Recces, training and blethering

The watershed adventure is getting closer and the training is building up! The last few weeks have been a great mixture of recces, races, fundraising, navigational sessions and serious training.

I decided a few weeks ago to approach a coach as I was starting to feel quite unsure about my training schedule. Initially I had been building up the miles following a similar plan to last year when I was preparing for the West Highland Way race as I felt really strong for the event and made a quick recovery. However, I'm slowly starting to realise that I've taken on something far more epic and hugely different to anything I've done before. I approached Donnie Campbell as I know he has a lot of experience with ultra runners and so went to Edinburgh to meet him. I have no idea what he thinks of our trip, he has a great poker face and was very direct in telling me what to do. Build up my miles. This shouldn't have been too much of a surprise as I'm training to run roughly 120 miles a week whilst at the moment I normally do around 50.  Needless to say this revelation has coincided with a busy time at work so my social life will need to take a back seat for a while...

I was racing the Cateran 55 the weekend after meeting Donnie so he promised me an easy week the following week. I didn't have high expectations for the Cateran race. It was only 3 weeks after the Highland Fling and I've never done ultra races so close together. I was determined that this should be a slow training run and that I should feel ok at the end as Donnie had instructed me to run the following day.  I had a brilliant first half, I really kept to my plan and trotted along, blethering with other racers and resisting the temptation to try and keep up with Ali Wyllie who I ran the entire Catern with last time.  By the half way point I was oblivious to where I was within the field, it had fairly spread out but I was feeling great and aware that I was overtaking a few people and so was very happy with my pacing.  At the Bridge of Cally checkpoint I arrived to see Ali and Johnny Fling leaving and I thought, wow, I've paced this incredibly well if I've managed to catch them up! I had a spot of faffing to do at the check point and left with them in my sights although it took a while to actually catch Ali, despite her turning round and telling me to get a move on several times! When I did she told me I was now 2nd female. The game changed... I've never made the podium in an ultra race and the prospect was very exciting.  It felt a bit strange to be racing Ali like this, however, we did have a brief chat on how we'd be very happy sharing the podium, regardless which way round we were. I've so much respect for Ali and she's such a great runner I'd be very happy for her to get ahead of me. If we'd been competing for 3rd and 4th place maybe it would have been different! Anyway, we didn't know where number 4 was so with about 18 miles to go we both really pushed to keep ahead. I opened a bit of a gap but I could always see Ali behind me. The final climb of the race is brutal, I remember the last time I ran the Cateran, I couldn't run any of the ascent, Ali had tried to get me moving at this bit but I was broken. It was so satisfying to be able to keep running bits of it this time. I could see Ali gaining on me, she was climbing much faster than I could and by the time we finally got to the top I knew I couldn't stay ahead but she was within bellowing distance and yelled 'get a move on, my knees buggered!'. With a sore knee she was going to struggle downhill so with the finish in sight I shuffled down as fast as I could. I finished 2nd female, 12th overall with a time of 10hrs 2mins which surpassed all my expectations, and my mums apparently - she missed my triumphant finish.  

I was just about on form for a further shuffle the following day, it was a very slow 10km, made slower by cows and mud but I was running bits of it, satisfyingly. 

My 'easy' week then involved getting 2 more 16km runs in, a tempo 12km and a 40km run.  Without wanting to dispense my social life entirely I engineered my runs to involve a navigation course, meeting up with Emily, and running to a party.  

The navigation course with Gary Tompsett was great and Stuart and I are very grateful to all the time and wisdom he has given us in preparing for navigating the watershed.  We covered a bit of the watershed near Coulter and I was really pleased with how confident I felt. I'm much better at interpreting contours now but a weakness I still have is not understanding from looking at a map what I will be able to see in the distance.  Just because there are contours depicting hills it doesn't mean that they will all be visible from where I stand.  Gary was disappointed the weather was so good as he felt it was a bit easy for us! Between Stuart and I we spend a bit too much time discussing our optimal route, checking between map and GPS.  We need to learn to be more efficient as we waste so much time doing this and I started to get a bit cold despite the weather being fairly mild.  It was also really useful to have Gary as a neutral party suggesting how we work our different strengths and cope with our different paces.  I realise that I'm a bit of a control freak and I like having control of the map.  Having a bit of time waiting for Stuart gives me time to check what I'm doing continually and allows me to make sensible, accurate decisions.  However, that puts me under a lot of pressure to get the navigation correct otherwise Stuart will be justified in getting fairly pissed off every time I make a mistake so it's important that we can work in a way that will allow us both to feel involved and responsible.  I'm not sure what the ultimate solution is yet but it's another of many things we need to solve before mid-July. 

Later in the week Emily was a huge help on my tempo run by cycling ahead of me and making me work hard and keep up the pace.  In order to attend my mum's Birthday celebrations I ran to Falkirk with my glad rags in my new rucksack. Although it was a very flat run my heavy bag made me feel it was useful training. The weather caught me out surprisingly, it was a beautiful day and my right hand side was very burnt by the time I arrived! Mum had decided to have quite a big do and requested that people didn't bring her a present but instead donated to Funding Neuro.  This incredible gesture brought in another £500 for the charity and I'm very grateful to everyone who donated and to my Mums great idea and selflessness. 

All in all it felt a tough week, my quads felt tight and my whole body was tired but after one day off before the run to Falkirk I felt much better and pretty strong over all.