a statistically consistent effort. But how did the races feel? Well I'm a survey of one, but for me the shorter distances feel like much harder work at the time and normally take longer to recover from. In a marathon I can chat to other runners, enjoy the sights and after a good night's sleep I'm ready to run again the next day, but in a half I'm out of breath after 5 or 6 miles, by half way all I want to do is get to the end, and it's several days before I can run again. I've stopped doing 10k's, they just hurt too much. I think what happens is that so long as you have trained for the distance the longer races are kinder on your overall system  -  lower heart rate, shorter stride length, lower impact forces, etc.  This could translate into ultras. OK, so at the end of 100 miles you feel pretty whacked, but how much of this is due to sleep deprivation, less than brilliant nutrition, and so on? Physically, are you any worse than after (a much quicker paced) 50 miler?

There are plenty of runners out there completing a high number of ultras every year. Susan Donnelly and Rob Apple seem to knock off a hundred miler every other week in the summer, and nearer to home Jim Drummond has a similar record. This year John Vernon completed the LDWA Heart of Scotland (104 miles), the West Highland Way (95), the Lakeland 100 (104), the Grand Raid Pyrenees (100+) and the Hardmoors 110 (110), the last three in particular being very tough events. Look in the results tables of even just the UK ultras and you'll see plenty more examples. Ah, you may say, but these guys are going for a finish, not necessarily their best performance every time. Try harder and you won't do so many. It's tempting to agree with this view from personal experience. I set out this year with a similar programme to JV's; I was faster than him by 3,5 hours in the Heart of Scotland and by 5 hours in the West Highland Way, yet when it came to the Lakeland 100 I was forced to retire at 88 miles while John cruised on to a finish. Too much effort in the previous events? An easy conclusion but...............yes there has to be a "but". It could be that I just hadn't trained appropriately for the Lakeland event, or made some tactical mistakes on the day, or wasn't mentally up for it although I was physically OK, etc, etc.

Anyway, I'm now rather sceptical that you can decide to turn in a less-than-best performance in an ultra on any given day. I suggested to John K that he might consider concentrating on his "main" three races for best performance but do others for training, or for fun, or for whatever else but not flat out. His reply was interesting, along the lines of "I've tried to do that but once a race starts it's a race and I end up going much faster than I would in a training run". On reflection I think this is a fairly astute recognition of reality. My own plan this year was to run the Thames Trot 50, the Hardmoors 55 and the Heart of Scotland 100 for training, the Lakeland 100 just to finish, and other races for the best time I could get. I didn't feel any less exercised after the "training" events than after my "target" races, in fact the Lakeland 100 was for me the hardest as I didn't finish. So it does seem for me at least (and clearly for JK) that once I commit to an event I aproach it with all the tools I have in the bag at the time. It's easier to plan an easy day at say a road marathon where the effort is very even and predictable, but much less easy to plan and execute an "easy" ultra. I would be interested in other views on this.

But there are also runners at the sharp end completing multiple events successfully. I'm sure Richie Cunningham has done more ultras than me this year, and last year Jez Bragg got around the Lakeland 100 in 24 hours just two weeks after his third place in the Western States; these guys are clearly not "easing off" much!

One last point before I try to make some sense of all this. I'm pretty convinced after running 20-odd ultras in the past 4 years that you can have a tough race on the day without doing any medium term damage to your fitness. Since I understood what the game was about I have had three DNF's (two UTMB's and the Lakeland 100). In all cases I was fine after a sleep, sometimes in as little as a couple of hours. I think poor tactics (pacing, managing stops, nutritional, etc) played a part but I'm also wondering about the oft-quoted adage "50% of running ultras is in your head". I went into these events without the absolute certainty in my mind that I was going to finish, so I didn't.

So what is my conclusion?

Well , I think the starting point for running multiple ultras per year is that you have to train for the effort involved in the event  - ie you have to be able to cope with the distance, height gain, ground underfoot, etc. Many people complete an ultra without getting to this stage  -  you may disagree with me here but I think if you're still hurting physically a week or so later then you didn't put the appropriate work in beforehand. You compensated with a lot of mental strength and I really respect that, but you're not going to repeat the effort three weeks later.

If you've ticked that box then I think that the only thing that stops you setting out again is if you genuinely feel fatigued and "not up for it". I don't believe that one or two disappointing results proves that you're doing too much; so many things can happen on the day to produce these that I think you have to move on from the last event and not let it bother you.  If I get to the end of my plan this year I will have run an average of one event per month (a half marathon, two marathons, and nine ultras). I've been pleased with some and disappointed with others. I'll review the year at its end but at the moment my feeling is that I may cut one or two out next year because I want to spend a bit more time climbing, but in general it works for me OK. Would I do better if I cut the number of races dramatically? I believe not, but I'll never know because I enjoy the events and that's not what I'm going to do!