Race report: Country to Capital 2014 [That was pretty amazing!]

Country to Capital; a 45 mile run from Wendover to Little Venice, mainly on trails and about half following the Grand Union Canal into London.

Having read the race guidance, which is pretty minimal, the suggestion was that it'd be a fairly normal trail run with the potential for some puddles and then the rest on canal tow-path.  The profile was a long slow up for a few km, long slow down for a few km, then mainly flat along the canal to the end.

With the distance, weather, terrain, mandatory kit and profile in mind I had my kit list dialled in:-

•  Salomon S-Lab Hydro 5 backpack
•  Skinfit Aero, long sleeved shirt
•  Pelle, short sleeved t-shirt
•  Icebreaker Merino, 200 1/4 zip top (spare warm layer)
•  Icebreaker Merino neck funnel
•  Skinfit Aero, long tights
•  Saucony Ignite, tight shorts
•  Bridgedale Woolfusion, trail socks
•  Bridgedale Woolfusion, trekking socks (spare socks)
•  Apple iPhone
•  Garmin 800 (GPS bike computer for navigation)
•  Power Walker 5000mAh battery pack
•  Clif Double Espresso gel (in case of emergency)
•  Prêt A Manger yogurt coated cranberries (x2)
• 2x M&S mini pork pies
• 1x Clif White Chocolate and Macadamia Nut bar
• 1x mini medical kit
• 2x 500ml soft-gel water bottles
• 4x H2Pro 250 electrolyte tablets
• Brooks Pure Cadence running shoes (with elasticated laces)

This all needed to be packed up two days before along with clothes etc. as I planned an overnight stay the night before close to the race start.  So once it was packed and taken in to work, there was no going back on the choices.  I did have a pair of Salomon trail shoes to wear for casual with me as they were unproven over anything longer than 5km and quite loose at the heel; too risky to run in with no option to change out of them at any point in the race.

I had dinner in the pub at the race start and got a taxi to the hotel (exorbitant! £20 for 5.2 miles!) which was full of some sort of party and I was glad I’d eaten at the pub as there was no food on between 7pm at 10pm.  Hey ho, I was fed and had a warm (single) bed to sleep in and a bath to help warm me up to go to sleep.  No mobile coverage in the hotel meant no call with my coach or MrTOTKat and I listened to a Kinetic Revolution podcast to lull me to sleep with the alarm set for 6am the next morning.

With the hotel refusing to provide -any- sort of breakfast before 8am (not even a bowl of cornflakes and a jug of milk left out the night before!) I was prepared with a twin pack of mushroom and goats cheese frittata from M&S for my breakfast with a mug of tea made in my room.  I forced down 1.5 of the frittata before running out of room.  Thanks to the hotel receptionist negotiation the night before, my 7am taxi to the start was “only” £15 and this time I didn’t have to look up the route for the driver.

Guidance from the race organiser said that if you weren’t on the train up from London in the morning to register as early as possible to allow for processing a train-load of runners at 8am when that train got in.  So I was numbered, chipped and ready by 07:15, sipping my £2.20 cup of tea and chatting to very many far more experienced runners than myself and trying not to get wound up about it all.  I got to meet @UltraBoyRuns, which was nice, but then lost him from that point to the finish.

The night before, I’d worked out what was the minimum average pace I needed to hit to make the cut off times at the check points and overall.  That way I’d know how much time I had in hand if/when I got tired and felt the need to slow down, walk, take a break etc., but the plan was to spend as little time as possible at check points (as I’d lost 90 minutes at Rotherham through stoppage time).  The worst-case pace I needed to average was 09:22/km (in Imperial, that’s 15 minute miles).  If you run shorter distances than this and have never run further than a marathon, this looks really really slow.  But there are a few things to remember here: it’s a bloody long way, most of it is not on tarmac/pavement, there is a bit of elevation gained and lost overall, there is navigation to be done (no race route marking -at all-), you will need to stop and refill water containers at the very least at check points and probably eat something even if you’re relying 100% on fat for fuel (you simply get an empty stomach at some point and you want to eat rather than need to and if you’re pushing into any carb burning zones you’ll need to top that up at some point too).

I’d also loaded up the GPX file provided by the race organiser onto my Garmin 800 bike computer and set that to give me 1km lap splits to keep an eye on pace without obsessively checking a watch.  The GPX plot seemed short, but it turned out that it simply deviated from the national trails we were supposed to follow a few times and did things like following the central navigation course of the canal rather than the tow path so it was short of the actual route by about 4km in total.

Having chatted with one of the check point marshals about pork pies, he'd promised there were some at CP3, so I unloaded them from my pack.  And the Clif bar.  And the medical kit.  This made quite a difference to the weight of my pack and made me feel quite a bit better about that.

08:15 came and went, the planned time for the race briefing, and no briefing was forthcoming.  It seems that the train from London was a bit late and then the huge influx of competitors simply took time to process through registration.  The hooter for the race start went off a few minutes later than planned at around 08:37 and I’d started my Garmin and Polar a minute or two early to save faffing at the start.

We were off!  320ish runners thundering down the street in Wendover to the beginning of the trail and immediately grinding to a halt at a gate that narrowed the available space to 1-2 abreast instead of taking up the whole road.  We all squeezed through the gate and off onto the trail.

Within the first few moments it was clear that the ground was really very wet as well as the forecast low temperature coming to fruition.  Tracks, fields and paths along the sides of fields for the next 50km were quite taxing.  The first field we came across, my feet were skating sideways more than going forwards and it was all I could do to stay upright.  The next one, I lost my left shoe in a sticky bit of mud and ended up with a really wet left sock.  Someone was pretty disparaging about both my shoes and the fact I had elasticated laces on; to be honest the laces were a silly forgetful mistake but the shoes… most of the really slippery mud would have been too much for almost any “proper” trail shoe so I doubt it would have made much difference had I been able to wear any.

That first hour was really disheartening.  I was increasingly convinced that the huge amount of extra effort wasted in slipping sideways and staying upright was going to tire me out early and I perhaps wouldn’t be able to finish the full route due to sheer exhaustion.  It wasn’t the nicest thought, but I kept going anyway.  A group I was running with had a guy with Vibrams on and we discussed that and the fact he’d run this event last year in a time of 09:30.  He was pretty sure that wasn’t going to happen today, but we were all quite impressed with that time (I think).

Within the second hour, I lost my right shoe to sticky mud and got myself a wet right foot.  From here on and to the finish, my feet were wet.  Credit to my sock and shoe choice I didn’t get a single blister from it and my feet were only cold while I was actually running in water or really runny mud.

Checkpoint 1 came up reasonably quickly after a bit of a hilly path down the side of a fence, up a hill, down it and then to a table with water, jelly babies, electrolyte tablets and fruit cake on it.  Most of the checkpoints were stocked this way, only CP3 had anything in addition to that food.  This wasn’t so great, mainly for the marshals as it was pretty bloody cold to be standing around for hours and there be no hot drinks at least.  Anyway, there was then a small section through Chesham town and then back onto trails for lots more km of mud, wet trail, mud and more mud.

I spent a good section by myself before CP3 and that was nice.  Having had brief chats with a few people, most notably a chap called Iain at CP2 who dropped back to wait for friends, it was nice to be by myself.  It’s one of the reasons I like running long, the time you get with your own mind and the countryside.  I did meet up with a couple more runners shortly before CP3 and we weren’t quite sure whether that was supposed to come before or after the most notable bit of navigation - hitting the canal.  Once you hit the canal there is only one turning to make before the finish, which is a relief after missing a couple of turnings into hedges earlier on.

CP3 was in fact on the canal, @abradypus (thanks for the photos too!) surprised me at a bridge just before the checkpoint and shouted encouragement (and direction on how far on CP3 was from there). A table under a bridge appeared shortly, with water, electrolyte tablets, jelly babies, cake and.. the promised mini pork pies! (and sausage rolls and vegetarian Scotch eggs - yuck!)  Up to this point, I’d only looked at my printed out cutoff times card once, at this check point and it looked to me like I was only just on track to hit those times with a target of 14:15 to be leaving CP3 and I was off down the road a bit before I’d validated a time of 14:22.  That was where the maths started to really fail and I began to worry I’d not make it under 11 hours in total.  I was also worried about the mandatory pairing with another runner from, in my case probably CP4 onwards.  I’m quite good at even pacing throughout these events and most other people slow down towards the end.  My biggest worry was being paired up with someone and they couldn’t keep up sufficient pace to hit the goals.

At CP4 I almost forgot about the potential need for head torch and then the mandatory pairing.  It didn’t happen.  I think I’d made the checkpoint minutes before the time that was going to be enforced and that was a very good thing at the time.  Maintaining a reasonable pace and moving to - run for 5 minutes, walk for 1 minute as a tactic to get to the end feeling relatively OK - I motored on to CP5 pretty much alone.  CP5 came and having overtaken quite a few people between CP3 and CP5, I got there at the same time as a pair of Americans and there were others hanging around.  Pairing was being mandated and, with great relief to me, Iain was there and asked to pair with me. I could not have wished for a better pair-up.  The Americans, we left behind at the checkpoint and they were convinced they wouldn’t make it in under 10 hours now and I agreed (with my terrible maths failure at this point, I was now hoping for around 10 and half hours).

Iain was nothing short of amazing - interesting to talk to (as I suspected, in the armed forces), bright, full of energy and practicality in good measures, happy to follow the run/walk tactic and selflessly encouraging.  Handily my head torch was pretty good so he didn’t need one and I managed not to look him in the face and blind him with it at any point.  We tried to work out whether we’d make it under 10 hours.  Many many calculations later we still weren’t sure, but agreed it might be nice if it did happen.  We were also neither sure exactly how far it was to the finish so were a bit surprised when we heard clapping and thought we’d better put on a show and actually run it in regardless of where we were in the run/walk phases.  It turned out that although that was race-related support, it wasn’t quite the finish so we had to run a bit further to the end.  Slightly mis-communicating at the end, I did try to make sure we crossed the line together to share a finish time we’d worked on as a team for that last stretch.  It turned out it was the electronic dibber that gave the finish time in the end, so Iain was registered as 1 second faster in the end.

@abradypus  was there, there was tea, more cake (which I wasn’t interested in) but MrTOTKat was only just pulling in to Kings Cross (having been at Scunthorpe parkrun that morning).  I eventually remembered to stop my Garmin and Polar watches and spent a while being very confused that they showed 09:03 and 09:04.  I was convinced I must have paused them at some point by accident, but then thought through that that was very unlikely that they’d both get accidentally paused and un-paused for exactly the same length of time.  I chatted with @abradypus and sat with my tea, worked out a pub to go to for food and a sit down (and to change into dry socks and shoes at the very least) and we rounded up @UltraBoyRuns, the Americans and @abradypus to sit, eat, drink and meet with MrTOTKat.

We found a pub, I changed my shoes and socks and put on warm clothes (and reeked a bit), we ate, drank, chatted and had a generally good time then went home.

@abradypus , god bless her again, discovered something really rather amazing later on and posted it on Twitter.  Provisional results were up and my finish time was 08:59:00!  Not only had I finished, and I’d hit the goal of 10:30, but I’d smashed it to smithereens!  I’m absolutely ecstatic about the time.  It was way better than I could have hoped for.  Having “wasted” 90 minutes at check points at Rotherham, I was sure that ploughing on through was a better tactic and, by god, I was right!

Oh.  And I did a negative split by over 6 minutes - 04:30:28 for the first 34km 04:24:06 for the next 34km.  BOOOOM!

11th W40+ - 2 hours 10 mins behind the 1st W40+

Thanks to @abradypus for cheering and being supportive and finding a pub at the end.  Thanks to Iain for being the best pairing I could have hoped for in that final section.  And thanks to @ultraboyruns for making me feel better about my pack weight before the race.

London Ultra (race report)

(I've done a brief report on the low carb/high fat thoughts for the race here - this is the fluffy race report)

6am on Sunday 17th February 2013 and I'm waking up to a day with the longest run of my life so far, having run further than 21km only twice before this day.  And today I'd be running 51km.

MrTOTKat (on race support duty) and I got up and breakfasted on scrambled eggs, smoked salmon, baby plum tomatoes, coffee and cream before packing water bottles, post-race clothes and shoes into the car and off to pick up @abradypus and head to the race start near Grove Park station in East London.  At 7am on a Sunday, traffic is pretty OK crossing town from South West to South East and we made good time, arriving at registration at 5minutes to 8am despite setting off a few minutes late.

Registration was quick and easy and the room was filled with people munching on chocolates being handed out, bananas and various chewy bars.  Pointy-looking, fit-looking people.  Not like me (or so I think).  It's pretty chilly, so I'm in a few layers: Under Armour base layer with long thumb-hole enabled sleeves and a 1/4 zip, Under Armour long-line compression knickers (both from Sport Pursuit), my old Nike Run To The Beat t-shirt (best running t-shirt ever!), Under Armour fleecy beanie (£8 from T K Maxx :o)), Bridgedale running socks, some lovely warm Thoosa running tights (again from Sport Pursuit), Nike running gloves and a buff from Blacks (own brand, I think, 2x for £10 on sale a while back).  My support kit - a Camelbak Delaney Plus run belt which has 1x closed pouch (holding iPhone and extra battery pack for safety and being able to upload position to GarminFit), 1x mesh pouch (holding "emergency salami" and a middle-warming haramaki in case I got cold), 1x bottle holder (plan was to swap in a bottle at each check point if I felt I needed it).

We stood and chatted for a bit, listened to the race briefing (you really need to look up "tyre girl") before strolling to the start, a wave of the flag by Rory Coleman and we were off.

The plan was to start out at around 07:40 at a nice high cadence to warm up and then turn it up from there to keep my heart rate on or below 170BPM.  OK, I didn't quite do that as that meant falling off the back of the entire field and that would have been too depressing at the start, so I picked up to keep up as the rest of the runners swarmed down the middle of the road and held up a bus for about 5 minutes before thinning enough to fill the pavements without too much problem.

I thought I'd get space to myself pretty early on, but it didn't really happen and  I fell into a bad habit of following people in front of me.  You don't do that.  You can't be sure the people in front are going the right way (and I hear later on from "3 guys in blue" that they did it, ended up 1.5 miles off course before realising, sorting themselves out at the others carried on going the wrong way).  But I did keep an eye on signs and got tuned in to the various combinations of Capital Ring signs on high posts, little logos on low posts, "Ur" stickers and yellow spray-painted arrows that marked almost the whole route (more on the "almost" later).

So, despite not really wanting to talk to people as I generally prefer to run alone, I find that talking uses effort I'd rather spend on the actual running and I either end up running too slowly or too quickly when with others, I ended up running and talking to people.

Bits of London came and went and I recognised parts of the route from having read the Capital Ring leaflets and plotted the course to load onto my Garmin 910 watch (which I had on).  Check-point 1 came up pretty quickly and I took a bottle from MrTOTKat, glugged down half of it, ditched my hat and gloves as they were too much now, and carried on without taking a bottle with me.  On entering Crystal Palace Park I spotted loos and decided it would be a good idea to make use of them and took my leave from Dave-the-teacher who I'd been chatting with to that point.  I spent a bit long in the loo, due to making sure that all of my layers went comfortably back in place without wrinkling, and ended up running alone for quite a while after that.

See the little scribble just inside the East side of the Park? Loos :o)

I don't remember much of the next bit of the route.  There were quite a few sharp little hills and I walked up those to manage my effort level/fuel burn, paranoid that I'd run out of carb and have to slow right down (probably to a walk) before I got to the end of the race, and there were a few odd little bits like where the route wriggled around the back of a kiddies play-park.

Then I overshot a turning by a few metres due to a bus being in a bus stop and obscuring a sign I caught sight of briefly then misplaced where it was...

Very quickly recovered from that and carried on alone for a while longer and up came check-point 2 and MrTOTKat was ready and waiting with a smile on his face, a full bottle in one hand and a half full one in the other.  I think I made a mistake at this point as I put the 1/2 full one in my bottle holder, swigged a bit of the full one and carried on.  I wasn't all that thirsty, so I thought it was OK.  Quite quickly I regretted the bottle I was carrying as it changed the weight distribution that I'd got used to and it tempted me to swig frequently like I used to on long training runs last year.  Not good.

Onwards, still alone, past Tooting Bec Lido and up another mean hill before my Garmin shrieked at me half way down a road I'd been following Capital Ring signs into, with no turnings that I'd spotted, telling me I was now off course.  And it kept at it, so I stopped, turned around and headed back to see if I'd missed a turning, to see "3 guys in blue" (3 of the other runners, dressed in the same blue shorts and tops and apparently running for a testicular cancer charity - Dave, Ian and Nick) thundering towards me.  I asked if I'd gone wrong and they were sure I hadn't, so I carried on with them for a little bit, chatting away before I realised their pace was too high for me and I let them go on ahead without me at Wandsworth Common.

Memory fades again at this point a little until I saw signs for Earlsfield and recognised bits of local territory and I motored on towards Wimbledon Park, through the building site mentioned in the race briefing which meant I was at about the half-way point and on into the park, around the kiddies play-park, alongside the lake and then down the side of the athletics track where I'd set my 5km PB only 4 days earlier.  Check-point 3 hove into view and I chatted to MrTOTKat a bit about my stiffening right quad, sore feet and achey glutes which had come on noticeably since check-point 2, and dropped off my buff as that was making me too warm too now.

Digging the empty bottle out of the holder - attractive pose!

I ditched the empty bottle, drank half of another bottle and went on without a bottle for the next section of the route.  And this next bit of the route was going to be nicely familiar, but I knew it would be muddy and a detour from my usual routes across/around Wimbledon Common.

Brooks Pure Cadence

Asics - Fuji Attack

I did go off course just past the windmill as I missed a low-level Capital Ring sign, but realised really quickly, swore a bit until I saw it and set off down a steepish, muddy descent.  The mud had begun in earnest and this was the section that made me worried about footwear for the previous two days.  Trail shoes?  Road shoes?  I'd plumped for road shoes in the end because most of the course is on pavement, tarmac, gravel or paved paths and my cushioned trail shoes (Asics Fuji Attack) are appreciably heavier than my cushioned road shoes (Brooks Pure Cadence).

The next part of the route across Wimbledon Common and then across the A3 (where I bumped into @abradypus who very kindly stopped me from heading off on totally the wrong heading at the junction) into Richmond Park was very muddy.  Very very muddy bridlepath at the beginning, then once in Richmond Park just a boggy field in which I lost my right shoe right at the first edge of the field, accompanied by a sucking-popping sound from the mud and a loud squeak from me.  From here on in, my already abraded feet were scraped further by the gritty mud that got squeezed into my shoes and socks in this section.  My feet were soaked through and I squelched on through Richmond Park.

I got complacent following a few other runners up the little hill and we all missed a left turn just past Jubilee Plantation.  After a while my Garmin yelled again "off course!" but I couldn't see a path so assumed I'd just plotted the route from the leaflets in a way that disagreed with the signs (which had happened a few times before so far).  But when it got to over 500m off course and we were coming up on one of the park gates I was certain we were all wrong and off course by 1/2km.  We agreed on a route to join the course that seemed sensible (and didn't end up short-cutting) and we all trotted onwards towards the river and the Richmond check-point.

Once alongside the river, it got really really busy; loads of people out for a Sunday afternoon stroll with baby buggies, pushchairs, toddlers in tow, low-slung bicycles, sit-up-and-beg bicycles, scooters, couples strolling hand-in-hand... a normal busy Sunday by the river.  I let the other runners I'd got a bit off course with go on ahead as they were quicker and then we crossed the river again and I was alone.  But I started to overtake people.

Check-point 4, the last checkpoint, 24.5 miles into the 31 miles  and I was sore and it looks like it was showing (though I was slowing to walk when this photo was taken so I could pick up water).  And here I made a big mistake and didn't realise it for a little bit.  I just picked up a half-full bottle of water and ran on with it.

The next stretch was really quiet, long and impossible to get lost on even when it diverged from the river and then dove into Syon Park.

See the line of trees to the right of the red line? That's where the path is...

I had "fun" in Syon Park as I followed the "Ur" stickers along the tarmac road, running on the right as you do when there is no pavement.  There was a little path a good 30-80m from the road at varying distances along its length, but I figured that the stickers were along the road and there was no need to run further than I needed to, so to speak.  The traffic handled it perfectly fine, as it should, until a very angry woman driving in the opposite direction gesticulated at the path and yelled at me to get on the damned path.  I ignored her as long as I could and then cracked and flipped her some Vs.

Under the A4 and down the canal a bit, waving and "good afternoon"ing the boaters along the tow-path, over the river again and overtaking a good few more people who were now walking even on the flat, my legs were really starting to get pretty sore but my feet were drying out, but the worst part was that I got thirsty.  I drank the rest of my water and still had a little way to go.

I realised I'd need to beg for some water from someone else and started to check every bicycle that went by for bottles; there were no other runners in sight.  And then I found someone... who had water and plenty of it left and kindly let me have a drink, then filled half my bottle with it.  I could taste something faint and sweet in the water and asked what was in it.  I feared the answer (it could easily have been a carb mix), so the relief was immense when the answer came "Nuun tablets".  Phew!  No sugar!  I thanked the guy and trotted on as he was walking, but then he started running again and we ended up running together around the massively frustrating paths/bog/quagmire of Brent Lodge Park and then Brent Valley Park and stayed together, chatting along as I counted down the distance still to go.

Frustrating, looping part of the route.

Steve, as was his name, was in quite some discomfort and was grunting with the effort of each step and I joined in occasionally on up or down slopes and steps as my right quad was by now really quite painful.  The OK kind of pain though, the pain of use rather than injury.

Things were really sore now for me too and every time there was a little hump-backed bridge to go over a stream, or steps up or down or a little slope became very difficult.  It was hard to control the descent more than the rise, but the rises were difficult too.  We were so close to the finish and for the first time I had mild thoughts of wanting to walk.  But I wanted to finish in under 6 hours and do as well as I could with the fuel and fitness I had.  Steve and I encouraged each other on in our own ways, his more vocal than mine and I felt so much better after the water he gave me that I ignored the "go on, just walk" thoughts and carried on trotting.

Then we crossed that final road and saw the sign for Perivale Park where the athletics track and the finish line were!  We were so close!  We turned right into some trees and my Garmin announced we'd got to the finish a little prematurely, but we picked up another runner and headed for the track.  Steve ducked in through some more trees to the track and he and the other guy sprinted down the track to the finish, leaving me for dust behind them with nothing left in my legs but I still carried on running and ran over the line.

Me, finishing!

Got a medal and a goodie bag presented to me by Rory Coleman and I triumphantly produced the square of snickers I'd picked up at check-point 4 where I told MrTOTKat I thought I was in serious danger of running out of fuel as I was burning my heart rate too high too often.  It was untouched from check-point 4 and I'd not had to eat it, nor any of the nuts or salami I'd carried with me in case I felt uncomfortably hungry.

I'd done it.  51km on a breakfast of salmon, eggs and tomatoes with coffee and water with electrolytes while on the route.  No gels, bars, sweets, snacks from the check-points, energy drinks, cola or sugar in any form; no food or calories; just water and salts.  I didn't run out of fuel, I ran out of endurance strength/form/support in my legs.  And I felt fine!  Perky!  The lady who massaged my legs said I didn't look tired at all.  51km in less than 6 hours, at an average moving pace of 06:45/km.  3 PBs in 4 days - fastest 5km ever by 91s, fastest 42.2km ever, and longest run ever by 9km.  The only disappointment was lack of hot drinks at the finish and it was quite a big disappointment as I was really looking forward to a cup of tea.

My shoes and feet were caked in gritty mud...

But hey... I had a medal and I'm now an Ultra runner, no matter what people think about the 50km distance.

And thanks to MrTOTKat for making me a yummy dinner (bacon, eggs, tomatoes, cheese and no-carb "bread") that wasn't giving in to the the convenience of a Dominos pizza.  And for the fantastic support through the day, ferrying to and from the race through the awful traffic on the way back and being there at the check points with everything I needed at the right times and words of encouragement and pride.  <3

The results are out and my official time was 5 hours 51 minutes (Garmin which auto-pauses says I was on the move for 5 hours and 41 minutes).  I was 18th lady across the line of 38 that started, 178th across the line of 246 people that started, two didn't finish.

London Ultra (LCHF edition)

(The human, fluffy race report is here, the low-carb report is below.)

So, I've run two half marathons and two more as part of Ironman 70.3 races, and one marathon as part of an Ironman since I started running in July 2009.  I've also got my longest training run of 28km once, but since July 22nd 2012 (Ironman UK 2012) I've not run further than 15.5km in any training runs and only one half marathon race.  Of course it was a great idea to sign up for a 51km Ultra Marathon!

July 2009 - started couch-2-5K
October 2009 - first 10K run/race
September 2011 - first 1/2 marathon
July 2012 - Ironman UK (first/only marathon)
February 2013 - London Ultra

Seems a logical progression, right?

Add in the fact that I changed to a low carbohydrate (high fat) diet at the start of November 2012, and, against conventional sports wisdom, planned to race without loading up on, or taking on carbohydrate during any race as far as is practical and you get a quite interesting place for a 51km long running race course.

I train with water and electrolytes and otherwise just end up eating a little more on training days than rest days, averaging around 2400kcals per day.  And there are a few reasons I want to race without taking on carbohydrates (faff, stomach trouble, personal lack of skill, time-wasting, not being comfortable with the contents of gels/sports drinks/sports bars in general, insulin spikes).  This 50km Ultra race was going to be a fantastic, practical test of the theory of fat-fuelling exercise for me.

In the run up to the London Ultra on Sunday, I decided to work out how long I could run for and at what effort level before I depleted my body's glycogen stores.  I had the gas analysis figures from the beginning of December last year and Excel in my armoury...

Complicated with a lot of assumptions:-

1. liver glycogen as normal
2. reduced muscle glycogen stores due to day-to-day diet
3. using muscle glycogen from mostly lower half of body
4. lower half muscle mass is 2/3rds of overall muscle mass
5. weight approx 62kg
6. body fat of approx 25%
7. no added carbohydrate from breakfast (4g carb, coming from 100g tomatoes and 40ml double cream)
8. improved heart rate threshold for changes in fuel burn by approx 5 BPM since gas test

Using those assumptions, the calculations dropped out the rough reckoning of needing to maintain a heart rate of 170BPM to be able to last for 6 hours on the carbohydrate stores from my body (estimated to be 1500kcals from the initial assumptions above and a burn rate of 4.2kcal/min of carbohydrate).  You can see from the graphs and below spreadsheet fragment that the time (Time on CHO column below) drops off a cliff at 166BPM when it was tested (and I'm assuming an improvement of 5BPM in threshold since this test).

Stats from my HR monitor for the race:-
HRavg   - 171
HRmax  - 179

Pretty pleased with my effort management (it's missing the first 15mins due to trouble before the start)

So I kept fairly close to the heart-rate I'd intended.  But, for every beat per minute above 170 I burn around an extra 10kcals in carbs per minute so it starts getting very carb costly very quickly when I go above that number.

To cut the long story short, I had scrambled eggs and smoked salmon with a few cherry tomatoes for breakfast at around 06:30, the race started at 08:59, I finished at 14:50 having had only water with High5 Zero tablets in (and about 300ml water with Nuun tablets in).  I did not bonk.  I maintained a steady 06:45/km throughout (apart from a wee stop and short stops at aid stations and traffic lights).  I maintained an average heart rate of 170BPM.  I did not feel tired.  I was perky at the finish.  The bits of me that hurt was my calves, quads and soles of my feet and I needed to stop when I did because my fitness and muscular endurance levels had limited me (remember, I have -not- trained for anything like this distance in the slightest), not my fuel.

Endurance racing without carb loading or taking on carbs in a race is possible.  It isn't painful or difficult.  Fat adaptation works.

And I want to try this again but with race-specific training and better long distance fitness (i.e. able to run quicker for the same heart rate/effort level).  Time to ponder when that might be practical; possibly after 70.3 Zell Am See, seeing as I'll likely ditch 70.3 Lanzarote now.

Slightly less boring race report with nice photos coming next!