The rather strange ballot system used by the UTMB races meant I had a guaranteed place in OCC for the coming year. My qualifiers were still valid, so I was in!
As I set out plans for the year, my whole focus was preparing to be competitive in this one race. With the benefit of hindsight this was a big red flag, that, after 2012 and 2013 I should have seen as a bit of an error. I even measured up the podium times in my age group in previous years against efforts I made in 2017 over similar distances, and gave myself a shot at a 9 hour finish of the 56km / 3600m race. Silly me!
So I drew up a series of races that would build up to a climax over the year - winter trail and fell races, a long trail marathon in the spring and an alpine "prep race". And entered all of them in the autumn of 2018. Coach Natalie approved the plan.
January 2019. Oh my Obelisk - fast hilly trail and country lane half marathon starting and finishing in Dawlish, South Devon. It was a crisp winter's day, and I found myself in much better shape than expected, an MV60 win and a flying downhill second half to finish in 2:01. I even got a trophy!
February 2019. Back to Sidmouth 4 Trigs, this year on a reversed route. I had done another recce, determined not to make the navigation errors of 2018. It worked, and gave me an MV60 win and a 20 minute improvement on the previous year's time. My new Mudclaw shoes stuck to everything, where others were sliding all over the place. Sometimes the kit does matter.
March 2019. The Grizzly. This race is a huge event, and pretty much an institution in the South West. Everyone who I run with has run it, some many times over. 19 odd miles of coast path, mud, bog and hills a few miles to the East of the 4 Trigs route, starting and finishing on Seaton sea front. Again I performed pretty well on the day, although with course knowledge, came away thinking I could shave 10-15 minutes off my 3:30. I was 4th in age group but 16 minutes off the winner. Could I find those 16 minutes somewhere? I've entered the ballot again for 2020.
May 2019. PureTrail Race the Tide 46 km / 1250m trail race in the South Hams, part Coast Path and part inland trails. I definitely saw this race as a stepping stone for the alps, and somehow got slightly distracted in my thinking during the race. For the first half I somehow found myself running with a friend, who is younger, a bit fitter and has different objectives to me. This meant I probably went a bit too quickly and didn't pay much attention to a proper eating and drinking strategy. At 29 km the race crosses a river estuary and here the running mate dropped me. Nothing wrong in that, but as a tricky cliff section followed, and the day was getting warmer, I lost a bit of focus and stopped enjoying myself. My descending went to pot on the cliffs, and I lost confidence in the shoes I was wearing. It was not until the last 6 km or so that I came back to life, finishing strong and easy in 6:03, all be it for an easy MV60 win in a pretty uncompetitive field.
June 2019. And so to my first proper race in the alps. Swiss Scenic Trail K54 - 53 km with 3700m of ascent in Ticino, just north of Lugano. I travelled out with Steve of PureTrail, a friend and extremely experienced long distance marathon, trail and ultra runner. Steve has had a number of chronic injuries, and struggles to train regularly, and we pledged to run together at a slow enough pace to get round comfortably. I needed to jump on the learning curve for the ride. The atmosphere surrounding the race was terrific, and after only a few km we were hiking in single file on narrow tracks rising steeply from the race base in Tesserete. This was my first race with hiking poles, my first race at altitude, with a big pack, on technical terrain, in a southern European summer with high humidity. In truth we hiked most of it, and all the uphills. I think without Steve's influence I would have run more, for good or bad. I learned how shockingly inefficient I was at speed hiking, and also to my dismay after 6 hours, "GI distress" reared its ugly head! This meant no real fuel for over 4 of the 12 1/2 hours we were out there, and a lot of pondering over why it happened.
July 2019. The "wildcard", Eiger Ultra Trail E51, 52 km / 3000 m, Grindelwald. This was never on the long term plan but as a hugely popular "sells out in minutes" race, I managed to get an entry, and I wasn't going to waste it, despite the fact that my daughter Lisa had her first Olympic distance triathlon on the same day in Zurich. "Iconic" doesn't really do justice to the setting of this race, mainly up high facing Eiger, Schreckhorn and Wetterhorn. The fact that the high point was the 2680m Faulhorn at about halfway determined my approach - very conservative early on. Once again, this time at under 4 hours in, I started to get GI problems, and fuelled lightly after that. My climbing was pretty slow again, although once the high point was achieved, the course was much more runnable, and I coped better with descents than ever. I had far too much energy in the final 10 km or so, in truth, and finished pretty well in just over 10 hours. I felt elated, and reflected afterwards that I wasn't going to find it easy to better this, nor were the GI issues something I could take into a race like OCC. So I withdrew, saving myself loads of cash and taking the work / life / running balance out of the red zone.
August 2019. I felt I wanted to replace OCC with another long day out, and fortuitously I found this close to home. Even better, the LDWA Brendon Incline challenge event allowed me to hike and run with Cocoa across Exmoor and the Brendon Hills. Again just over 10 hours (getting to be a habit!) for 53 uncompetitive kilometres with 1900m of ascent. Lots of fun, great views, challenging terrain, sore ankles and Cocoa made it look easy.
What about September? A road half marathon in Barnstaple on a totally flat course.
10 am tomorrow morning.
Evolved to run. Born to run. Older, greyer, still running.
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