My first 24 hour event on a track, and what an amazing experience it turned out to be!
I was so, so anxious about it. It wasn't so much the time or the distance involved that bothered me, rather than that it was going to be the same thing (a 400 meter track), over and over and over again, always being able to see where you had come from, and where you were going. I had no idea if mentally I was going to be able to manage that in my head, to be quite honest. I haven't been able to manage a lot of things in my head lately, and I thought that this might be too overwhelming.
I had spent a couple of days deciding I wasn't prepared enough, and checking the weather forecast - the conclusion of this being that I needed a plastic kit box to leave my things in by the side of the rainy track. This was sourced (as I'm sure real athletes do too), from Argos on the Holloway Road at 5pm the day before (long story, but includes tube strikes, being stuck on a home visit in far north Haringey at 4pm, and a long traffic jam). I was quite pleased with it, and arranged my spare kit, head torch, first aid kit, hairbrush, and a selection of favourite snacks and ginger beer, all neatly inside. I felt quite proud and prepared, finally.
The event started at 08:00, at the athletics track at Elmbridge Leisure Centre in Walton on Thames. I placed the kit box down by the side of the track, and instantly felt less prepared again, when I compared it to all the professional looking kit everyone else had. Andrew and I met up with Sarah and Jon, and lots of other friends.
We collected our timing chips. Had a last minute safety wee (in the luxury loos in the trackside building - so warm!). Then it was over the starting mat, and away, for 24 hours!
The 24 hour event was, as you might have guessed, 24 hours to run as far as you wanted. Each lap was 400 meters. There was a fantastic aid station, which was every 400 meters (which during some other last minute panic preparation I had done about running for 24 hours on a track, turned out might actually be an additional challenge, as the temptation would be to stop too often!). We started off anti-clockwise, and the direction changed every 3 hours (when if you were lucky, Rik would dress up as a traffic cone and mark the place of turning, plus Sarah and I had a rule that we got a chocolate Freddo at each turn around point). There were other 6 hour events starting at 08:00, 15:00 and 00:00, and a 12 hour event starting at 20:00, so lots of new faces would join every so often, which was really nice. It was very excellent to run the first few miles with Alice, and to run some with David and the two Richards at the midnight event. So many people I saw and caught up with!
I ran with Sarah, and we had the best time. Sarah has done a 24 hour track event before, as she is amazing, and when she talks about it, she says she never looked at her watch at all during it. So I tried that too, and it really worked for me as well. I put my Garmin to show the time of day, rather than miles. There was a screen by the timing mat, so you had the opportunity to see how many laps you had done each time you passed it, if you wanted, but fortunately the text was quite small, so it was easy to ignore it. We decided that as the medal was in the shape of "24", that our aim was to run for the whole 24 hours, rather than worry about the distance. I really liked that, and it felt really relaxed. The first time we checked our distance, we had already covered 76.1 miles, and I couldn't believe it!
I had been worried more about the mental challenge rather than the physical side of things, but it turned out to be totally the other way around. I found running on a completely flat, completely consistent surface for the whole time actually was really difficult. The 100 milers I have done so far have all been trail, and actually hills, although they are nice to moan about, I think I find them easier - it uses different muscles and tempo on the up compared to down, so different muscles get little breaks while others work harder etc. I also got a really sore right hip on the clockwise sections, running in circles! Sarah and I did lots of strategic stretching, which really helped! Mentally, it was no bother. I absolutely loved being around so many people, chatting with different people for different laps, and seeing everyone all the time. I managed to switch off thinking about laps in my head, and just enjoyed being there. So many catch ups with old friends, and getting to know new ones, lots of joking and banter. It really was very good fun, and I felt very happy to be there for 24 hours.
It was very cold, and a bit rainy on the Friday (where I learnt that the first rule of having a waterproof kit box, is that it is only waterproof if you actually put the lid on properly). But actually it was pretty nice for running in. Overnight it was absolutely freezing. My layers sort of built up overnight, until they almost got out of hand - in the end I had on a base layer, light running jacket, waterproof jacket, and a puffer jacket, plus gloves, handwarmers and hat. And leggings (obviously). On the subject of kit, I had on my specially bought and (what I thought) well broken in, Hoka road shoes, which are really comfortable for general running around in, but turns out weren't that comfortable to wear non-stop for so long. I had terrible sore feet by half way, and a few blisters, so ended up doing a short trip to the car to pick up my reliable old trail shoes with a hole in, which saved the day for the second half!
The aid station was epic. I had my own favourite snacks in my stupid wet kit box, including smoked salmon and cream cheese wraps, Quorn sausages, jacket potatoes with olive oil and salt, custard, bananas, cream eggs and watermelon (and some additional chicken cocktail sausages which I accidently bought, thinking they were Quorn, which Jon kindly ate). But I didn't really eat much of them. The aid station had, amongst other delectable delights, all types of cake, sweets, crisps, cold drinks (Coke, which I normally hate, but love on ultras!!), a kettle and coffee machine. The best sweets there (and indeed, the best sweets anywhere) are foam shrimps, which were essential for our "Shrimp Strategy". The Shrimp Strategy is an as yet unknown ultra technique (developed by Sarah and I, during the event), which I suppose is a version of "winging it" - whereby we kept an eye on how we were feeling and ate and drank as we needed to. The very moment that either of us felt low on energy, the next visit to the aid station we would have some foam shrimps, walk a lap, and pretty much always, we would feel better. If we didn't, we'd just try something else (always good to have a Plan B!). This served us well! It was only at around 90 miles in I think, when we were quite tired, that we adopted a more structured strategy of running two laps and walking one, and that worked well too.
Other special aid station moments were the 20:00 pizza delivery - I have never seen so much pizza! Coffee at about 01:00 was epic. And hearing "we've run out of tea bags" in the early hours of the morning, and the calm manner in which this was rectified, is something I shall remember.
Andrew did the 6 hour events at 08:00 and midnight, and is now on his #90 marathon total! Miles with Andrew are known as the "joke-athon miles" as he has such a vast range of terrible jokes. That's also a joke, by the way. His jokes are exceptional.
The flood lights went out at 22:00 (actually, they momentarily went off quite a long time before, due to a technical hitch, which was quite a moment of excitement, and forced me to find my torch and batteries in my stupid wet kit box, which randomly and unlike anything else, I had put in a plastic bag, so were fine). So the night section was a headtorch section which was great fun - I love running with a headtorch!
There was an incident in the early hours when a gust of wind caught the gazebo that the timing chip screens were in, lifted it up, which in turn lifted up the tables with the timing chip screens on, and brought them all crashing down to the ground, which was all quite dramatic. Happily, everything was fine!
"Cone chat" included party cones (fallen over), fancy cones (reflective), naked cone, little yellow cone, baby orange cone, and Rik cone. This is nonsensical chat, I appreciate, sitting and writing this well rested and with a nice cup of tea, but at 03:00 running round in circles since 08:00 that day before, it's a completely serious topic of conversation, I promise. As is, how do trees know to grow in the shape of a tree, the Poddington Peas, the differing heights of floodlights, the wildlife on a running track, if hurdles can watch you, and saltwater.....
...so, thank you Sarah for putting up with me for 24 entire hours non-stop! You are an amazing friend to me, and I love running with you and our adventures together. Love you big time! Thank you Rik and Phoenix for an absolutely brilliant event! And all the volunteers and especially Gavin for his epic mammoth volunteer stint and for being so positive and supportive even in the dead of night, and making the best cup of coffee I have ever had. Karen, Matt and Timing Monkey! The lady and her two small children who had come out to support Dan, and who ended up adopting us too. Everyone there in fact - what an awesome community this is! Running past the part with people kit/ support crews was awesome. Huge well done to everyone who ran. Brilliant, the lot of you!
I ran a PB for 24 hours, which basically was going to happen anyway as I have not done a 24 hour event before - so that is now 109.9 miles. I also ran a PB for the 50 km (05:10:55), 50 mile (08:58:01) and 100 mile (21:20:12) parts of it. Which I know aren't official PBs, as they are not the actual thing that I did, but I don't mind about that, I just am happy that after a bit of a disastrous few weeks I did something that turned out positive. And the best part? I felt good, and I and loved every moment.
No comments:
Post a Comment