Improvement, of a sort...

Well, my running may not be going as well as I'd like but my rowing is improving. ;-)

I've now rowed 120 km which takes me to Altnafeadh at the base of the Devil's Staircase. That only leaves me another 33 km to do before I'm finished the WHW. I did my first 2 km time trial today and was pleased to slip under the bar set for me by a certain crazy German of 8 minutes with a time of 7:46.0. I took 10 minutes for my arms to stop shaking afterwards though!

My legs do seem to be recovering well after the Hardmoors though. I returned to a favourite hill on Wednesday that for various reasons I haven't run up for a year. At 270m it isn't that high but the road swoops up and down on its way to the top and it's an excellent hill for giving your quads a good thrashing on the way down. I'm convinced that one has to train your quads to run downhill as well as up to survive the WHW race.

Away on holiday for a week next week (canal boating) so there won't be any rowing but hopefully I should be able to get in some easy miles along the towpath.

Hardmoors 42

42?? Well yes, it should have been 55 (or rather 54 due to a late course change) but as things turned out, I called it a day at 42 miles.

This race was one I had some trepidation about, knowing that I didn't have nearly as many long runs under my belt as I would have liked before tackling a race of this length this early in the year but I was keen to at least be at the start line of the first running of the Hardmoors 55. I'd missed the first Devil O' the Highlands, I'd missed the first Loch Ness Marathon and I'd missed the first Highland Fling race. I was darned it I was going to miss the first Hardmoors 55, a race that looked to have great "classic" potential.

I travelled down with John Kynaston & Sharon Law, both very accomplished ultra runners and we met up with Andy Cole and Brian MacIntosh at our hotel. A lot of talent in one room, with one exception. ;-) That said, I was still excited by the prospect of getting started. I expected it to hurt, I just didn't expect things to be quite as bad as they turned out.

As other bloggers have already recounted, the conditions on the day were little short of horrendous for an ultra race. The combination of low cloud, wind and exposure for such a long duration meant that something like a third of the field failed to finish the race, mostly down to hypothermia.

Hill and ultra runners often sail a bit "close to the wind" with regard to protective clothing, relying instead on fitness & the consequent generation of body heat to hold the elements at bay. Unfortunately for those of us who lacked fitness or experience of the prevailing conditions on the day, the prolonged exposure to the elements was very hard to deal with. I can honestly say that I've never experienced prolonged cold like that during a race, not even during the 2005 WHW race or during my winter WHW run.

I'd started off a bit overdressed, opting to wear my "walking" gortex jacket with hood and all the way to the first checkpoint I was planning to take it off and stow it my bag. Immediately after leaving the checkpoint though, we turned to face a north wind and I was only too happy to keep it on. In fact, without that jacket & hood I'm sure I would have withdrawn at 22 miles at the Osmotherly checkpoint. As it was, after a cup of tea I felt a lot better and headed out determined to make it to the next dropbag point at Kildale as 42 miles. I think if I had realised just how exposed that next section was I might have given up then. As it was I plodded on, grimly trudging my way up the hills and slipping and sliding through the mud.

Some of the time I "ran" with other runners but most of the time I was travelling alone. Because of the low cloud the views that should have been stunning were minimal to non-existent. All in all it was a very lonely and difficult run, not helped by mistaken decision to not study the route in detail before the race. I had no real navigation problems (apart from one brief moment when the low cloud was so thick it was hard to work out where the path continued across a car park) but not knowing how far it was to Kildale made the second section really drag on and on. I think if I had known just how long it was from the Bloworth Crossing to Kildale I might have coped better mentally. Instead, I was forever expecting to see a sign directing me off the moor at every corner and having my hopes dashed repeatedly.

By the time I reached Kildale I was destroyed mentally and physically completely unable to continue, my hands numbed to near uselessness and my energy almost totally spent in just trying to keep warm.

I think I arrived between 5:45 & 6:00 pm which, in the grand scheme of things and considering the conditions, I'm not unhappy with. Yes, I'm disappointed not to have finished but I have no regrets at stopping there. It's the only time I've been scared of dying during a race and I know that on the day it would have been madness for me to have continued.

Like many runners, my amnesia for the sheer unpleasantness of it all is already kicking in and having sworn "never ever again" many times on Saturday, I'm now thinking about next year's race and what I'll do differently.

I've learned more from this DNF than I think I have learned from numerous race finishes and whilst the experience probably won't make me a faster runner, I hope that I'll be a safer and better prepared runner.

I'm now much more appreciative of the benefits of hot drinks and the advantages of support crews & runners. Sure, when conditions are benign you can get away without these but when things turn nasty, they can make an enormous difference.

I'd just like to finish by extending my thanks to Jon Steele and all the marshals and everyone else who helped to make the race a reality and kept us all safe out there.

p.s. Just in case anyone is wondering, did all that rowing help (100 km in 4 weeks), the answer is "B*ggered if I know". ;-)

9 days, 50 km and...

...still not reached Inversnaid!

I realise that this is of almost certainly of no interest to anyone but myself, but hey, it's keeping me motivated to keep getting back on the rower. Another PB today although I must confess to having dropped the resistance to 4. As I've explained before, this doesn't make it easier to clock up my 5km, it just means I need to do more strokes/km. I've dropped the resistance as I'm finding that it's fatigue in my lower arm muscles that limiting me more than my aerobic fitness.

I ought to be enjoying rowing alongside Loch Lomond but there just aren't enough prominent landmarks to make me feel that I'm making any progress. Anyhow, that's the first 50km done and just another 103 to go. I'm getting there! ;-)

Another 7.5km

In an effort to do a bit of "catching up" I did an extra 2.5km last night before bed but it wasn't a good idea. Despite plans to "take it easy" I still ended up working harder than I would have liked and then didn't sleep well. I'm beginning to doubt that I'll be able to maintain an average of 5km/day, particularly as I have so many weekends when I won't be able to row. I suspect 25km/week will be more realistic.

Anyhow, another 5km today. I found it harder than yesterday but then I had been for my run first today rather than rowing first. Can't expect a PB every day I suppose.

That's 45km total now which places me somewhere due west of Ben Lomond's summit at a wee place called Toll a' Bhruic on my OS map. Guess it'll have to do for tonight.

Row, row, row your...Concept2

...gently up the WHW.

Back on board after a weekend off. I say "off" but in reality a busy weekend driving between Melrose, Oldham, Chester, Oldham again and then back home. We didn't get back until late Monday night and red wine seemed considerably more important than clocking up a few more km on the rower. That said, I'm going to see if I can catch up so that I can at least average 5km per day over the whole WHW.

After my first week of rowing I started to develop an unpleasant ache in my right wrist & hand and I suspect that I've got a touch of carpal tunnel syndrome. Consequently I've reduced the resistance from 10 to 5 which so far isn't troubling my wrist. Although it took me a while to get my head around the idea I can confirm that rowing 5km at "5" is just as hard as rowing 5km at "10". The resistance setting is equivalent to changing the size of oars that you might use in a real boat. Smaller oars mean an easier pull but you have to do more of them to cover the distance so I've pretty happy that I'm not "cheating" by dropping the resistance, I'm just using a better sized oar for someone of my physique.

Whether all this rowing is going to do me any good I don't know but I'm working on the basis that anything that leaves you collapsed on the floor in a puddle of sweat can't be all bad. ;-)

Elephants and sudden death in runners

I was very saddened to read of the death of another young man (i.e. younger than me) in John Kynaston's blog.

As John says, maybe running prolonged his life, but we'll never know. The question that really needs answering is did he ignore any warning signs that might have saved or prolonged his life?

There's been a very big "elephant in the room" about the death of Dario Melaragni, the previous organiser of the West Highland Way race who died suddenly whilst out running in the hills with friends. Why Dairo died is a question that must surely trouble any distance runner as we all hope to prolong our lives by participating in such a healthy sport.

Sometimes heart attacks (if that's what it was) do just strike out of the blue but one almost certainly anecdotal but believable figure I came across on the net was that over 80% of runners who had had a heart attack had had symptoms beforehand but had either ignored them or played them down.

There are many causes of sudden death in athletes and if anyone is feeling so inclined, have a look at this. http://www.sportsci.org/encyc/suddendeath/suddendeath.html


Whilst running probably doesn't make conditions predisposing to heart attacks worse, runners are inclined to ignore or play down symptoms because we're used to tolerating discomfort and expect running to hurt sometimes.

I want to go on enjoying my running without worrying about whether I'm going to leave my wife widowed and it would certainly put my mind at ease to know if Stephen or Dario had any symptoms beforehand that they might have mentioned in passing. Not just chest pain but things like episodes of racing pulse, irregular heart beat and aches in neck, shoulder or arms when running.

If you knew Stephen or Dario and know of any symptoms that they might have had but ignored, sharing that knowledge might help to prevent others from ignoring potentially serious warning signs.