The longest race…

Phew, well yesterday was a long one, the 2nd of the marathons/ultra-marathons that I planned for 2009 (even if the first did not go to plan - see previous posts for details). My car was fixed this week and I picked it up Saturday morning. It seems to (touchwood) all be in working order at present and got me over to just outside Rugby for the Draycote Water 35 mile ultra marathon with no problems.

Yes that’s right yesterday was a 35 mile race. The longest I have ever run. I was expecting to take about 5 and a half hours but I actually managed it in 5 hours and 3 minutes and 36 seconds and came 37th out of 91 people so I was quite pleased about that. I was dead at the end of it though, even though I’d had an energy gel, a vegan energy bar etc. on the way round. I was really happy to finish and limped back to changing tent to get my stuff. There I started chatting to a chap who was just using this race as a warm up for a 45 miler run in a few weeks, at night, with only self navigation to get him and his team round!! He was about 45/50 as well. Good luck to him is all I can say.

Ultra runners are an interesting bunch, (NB having only run two ultras I don’t class myself as an ultra runner yet) they seem to be one step beyond even marathon runners. It's funny but the only other time I have come across the term "Ultras" is in Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space universe. These are series of hard science fiction space opera novels. My housemate bought me one (Revelation space) and I quite enjoyed it. In the book Ultranauts are a faction of transhuman spacefarers who look a bit different from the standard human form with many (but not all) having opted for extensive mechanical modifications, and with many weird hairstyles. Ultra runners may seem to have mechanical limbs to run for so long at such speeds (the guy that won on Sunday did it in under 4 hours) and many also seem to have hair that is a bit different from the norm so maybe it’s not such a bad link.

Anyway the race was good. It was 7 and a bit laps of Draycote Water a large reservoir out in Warwickshire near Rugby. The scenery was pretty and the weather was OK. Saturday had been really nice so I was thinking I might get away with running in just a T-shirt and shorts but, having been in the scouts, I went prepared with extra tops and my running jacket. When I got there is was OK but in the changing tent the wind really picked up and for a minute it felt like the whole thing was going to fly away. I hurriedly put on the extra cloths I had brought. The start was on time and my jacket and gloves kept the wind off which I was very glad about. I even saw the famous Mike and Phil (http://www.fetcheveryone.com/micknphil) on the way round. The race course was open to the public so I had to dodge cyclists, children, other runners and even one guy rollerblading while pushing a pushchair. This latter activity seemed a bit dangerous to me considering the path was at the top of a raised bit of ground so, if he had slipped, said pushchair could have gone a long way and he would have had a hard time catching it. Still, each to their own, maybe I just worry too much?

The course was fairly flat with only a few undulations but these got harder and harder each time you went round. I felt knackered at the end and I am having a rest day today to let my legs recover. I have the Cambridge boundary run next week so I don’t want to do a repeat of last time I had an ultra and a marathon in close succession and be knackered for the marathon, so I shall try and take it easy this week. I don’t think I could run very far at present anyway and I think even going for a swim would be asking for a bit of trouble in terms of letting my legs recover so I think I may just wait until tomorrow for that. I did have a bit of a workout this morning but that was mainly arms and upper body so not too bad.

I’ll see how I feel tomorrow. I need to go running in my new shoes this week. My 2nd pair of faithful Brooks Beast’s have fallen apart totally now (after less than a year of use). They have been on the way out for some time now and I probably should not have run in them yesterday but I figured it was a bigger risk running so far in new shoes than in knackered ones that I at least knew would not give me blisters. However, the padding and cushioning on the old pair has gone the same way as the first pair of Beast’s that I had and I don’t think I can run in them again without risking my ankles. We’ll see how it goes but it's the new shoes for me from now on.