30 August 2023

Coming to you a bit later than the usual Sunday post (I don’t think I’ve ever actually posted one of these on a Sunday, but shhh), and it’s been all about the taper since we last spoke! I have mixed feelings about tapering. It’s great not being tired and not spending all that time running, but it also feels very counterproductive winding things back and eating a lot before the big race - rather than starting races fresh and fuelled I usually just feel fat and unprepared.

The training plan I’ve been following continued on with a few easier versions of the ‘hard’ sessions for the taper weeks, but I didn’t really stick too closely to these due to travel throwing any sense of organisation I may (strong emphasis on ‘may’) have had out the window. I’ll drop them here quickly though for those playing at home:

• Z4 Fast Finish - 45 mins at an easy pace, finished with 10 mins at the pace you’d hold for a 30 min race.

• Acceleration Run - two sets, one of 11 mins and one of 6 mins, increasing pace throughout and trying to finish at a sprint on each.

• Fartlek Run - a few days out from the start of the race, moving between Z3 (2 mins) and Z1 (1 min) six times.

Because I did my last big weekend run a week late I also missed the final weekend effort, which was back to back 2 hour runs (ie, one on the Sat and one on the Sun). These are great for replicating tired leg running, and getting used to moving again on tight legs after they’ve cooled down.

Instead of all those important training sessions, I got to do some lovely tourist runs in London where I’d flown into before the race.

First of these was an out and back along the River Thames, from Chelsea Bridge up to the Tower Bridge. I got into London at 6am on a Sunday, and after dropping my gear at my Airbnb hit this run at 9am. Was a great way to chip away at the jetlag, and stretch out the body after the 17 hour direct flight from Perth (!). Having not been to London for yonks, I couldn’t have picked a better way to find my bearings and see some of the key sights along the way. The run took me past Battersea Power Station, Parliament, Big Ben, London Eye, St Paul’s Cathedral, London Bridge, Tate Modern, Tower of London etc etc. The list goes on. I’d chucked on a long sleeve top for the balmy 18 degrees, contrary to the thoughts of every Londoner who’d taken the opportunity to wear a singlet for the fantastic summer’s day they were having. Oops.

The next morning I was off for a lap of Hyde Park (and a little bit of Farlek work for good measure). From where I was staying near Victoria, the run out there took me through Sloan Square, Belgravia and the surrounding areas which looked way too posh for my dirty trail runners (only brought these for the run) and short-shorts. Hyde Park was fantastic. They’ve done a great job at preserving the inner city spaces in London, and this is no exception. That said, I kicked things off with a little faux-pas, thinking I’d found a lovely trail to cruise along, only to quickly be met by a number of horses trotting along - once I moved off the horse trail and onto the tracks, it was a gorgeous run through fields and trees that feel a million miles away from the hustle and bustle of the big city. My final run was in Battersea Park, just south of Chelsea. I’d chosen it due to its proximity to where I was staying but was pleasantly surprised by this amazing running park. It’s got a 2.7km loop, which follows a wide promenade around the park - there’s also some handy desire paths you can follow for that off road feeling. I added a little section of the River Thames that I didn’t cover on Sunday as part of this to get some extra time in. A delightful section opposite Battersea Park that shows off the impressive Royal Hospital grounds.

Beyond all that running, it was time for some important race preparation! I used my few days in London to gather some of the last items of mandatory gear I needed, including waterproof gloves (surprisingly hard to find in Australia - it’s either water resistant gloves, which wouldn’t pass, or ski gloves, which was a no from me) and a bunch of nutrition that I’d carry - sticking with what I know, that was Clif Bloks (black cherry, baby), and my new fav Maurten gels and bars.

I also used a good chunk of the flight over to map out the check points for the run so I’d have a handy little guide of what to expect for the run and, most importantly, something to map my nutrition around. Nutrition planning was a little tricky coming into this one - I’m used to having a lot of control over what I eat and when, with all the ultras I’ve done so far allowing you to have your own drop bags at a number of check points, which you can fill with whatever food and gear you think you might need at that point in time. No such luck for CCC, where the only drop bag you get is for the finish line. Instead, it’s just whatever you carry from the start, and whatever you pick up along the way. This meant that rather than the structured approach I’d taken previously (eg, at Checkpoint 1 eat X, Y and Z, and pick up A, B and C to eat for the next leg) I adopted a more principled approach - basically, try to eat three substantive things each hour (whether that be a gel, bar or a descent portion of whatever they happened to have at the checkpoint).

Key thing with whatever you decide to do is to make it easy to implement - trying to work out nutrition is risky business when your brain is mush at 3am in the dark after 80kms. So with this, the main thing I wanted to map out in this guide was how long I’d have between each checkpoint, to make sure I was carrying enough food when I left each one beforehand. Helpfully the LiveTrail app that UTMB use for tracking has a tool that estimated your time to finish, and between each checkpoint, based on your UTMB number (effectively a ranking they give you based on the time you’ve taken to finish each race). I also used the course profile to roughly track what each segment held in terms of climbs to be mentally prepared ahead of it. Previously I’ve printed it out, but for the race I’m going to implement a handy tip I’d read elsewhere, to screenshot the table and set it as my wallpaper/lockscreen on my phone for easy reference. Here’s the guide:

Next time we speak, I’ll either have a big shiny finishers medal around my neck or a good story to tell on what went wrong, and either way I’m very likely to have sore legs.