Race Report: Mornington Chasers - Regents Park 10K Series 1/6

One week to go to the Centurion Running Autumn 100 race, and what better way to keep things peppy but relaxed than a local 10K race :)

We've entered a couple of race series across the winter and through next year.  A grand slam of 4x 50 mile races, interspersed with 6x 10K races. I ran the last of last winter's 10K race series organised by Mornington Chasers and I really enjoyed it, so when the entries popped up recently for the whole 2018/19 series we got a full series pass each. The first race of which was today.

The mission was "1 hour very very easy" from my training plan, so that fitted nicely with a gentle 10K and we jogged around together, chatting away. The route is a pretty 3.33km x3, mostly through light tree cover around Regents Park with some very very gentle undulations and past the zoo - the residents of which started waking up quite loudly on our second lap. It's a nicely run race with no queueing for registration, free toilets and bag drop, a water station at the end of each lap and a cafe next to the start/finish which is open by the time folks are done running.

We managed to keep things sensible and averaged just over 10mins/mile until I negotiated with my brain that although it wanted to have a bit of a leg stretch, today was not the day for that apart from a little 400m right at the end. So as my watch beeped the 6 mile mark, we opened up the throttle to an easy cruise at 8:20/mile and that felt really good. Bananas (which we declined), flapjack and water at the end before a quick tea from the cafe and a stroll to the tube to go home. Out, raced and home again in plenty of time for a civilised brunch and an afternoon on the sofa.

Race report: Regents Park 10K

First race of 2018; woohoo!

Mornington Chasers run a 10K race series through the winter season and I wanted an early race for this year to kick things off, see where I'm at with my speed work and just have a bit of fun really. At £19 for non-affiliated runners (£17 for affiliated) - chip timed and free bag drop - the February one seemed like a bit of a no-brainer really. Regents Park is so close to where I work and I know the park pretty well so it was easy to get to from where I live and a familiar set of paths and scenery.

Registration and facilities (free toilets, and changing and showers for a fee at the Hub Sports Centre) opened at 8am for a 9am race start, so I had to get up at 6am to get a good coffee in, let that work its magic (*poop*), feed the cats, make a travel mug of tea to drink on the tube and head out. And I nearly didn't get out of bed!

It was *freezing* and I was snuggled up warm in my duvet, really not wanting to get up. But as I checked out how my coach did last night at Rocky Racoon (100 mile trail race in Texas), I saw he'd smashed it and come 3rd. That was the little bit I needed to tip the balance in favour of getting up and out.

Regents Park is quite pretty. I mean, it's a park and quite a big one so it's got a bit of head start on pretty, but there are lots of landmarks (see above), trees, sculptures and the zoo.

The race route was 3 laps of 3.33km each and it's virtually flat - very tiny incline and very tiny decline. My 10K PB was set in 2011, and my most recent quick 10K in 2014 at 52:38 and I was struggling with setting a sensible goal for today. I got a grip in the end and talked myself down from "PB or you may as well not have bothered". Having been building up my speed recently, I took a marker session from 2 weeks ago where I had to run < 9mins/mile for 40 mins after a warm up, and I'd held 08:40/mile for the 40 mins. So what I wanted to do today was to hold 08:40/mile for the whole race, which at that pace would be just under 54 mins. There were pacers for 40, 45, 50, 55 and 60 mins so I wanted to be between the 50 and 55 min pacers and not let the 55 min pacer overtake me.

Knowing my brain, I set my watch to just record and not pipe up every mile with my mile pace. That meant that if I was off pace I wouldn't just throw in the towel and ease off to jog it in. I really am not good at making the best of a pace that's less than my target, so if I remove that information I'm more likely to just keep the effort up. And that worked really well! I ended up in a small group of ladies who were approximately the same speed and just tried to hold on to them as we leap-frogged a few times.

I got a bit grumpy at one point when a "helpful" coach from the running club at around the half way mark let us know that we were on for 54-55 mins finish. NOT HELPFUL! I lost heart momentarily and then spent the next few minutes persuading myself that he was probably a bit out and not very good at maths.

I picked it up at the 2km to go point and hoped I'd not over-cooked it. Having gone a bit too early at the Chase The Sun 10K on Wimbledon Common in the late summer last year, I was a teensy bit worried I'd just fade in the last 800m or so, but I was OK! One of the other ladies had a sprint finish in her and she stormed past the rest of us, which was lovely to see :o)

Over the line for me and BOOM!

Thank you very much; I'll take that! 53:25 (race results official time 53:21, so even better! Though it's currently incorrectly showing me as FV35 category rather than FV45.) And the first time I've seen a VO2 Max of 50 :o) 54s off my PB, but so much has changed since then!

08:35/mile average for 6.1 miles (though Garmin and Strava say it was 6.24 miles and 08:34/mile). Very happy with that! And finishing right at The Hub cafe meant tea and some eggs were immediately available for brekkie. Perfect! (The Hub is also a sports facility with free toilets and changing rooms/showers for a fee.)

So glad I got out of bed! Thank you Mornington Chasers! This is a lovely, small and low key race. 330ish runners and a good distance to spread out over so no congestion on the course. I'll likely be back for some more :o)

Little bit of post-race stats analysis:

• Cadence was nice and high, but started a bit too high and dropped off over the 10K (pink line in the middle)
• Heart rate was a bit wrong for much of the race; optical monitors don't do well in the cold, especially if you're carrying some insulation. (red line at the bottom)
• Pace (graded average, taking into consideration the elevation changes) actually increased across the 10K. (So either my warm up wasn't long/good enough, or I actually undercooked the pace from the start by a few s/mile.) (purple line at the top)

Race Report: Suunto RunWimbledon Marathon

What a lovely race! Set up on a grassy clearing on Wimbledon Common, the start/finish/registration area was like a mini festival! With a gorgeous gazebo containing a live music act, a couple of sponsor stands (one by Suunto, the headline sponsor, who were lending out running watches to try out for the race), a beach-style area with deck with deck chairs and bean bags, the registration and bag tents, as well as a coffee/snacks wagon (which also had a fridge full of beers for afterwards :) )

The race start time threw me a bit. 2pm is a tricky start time. What to do about eating for the day? Could happily run on nothing, but I didn't fancy not eating all day until well after 6pm so I had some eggs and avocado earlier in the day and hoped my stomach wouldn't mind that.

I bumped into a bunch of folks I knew before the start (@hairierhalf and @ultraboyruns) which was nice. And I headed out with little expectation other than a nice long training run with some trees, mud and the odd hillock. 4 laps of around 6.5 miles (or 10K for those who work in km) has the potential to be boring, but with this route and terrain, it wasn't that bad really.

I spent a lot of the first 2 laps sat behind a lady with a Centurion 50 Grand Slam t-shirt from 2016. Boy, could she motor and I had to be careful not to try to do anything stupid. I had nothing to prove and I'm not exactly trained for speed right now.

The laps are almost always my downfall. With the Clapham and Wimbledon 15K races in the past, I lost the incentive to finish the distance and more often than not bailed early to take a 5 or 10k finish and still get a medal because of the 3 race distance options. This time, with 4 laps of a marathon, 3 laps in and 3.5 hours with twilight looming I just gave up and let the niggles and soreness in various bits of me be the excuse to stop. I just didn't get on with the laps plus I felt crap, my legs and engine felt rubbish after 2 laps. I felt a bit sick, fat, lumpy, with dead legs and then my right foot got really sore. So I pulled up at the end of 3rd lap for a 20 mile run. That'd do for the day.

I was given a medal anyway, seeing as I'd gone further than the half marathon and the medal was the same for 10k, half marathon and marathon.

If I'd been in a bit more of a positive frame of mind I might have stuck it out for all 4 laps, but in the end I just wanted to go home and chill out.

The race itself was well organised, an interesting and varied route and a sensible number of water stations that were cleverly placed to service multiple distances through the route due to the layout of the route.

I'd recommend it as an introduction to trail marathons and while it's still small and low-key, it's very well supported with a lovely, mini-festival atmosphere. Maybe one for running with a friend next time! Keep an eye out for it next year!

Race Report: Seattle Craft Classic (half marathon)

Mr TOTKat and I discovered a while ago that it's really great fun to enter a local race when we go on holiday. And with the total lack of expectation on the day, we often pull out our best times - double win! 

Since starting a job which involves a reasonable amount of travel, I've had to find reliable ways of minimising/avoiding jet lag so I'm not a zombie all the time. Running is a fantastic way to combat jet lag! Going West; I stay up as late as I can and try to get a run in just before sunset. Then get up and out for a run as soon as it starts getting light in the morning. Getting daylight on your skin and eyes really helps sort out the rhythm of the day and every time I use this method I just don't get jet lag at all! Heading East again it's the same in reverse, get out and get a run in as close to sunrise and sunset as possible to help reset that inner clock. It really works!

The second thing running gives me when I travel is that it's a great way to explore a new location. This latest trip to Seattle, I found a local half marathon on the first Sunday I was there, which was planned to end at a local brewery! A great opportunity to get up and out and seeing the area! I was a bit surprised at the cost of the race entry; yes it was tiered by how close to the date you entered and I was entering the day before, but still. Pretty pricey!

A quick cab ride to the running shop on the day before the race, to enter, pick up race number and the race branded beer glass and t-shirt (adding even more to the overall cost! doh!). And, because I'm weak-willed, I ended up buying a new pair of 3/4 tights (for some reason I seem to have only one pair of training/racing 3/4 tights at the moment and they have a hole in them from when I face-planted in them a while back).

Anyway! The race! It was really low key and small. Just under 400 people ran the half marathon and 350 ran the 5k (which started in a different place, but also ended at the brewery). There were pairs of pacers for all of these race targets: 01:30, 01:40, 01:50, 02:00, 02:15, 02:30, 02:45 and 03:00. Which was really great to see - this race was taking itself pretty seriously in terms of quality even though it was pretty small. The bag drop, portaloos and pacers were the indications at the start and I figured out the big contributor to the price later on.

The course was all on "trails". There is a concept of trails in the USA that's different from what folks in Europe would expect. Given that there's a lot of road in the states, huge distances between things even in towns that mean folks drive almost everywhere, there's little walking facility to get from A to B. So what happens in a lot of places is that there are cycle/walk routes carved through the urban area which are usually made easy for accessibility in some way; tarmacced, gravel, packed sand etc. This is what they call a "trail" and in the case of this race route, that's what the trails were. So really good surface underfoot for running quickly AND flat as you like! The weather was absolutely perfect too. Clear, bright and with a slight chill in the morning. It was all lining up well for a good time for me, so I went into the race with a back-of-the-mind aim to cruise hard, making progress to equal my PB or beat it. 3 weeks back from LEJoG and I was feeling quite good in the legs and engine with some of the runs the week before, so why not?

So I set off smartly and set out to make progress without blowing up too early. The sun was bright, the air crisp and cool and the runners started to pull away, but I let it happen. This always happens with a large proportion of folks not being so great at pacing - Marathon Talk describe this phenomenon and the tide going out. And the thing about the tide going out, is that you know it'll come back in again later. It always does. So knowing this and having experienced it umpteen times, I didn't get too caught up in trying to keep up.

As it was on trails and no need for a whole lot of road safety costs, soon enough it was obvious where a large chunk of the cost of the race went. 5 photographers, with 4 clustered together at a point on the course where the half marathon runners and the 5k runners would pass twice, and the fifth strategically placed on a hill to catch the big efforts. At this point, I'd been following a lady who looked to be hitting a pace I liked the feel of; not too easy, not too spicy. The tide was already coming back in again from the 4th mile or so and it felt great for the first 9 miles - just under 9 mins/mile is a pace that I need to concentrate to keep the effort high enough, but no problem to maintain for a good length of time at the moment.

Each time I gently passed her, she'd step up the pace again having eased off a bit, and pass me again. It kept me honest for those 9 miles. Had she not been there, I'm pretty sure my concentration would have dropped and I'd've slowed down and ended up looking at the trees and the river more. But at about 9 miles, I passed her at a dead turn point on the course and never saw her again. There was a little undulation around that area and I was taking advantage of the very slight downhill gradient to get a little help from gravity and I think that's what did the trick. Mile 10-11 had a slight uphill gradient (as did mile 8), which sucked a bit of energy and from there the pace started to feel tough to maintain. Only 3 miles to the end and I was on track for a PB, so I kept the gas on.

Then in the last couple of miles I made some errors. From before half way onwards, my watch was disagreeing with the mile markers by about 0.1 miles.  My watch would tick over a mile marker, then 0.1 miles later I'd pass the physical one. It's never clear how accurate those markers are in a given race, so the doubts start to creep in about how long you have left to go. As my watch ticked over the 12 miles point, it was another almost 0.25 further on that I passed the 12 mile marker, so I thought I had almost 0.3 miles more to cover than my watch was telling me.

With the discomfort I was now in, I lost heart a little. I thought I was going to come in just under 2 hours by a few seconds, so I eased off a tiny bit and walked a few steps to adjust my t-shirt sleeves which were coming untucked from my bra straps (I'd tucked them in a couple of miles earlier because I was starting to overheat and needed a bit more surface area of skin available to cool down). Having had zero people pass me from after the first half mile, I now had a few folks go by. Not happy about that! Then the route twisted through some trees and up a couple of tiny little steeper slopes and I walked a few steps again there - I'd effectively given up in my head and, of course, it's your brain that gives up before your body. But then I heard the finish line! I turned a corner and it was literally only 100m to the finish! My watch just ticked over 13 miles about 200m earlier and I thought I had 0.3 miles still to go! Argh! So I sprinted over the line, hoping I'd not screwed it up too badly. My watch said 01:56:21! A PB!

No medals at the end because the race medals had been sent to a race in Florida by mistake and they were going to post them onwards to runners afterwards when they arrived in Washington (state). But there was a lovely picnic area with beer and food trucks on a field by the brewery and one free beer per runner (as long as you had ID to prove you were old enough - this is America after all!)

What great atmosphere with friends and family of the runners all getting involved. I sat myself on the grass by the prize giving area, where the pacers ended up congregating afterwards. I got to meet lots of local runners and felt really welcomed - fabulous atmosphere!

Official results later in the day knocked a couple more seconds off - 7th in my Age Group (and first non-US female athlete over the line :oD - OK there were only 2 of us and the other one was a Canadian! There were 2 Canadian men too.). Very pleased with a PB by 57s when I've really not been training for speed and had no expectations or target for this race until the day before it. Very pleased with my pacing (apart from the slight cock-up at the end). Cheers!

Race Report: Moyleman 2017

Trail marathons are never 26.2 miles long.  If you want exactly 26.2 miles, run a road marathon.  The same applies to any standard distance race name applied to off-road running.  And I'm OK with that. More than OK in fact, but it often results in weird conversations with non/road runners afterwards.

 Other Person -  "Oh you ran a marathon? What time did you get?"
 Me - "Um, 5 and a half hours."
 Other Person - *disappointed noise*

Most people know "The Marathon" as the race that's run in the spring in London and are unaware that there are other races of that distance that are called marathons too.  A subset of those people think that marathons are 26.2 miles run on road and/or don't realise that they're not always flat, and so any time under 4 hours (or whatever their weird uncle ran 15 years ago) is usually greeted by "oh that's alright then" but anything over 4 hours is usually considered pedestrian.  Fewer still understand that there are such things as marathons that are run off-road, and sometimes even up and down hills, moors, bogs, mountains even.  And once you go away from flat and off the road, all bets are off with times.  But, these are generally not people whose opinion I value when it comes to running.

The Moyleman is an off road marathon run in the South Downs.  It's a bit hilly, occasionally muddy and is actually approximately 26.2 miles.  I attempted it last year, but ran into trouble on the day and pulled out at half way.  It was the first of two races that helped me to understand that my stomach prefers to start a morning run empty (turns out I can eat fine while I'm running or afterwards, but sometimes when I eat before a morning run my stomach isn't happy about it and gets painful).

I went in with an aim to get around with no heroics; approx 50 mile pace. Conditions much better this year for this race. No slippery chalk and very little mud. A touch warm for the first half though. Took a long time to warm up properly, felt really lumbering despite only 1kg pack. Trashed my quads quite early on with really bad descending - seems I've forgotten how to do that. Got pretty pissed off with water station 2 (mile 10) having no water; I'd not re-stocked at mile 5 because I'd not had much of my bottle, and had about 1/4 bottle left at that point. No water for me!

Got pretty bored with the scenery and had a bit of a chat with myself at half way where the only way to DNF was to walk into town and wait for a bus - might as well get on with it!

Half way/relay handover point was a shambles; couldn't even find the water tables due to relay runners crowding around them. Eventually figured it out, filled up and carried on. Over the last half I overtook about 20 people, which was psychologically boosting. Squeaked my way down the last couple of hills - quads pretty sore and "sprinted" the last 150m or so. 5.5ish hours, pretty happy with that given the "no heroics" goal. Quads are pretty ruined though! 3,200ft of ascent and even more descent overall.

Race report: Centurion A100 2016

I learned a lesson this weekend.

Having had the dream come true race at NDW100 a couple of months ago,  I should have been nicely set up for a solid second 100 miler at A100 this weekend.  With 10 weeks in between the two, there was time for a few weeks of recovery, then a couple of weeks of maintenance/re-building and a couple of weeks of taper.  This is what those 10 weeks looked like though:

1.  Sitting on my backside, as planned, with a cheeky parkrun at the end.
2. A few gentle jogs, as planned and a flight to California, little parkrun.
3. Busy week at work in California, 3/6 planned runs, missing the long Sunday run, flight back to the UK.
4. Flight out to Massachusetts, hot & humid, 5/6 runs, not too bad!
5. Flight home to the UK/out to Michigan on Monday, really humid & hot, parkrun on Saturday and 2x 15 minute runs in the week.
6. Flight back home to the UK, knackered, slept for 3 days. Short 3 mile jog and a half-assed attempt at CW50 (managed 25 miles of starting slow and getting slower).
7. 2x 30 min jogs and a 10 mile obstacle race. Coming down with a cold.
8. 3/5 planned runs, long run cut short. Getting sneezier and coughing.
9. 3/6 planned runs, chesty cough really kicking in.
10. 1x 30 min jog. Chesty cough. Declared "fine" by the doctor on Thursday morning.

Basically, well under 50% planned sessions started, some cut short, not well, 60+ hours of travel over 3 weeks.  This does *not* make for great preparation for a hundred mile race.

Having not really sat down and thought it through, I toed the line at A100 on Saturday morning.  Felt pretty OK, a bit more chesty coughing, but that cleared up after about 3 hours of running.  The first leg was actually lots prettier than I remember that part of the Thames being, but I got a warning shot over the bows.  A short set of steps and my legs felt super heavy going up them.  Drained.  OK, I'd done around 18 miles at the time, but they shouldn't feel like that after 18 miles on the flat and very gently (5-ish hours marathon pace).  Quick dark patch, but then I ignored it and carried on - no point getting wound up about something at this early stage, it only gives fuel to the demons when they arrive later.

I motored in to the end of the first leg in just under 5 hours (just less than 25 miles in to the race).  Feeling sluggish compared with how I expect to feel at this stage I was still pleased to be doing pretty well for a reasonable, not-death-marched finish in another 75 miles or so.  I declined my drop bag - 4, out and back legs to the same central check point gives access to your drop bag 3 times during the race - as I didn't need anything from it, I chugged some Pepsi, filled my water bottles and got out onto leg 2.

Leg 2 and the first of the Ridgeway ones - I expected a bit of climbing but it didn't come for a good while.  I didn't recognise this section for a while until I realised on the outward stretch to the turn-around point that I'd run it in the opposite direction at Druids last year.  This was one of the delightful, hugely runnable descents that I flew down at Druids, kicking through the leaves and not even noticing the tons of tree roots that lay beneath.  Hiking up in the dwindling light, the rain started bang on schedule at 5pm.  Still under the protection of the trees, I whipped out my waterproof and stuck it on before getting out and into the pretty torrential downpour.  Good move as it meant I was completely dry inside that jacket (one I bought in a massive tantrum in the Lake District last year after getting completely soaked to the skin in a different one).  The turnaround point eventually came and I hid from the rain in the gazebo to get out my head torch and chomp on some ham.  Leaving wasn't too hard (lovely though the volunteers were!), I lost my marbles a little as I asked on the way out of the aid station which way to go.  Hm.  It's an out and back.  This is the turnaround point.  Which way do you think you should go?  (that was my inner monologue after I'd been pointed in the right direction and stumped off for a bit drinking my slowly diluting Pepsi in the rain).

The second major warning shot was hitting the lovely runnable descent.  There was still daylight so it should have been still safely runnable.  But my legs weren't playing ball.  More my knees and hips were jarring painfully - my gait was all wrong and I couldn't run downhill comfortably at all.  Darkish moment again, but I had a chat with myself about being about 30 miles in and of course things were going to be not feeling great as I'd just run 30 miles - it's a long way!

Darkness fell and I switched on my head torch.  This was the bit I was looking forward to.  Solitude, at night, in the woods.  This was one of the big reasons for being here after enjoying the overnight so much at NDW100.  I started to enjoy the dark and the owls hooting and a super long stretch without seeing anyone at all.  Glorious!  This is why I run long!  But the visual contrast between tree roots and trail was too low.  Once; I kicked a root really hard, twisted and almost fell down a steep slope to the side but pulled up with the muscles in my back and midriff to save me from hitting the deck.  That really hurt my toe and my back.  Twice; same again a couple of miles later only on the other foot and this time so hard that 24 hours later my toenail is about to come off.  Again I saved myself from hitting the deck, but at the cost of really twisting my back.

Miles 23.5 to 25 - according to my watch 24-32.

I came in to the aid station 4 miles out from the central base point feeling pretty good.  Ready for a quick turnaround with a cup of Pepsi and a water refill, I chugged out again in less than a minute.  At this point I was fed up with my watch to the point of wanting to throw it into the river.  On the first 25ish miles out and back, there was a section of the return leg where it lost its tiny little mind and clocked in 9 miles over a mile and a half of actual distance, with times that started out at 06:59 and ended at 0:48/mile.  I'd seen a couple of miles earlier in the run with silly quick times and thought it was a one-off weirdness and I'd have to mentally allow an extra half mile or so to the end, but this was now beyond annoying.

Uhhh, OK Garmin *pat*pat*pat*

About half a mile beyond this aid station, the wheels catastrophically came off.  I was jogging along pretty slowly and realised my glutes and hamstrings had stopped playing.  My back was pretty sore and bending down, to clear some debris from the inside of my shoe, it was twingeing unpleasantly.  I couldn't actually run at all, there was no power in my legs, and not long after that a runner ahead of me took a walking break and I realised I wasn't catching them while I was jogging.  I tried some food to see if that helped - a delicious peanut butter filled Clif bar (oh *why* can't you buy these ones in the UK!?) - but it didn't seem to make much difference.  Thoughts came and went of being well over 80 miles into NDW before being anywhere near this slow (totally untrue actually, due to the elevation profile of NDW!) and it didn't feel great to realise that (bad brain - lying to me!).  Shortly after that, a couple of other runners actually walked past me while I was jogging.  Not good. Very not good.  My glutes felt congested/sore/weak, as did my hamstrings - not even half way in to this race and my legs were shot.  I had no idea what my pace was as my watch was in la-la land so I was ignoring it completely, but I knew it was less than 3mph and that would make for a touch and go finish in under 28 hours.

And that was that.  I called it.  At Goring, the central base, I came in and sat for a bit with some tea and a tub of cold rice pudding.  Chatted with MrTOTKat, James, Nici, Louise and Melissa, who were all very encouraging and made it super clear that I could get to the finish as I had 16 hours to cover 50 miles, which I could walk if I wanted to.  But when I stood up, my legs were like a baby deer's.  I was wobbly, unsteady and lacking in much control to go forwards.  I know I could have jog/walked it in to just about beat the 28 hour cut-off, but I didn't want to finish like that.  I didn't come to this race to walk for more than half of it (having hiked a few earlier sections, and the second 2 legs being slightly longer than the first).  I did really want to run into the dawn as that is a glorious experience, but I wasn't going to get that today.  I knew why I was in this position and I wasn't happy about it.  It was 100% my responsibility and I'd gotten over-excited about doing another 100 that I was simply not in a fit state to do.  I cried through sheer frustration and disappointment, and James was really good about that.  I was also angry that I'd let a few people down through my own ego drowning out the pragmatic part of me.  I was angry with myself for all the people who'd wanted to run this race and I'd gotten a place that they'd wanted and was throwing it away.  I could have marched on for some more miles, but there was no point in doing that for the heck of it.  I was pretty perky, awake, full of energy and enthusiasm for getting through the night without sleeping, but my legs were simply not on the same page.

Ya think?

Centurion Running races are super professionally organised, staffed by genuinely lovely people with runners needs front of mind at all times.  I can't praise the staff and volunteers enough - and I'm hoping to give back some by volunteering a couple of times in 2017 (I loved it at 2014 NDW!).  It's a great community and I'm glad to be a part of it!

I will be back though to the Autumn 100.  The first two legs are lovely and I know I'm capable of the distance, I "just" need to put in the smart work beforehand to give it the respect it's due.  Onwards and upwards!

Race report: Tough Mudder (full) South London 2016

This really isn't something I would have signed up for myself...

I’ve always viewed obstacle races as something that “people who don’t understand running” or “people with short attention spans” do.  Not my bag at all.  Having concentrated on running longer and longer and getting physical endurance and mental fortitude tested, stretched and grown, getting out of bed for a race shorter than 13.1 miles (a tough sprint!) doesn’t really work for me.  So when I was offered a place by Merrell to take part in the South London Tough Mudder I was on the fence quite a bit.

Spectator map

I looked it up and, in my haste, saw it was a 5 miler with some mud, some walls, an ice bath and some electrocution.  (Hm, attention to detail - 2/10.)  No worries for 1 week after managing 25 miles of CW50 and 3 weeks out from A100, shouldn’t be a problem at all, but I doubted I’d actually enjoy myself.  And the offer of a nice new pair of Merrell shoes to run it in with the rest of the Merrell team tipped it over the edge, I have to admit.  After a few days I was moseying around on the Internet, having a bit more of a look at Tough Mudder and I realised I’d been looking at the details for etc one on 17th Sept instead of 24th.  The one on 17th was indeed a 5 mile jaunt with some obstacles to negotiate.  The one on 24th was actually 10-12 miles with twice the number of obstacles.  Hm.  More of a thing but by then I’d agreed and my shiny shoes were on their way!

Merrell All Out Crush - Tough Mudder Edition

Cue 06:00 on 24th - my alarm goes off so I can get up and cram some tea in me, make a second one to drink on the way, feed kitties, haul on some shorts and a t-shirt and my lovely new shoes (which were really surprisingly light so I wasn’t expecting much out of them on the terrain) and my glorious Dry Robe.  A little amble to our nearby tram stop with a nice dry bag full of clean stuff (full change of clothes plus a  warm jacket - doesn’t matter how warm it is on a race day, I almost always need a warm thing to put on to put on afterwards) and a tiny towel to dry off after my shower (again thanks Merrell for the hospitality - a warm shower was very welcome vs the cold ones outside the corporate hospitality areas).  Changing at East Croydon onto the 0753 to Horsham (Crawley is quicker, but not for the time I wanted to be travelling) I had a nice sit and my tea while I wondered whether I’d actually find the other person who was running for Merrell and coming by public transport too.  We’d arranged to share a cab from the station to the event and I’d no idea what she looked like, so a quick message and I was identifiable by my huge Dry Robe when we got to Horsham.

The cab driver did the right thing as we got close to the event venue - one lane of coned off traffic being filtered into the venue with the right hand lane for the rest of the traffic, he took the right hand lane and dipped through a gap in the cones just after the venue entrance to chuck us out onto the grass verge.  At that point it was pretty clear that the reverse journey would be *interesting* but not worth worrying about until after the mud-based fun.

Me and some of the Merrell crew

Lightly foxed wrist bands post-event

Registered, liability waiver form handed in, and now covered in various wrist bands (participant, media and corporate hospitality) we headed to the Merrell tent to finish getting ready for our 10am wave.

120 Merrell runners!  Covered in fluorescent orange face paint, orange hair spray-dye, one huge guy in a dress and another in leopard print hot pants, we followed the team flags down to the start area for the pretty cheesy motivational speech, a little bit of safety stuff (don’t attempt the water obstacles if you can’t swim; if you see someone in difficulty, stop and make a sign with crossed forearms in front of you) and then reciting the Tough Mudder “pledge” (*eyeroll* - sorry but this was a step too far for me).  And we were off!

Pretty woodlands!

The team mainly trotted off ahead of me like any parkrun - cue internal monologue about the fact they’d not be able to keep that up and I’d see them again later.  The ethos of Tough Mudder is that it’s a team thing, it’s about team work and camaraderie, but having met none of this team before that morning I wasn’t really feeling it, especially as there were sub-groups within the team who already knew each other.  I felt like an outsider and didn’t really expect that to change during this event.

Kiss of Mud 2.0

The route wandered mainly through very pretty woodland with a few little sections out into fields.  I don’t really remember the first two obstacles; 1 - bale bonds (I assume something with hay bales?) and 2 - skid marked (nope, doesn’t ring a bell at all). Obstacle #3 was the first one that registers - Kiss Of Mud 2.0 - a mud pit with barbed wire suspended about 18” above it that you had to crawl under.  Thankfully I’ve watched a few races like this on TV before and the advice on those programmes was still clear in my head; don’t go down on your belly and elbows, but get as flat as you can on elbows and knees and crawl.  Oh boy was that effective!  I did catch my shorts on the barbed wire a couple of times but otherwise progress was easy and quick like that.  More jogging through woodland for a bit to get to the 4th obstacle and I’d caught up with the back markers from the team.  

Hero Walls

4 - Hero Walls; wooden walls with a ridge along the side facing away from the approach.  Even if you’re super tall, you can’t reach the top of the walls without a huge leap and then hauling yourself up, so I took the tactic of using the side support, which was angled, as well as proffered hands for a leg up, to get half way up and high enough to grab the top and haul over, yelling back to team mates who’d not gotten up yet about using the supports.  I hung around to help pull other folks over the wall and promptly lost the rest of the team.  Didn’t really see them again after this obstacle.  I had no idea if they were in front or behind me, but given the start of the race I assumed in front so kept trucking to try to catch up again.

Pyramid Scheme

Obstacle 5 - Pyramid Scheme - came after more lovely trotting through woodland and seeing various people in road shoes skating all over the place in the mud - those super light shoes I was wearing turned out to have impressive grip and I was trusting them pretty much like I trust my La Sportiva Helios SRs!  This obstacle was fairly easy in teams as it’s a hard neoprene slope - too steep and slippery to run up - with a ridge part way up.  Folks basically form a human ladder and help haul people up to the ridge and then to the top.  I found a couple of the Merrell team here, but nobody I recognised and again got split up straight after the obstacle.

Ice. Lots of it.

The 6th obstacle - Arctic Enema - I thought I’d be totally OK with.  It’s the first proper water obstacle and I’m not only a strong swimmer but I’ve done a fair few swims in pretty cold water so I wasn’t worried about it.  It’s basically a great big, deep tin bath full of water with a lot of ice cubes in, with a bar half way across that you have to swim under.  Watching race marshals dumping a few more industrial bags of ice into the tubs, I climbed up the steps to the chute area where as a group of 3, we were counted down to drop down the slide into the water.  Smug as all heck and full of bravado I was talking with the guy behind about what a relief the cold would be after getting a bit warm jogging about beforehand.

Muddy water full of ice - Artic Enema

I dropped into the water and OH BOY was it a real physical shock.  As I surfaced, I simply couldn’t breathe - the cold had knocked the breath out of me and it took a couple of minutes to get it back.  The race medic next to the tub was trying to be reassuring; I was fine, just needed to get my breath back!  He then counted me down and shoved me under the bar to the second half of the tub where it was quick and easy to get out.  I was pretty cooled down by that so upped the jogging pace to warm back up again and got yelled at, by a fellow participant that I passed, to slow down (um, OK, how about no and I’ll run my own race - yes it’s not a race, but you know what I mean).  It took a little while to warm up but I was actually starting to enjoy myself!

Muddy water full of ice - Artic Enema

The log carry - Hold Your Wood - was the next obstacle (#7) and that was a breeze.  The logs were totally manageable even though I’ve not done any upper body strength work for a year now.  Obstacle number 8, though fairly easy, proved the most damaging of the day.  

Mud Mile

The Mud Mile - a set of 3-4 mud and water filled trenches with steep sides up to mud hills that were slick with slimy mud.  There was no way to control your descent into the trench and no idea how deep they were.  I started to regret wearing shorts as sliding down the mud banks into the water meant moving fast over hidden sharp stones which raked the backs of my thighs.  I couldn’t see how bad it was at the time, due to the layers of mud over me, but it sure stung and a week on, the deep gouges are still sore and scabby!  If I ever did one of these again I’d likely sacrifice a pair of capri pants under my shorts, to protect my upper legs.  The fun was in the mud and shoving on other peoples’ bottoms to help them up the hill out of the trench :o)

Very very sore gouge on my thigh

Two tube crawls next - obstacles 9 and 10; Sewer Rat and Prairie Dog - big, slightly ridged plastic tubes to crawl through.  The first flat and into knee deep water, the second angled downwards a bit and onto firm, dryish mud.  Again, if I was going to do this kind of event again I’d think about a long sleeved top to protect my elbows from the burns I got crawling through these, but probably not bother with longer tights to cover my knees despite how scratched they got too.

Messed up, swollen, scraped knee

Lumberjacked - the 11th obstacle, was a bit weird.  A rotating wooden pole at about head height, supported at each end.  The aim simply to get over it.  OK, it’s pretty high so you need help, but fairly straightforward.  Again I was pleasantly surprised by random strangers offering to help out of nowhere - despite having lost my team and feeling quite like I wasn’t 100% with the spirit of this event, it was great to be a part of that sort of overall camaraderie and I ended up jogging with these guys who helped at this obstacle for a while before losing them as well.  The woodland trails were so pretty and great running that I was really enjoying that part too - I’d expected a lot less running, so I was pretty happy to trot through the trees and enjoy the moderate amount of trail specific experience I have paying dividends in making progress with joy rather than trepidation about falling over.

Lumberjacked

I skipped the 12th obstacle - Funky Monkey 2.0 - having had bad experiences with my plated collar-bone and previous similar gym work (pull ups etc.) I wasn’t about to have a really unpleasant experience with crunching, clicking, popping and horrible sensations that have made me feel pretty sick in the past.  I did, however, help pull someone out of the water when it was pointed out that they couldn’t swim and they’d fallen off the bars (almost everyone fell off the bars so it was inevitable to end up in the water).  

Cage Crawl

The Cage Crawl - obstacle 13 - was great fun.  Like the Kiss of Mud earlier, only a water-filled pit and a wire fence about 6” over it so you had to slide in on your back and pull yourself along in the water on your back.  Super super quick and easy, so I wasn’t sure how the folks ahead of me ended up being so slow that I had to tap the guy following me on the head to slow down so he wouldn’t end up head-first on my feet while I waited.  At least the water in this obstacle was a lot warmer than the ice bath so it wasn’t a horrible shock to the system getting into it, and it washed a lot of the mud off!

The alternate obstacle for experienced Tough Mudder participants was - Rain Man - I’m assuming something water related but that’s all I’ve got as I didn’t get a good view of it.

Glorious trails!

Coming into obstacle 14 - the Hero Carry - I’d been steaming through some lovely woodland trail. Lots of fast shallow descents, flat sections with pretty difficult ruts and roots underfoot and twisty switchbacks that were really slowing down folks more used to road running (or not running much at all).  I arrived at the obstacle in a bit of a gap; nobody ahead of me waiting so I turned to see behind.  Spotted a bloke who looked like a handy victim and invited him to get on my back for the first half of the piggy-back.  He was thankfully pretty small and light - about my height and 76kg (I asked!) and way stronger than me so at the half-way changeover point of the Hero Carry, he picked me up and we moved a lot faster!  Fun!  Really enjoyed that!

I pinned this bib back on after every obstacle - given it's state I'm not sure why...

The 15th obstacle was the most innovative - the Birth Canal - a long wooden frame with multiple chute entrances, over each tunnel a tarpaulin filled with water such that it hangs down into the tunnel.  Not a lot of clearance in the tunnel - you absolutely have to lie on your belly and get your head to one side to fit - the water is so heavy that you can’t push it up other than with your body existing so it’s really hard to make progress. The trick turned out to be to turn your head to one side, stay to one side of the tunnel where the tarp was a bit higher (not much though!) and use the batons of the frame, which were about 3 feet apart, to drag yourself along the ground with your hands and push on them with your feet.  Ideally, someone helps to pull you out at the other end, but being not with a team and the teams ahead having moved on, I had to sort myself out.  Not too bad really, but I did wait for the guy behind to be near enough the end to start pulling him out.  All part of the fun and sense of achievement to help others out!

Birth Canal

The most pointless obstacle of the event was the Devils Beard - obstacle 16.  A cargo net stretched over some hay bales.  It slowed you down a bit, but nothing to write home about.  The only obstacle that required no upper body strength, and had neither mud or water involved.  I guess it was there to up the numbers?  

The Liberator - obstacle 17 - was pretty hard.  A pretty much vertical wooden construction with parallel, vertical wooden poles, about 2 feet apart, with diagonal notches cut into them, and 1.5” holes drilled into the panels in between those poles into which you were supposed to insert wooden pegs.  The intention is to haul yourself up the wall using those wooden pegs and using the notches in the poles to perch your toes.  It was super, super hard to use the pegs and I’d got about 12 feet up before getting a bit wobbly and worrying about losing my grip and falling back down the wooden panel, filling myself with splinters and grazes.  So I ditched the pegs one by one and used those notches in the poles for my hands to climb up.  Waaaaay easier!  So I yelled across to a woman having the same trouble and advised her to ditch the pegs - to similar effect!  It’s all about ingenuity and team work, right?

The Block Ness Monster

My favourite obstacle of the day was number 18 - The Block Ness Monster.  Really something out of Takeshi’s Castle or It’s a Knockout; a big ditch full of water with pair of square-sectioned tubes that rotate barring the way.  They’re huge and rotate enough that you can’t simply climb over them to get by, you need to work as a group with some on one side pushing to rotate them, some already across that one to pull from the other side and one or two folks grab onto an edge and rotate with the tube to land head-first in the grubby water on the other side and then help to rotate the tube for the next people.  Great fun yelling at people to push together and get those really heavy tubes moving with people on them!

King of The Swingers

I skipped obstacle 19 - King of The Swingers.  With an iffy shoulder for that sort of activity I didn’t much fancy it.  It’s a very very high construction over a pit full of quite deep water.  You climb up one side and there’s a free-swinging pole with a t-bar at the bottom that you have to jump to grab and then swing forward with enough momentum to jump further at the end of the swing to hit a cow bell before dropping into the water and swimming to the exit.  Many many people didn’t make the jump for the bell, some even didn’t make the jump for the t-bar.  Hey, at least the water wasn’t full of ice cubes this time!

Everest 2.0

Everest 2.0 came up next and I’d found some of the Merrell team on the other side of obstacle 19, finally!  We reached the 20th obstacle together and was really going to need team work to get over it.  This one is a curved slope made again of that super hard and slippery plastic; you need to run up it as hard and as far as you can to reach the top and haul yourself over onto the ledge at the top of the obstacle.  It’s really very difficult to do that under your own steam, so what you really need to do is run at it really hard, aim for the bars behind the top ledge and reach out for your team mates’ arms to haul you over the top.  Which I failed to do at the first attempt and bounced and slid back down the slope - burning and bruising more bits of me.  I was pretty sore by this point and most of the mud had washed off in the water obstacles.  

Me, being hauled up Everest 2.0

My second attempt, on of the guys at the top managed to get enough of a grip on one of my hands that with some hauling and getting one leg high enough for someone else to grip, I was 100% man-handled over the ledge.  No mean feat for those guys at the top, I’m not exactly at fighting weight at the moment!  I turned around to help another guy up by grabbing him under the arms, but he was pretty strong and managed a lot of the work himself.  Still, it was nice to have helped a bit!

Somehow I missed obstacle 21 - Frequent Flyers Club - I think I thought it was an alternate obstacle for folks who’d done a few of these. And having seen a video of what it is, I’m a bit miffed that I missed it!

Frequent Flyers Club

The last obstacle came up pretty quickly and it was the one I was never planning to have anything to do with - number 22, Electroshock Therapy.  Having initially assumed the shocks would be like little jelly-fish stings, over the course of the event I was hearing more about it, that folks end up knocked to the floor with the shock and it’s not only not advised if you have a pace maker, but also if you have any metal implants.  I’ll take that, a titanium plate in my collar-bone is enough of a get out of jail card for me!  So I jogged around the side of it, only to see the finish line a couple of feet afterwards.  Bah!  I was hoping for a bit more of a run into the end, but there it was.  Anyway, over the line in 02:45, way quicker than it should have been because I’d spent most of the event thinking the whole Merrell team was ahead of me when it turned out that the majority were actually behind me!  Off to the hospitality tent for some hot coffee, hog roast and a quick shower to scrape off the worst of the mud.

Heading home was going to be tricky, I knew that from how the taxi had had to drop us off earlier.  I’d planned to walk to the station from the event site and get the train home.  But as the thought of the dual carriageway loomed I was contemplating hitching a ride.   There was no easy way to get a taxi to pick me up without them spending ages in thick traffic and probably charging loads due to that.  So by the time I got almost to the exit of the site, I was hailed by a marshal who said they were not allowing pedestrians to exit the gates.  I stuck out a thumb and the next car picked me up right away!  Thanks to those guys for dropping me off at the station (they turned out to not have done the event themselves, but one was in the middle of interviewing for a job with Tough Mudder and came to experience the event first hand - nice chaps and I’m grateful of the lift!)

Nice t-shirt; super light!

So. There we are, I really really enjoyed myself.  Tough Mudder was lots more fun than I’d expected it to be.  A lot of it was down to everyone helping everyone else regardless of which team you were part of or even by yourself.  A lot of it was down to enjoying being a not-totally-shit trail runner and having shoes that were super light and super grippy in the slidey mud.  I would suggest that it’s not particularly friendly if you don’t have a car, but I managed on the day.  I would heartily recommend an event like this out of season for trail runners - it’s super fun, no pressure about time, a bit of a fartlek and quite satisfying running with a pretty nice quality t-shirt at the end.  Bit expensive though unless you volunteer a bit as well.

[Merrell is the Global presenting partner for Tough Mudder. For more information go to www.merrell.co.uk]