It’s just
under 3 months after I ran 336 miles in one week, did 7 ultra marathons in 7
days and completed one of the most significant events in my life so far. Upon
finishing the week my body broke down as soon as I crossed the finish line it felt,
everything that had held together through the week suddenly sighed a sigh of
relief and let go. I was limping on badly mangled toes and feet, with the skin
of my feet after 3 days of finishing going really dry and blistering and all of
my toenails bar one dropping off over the forthcoming weeks. But I did it!
Rtrx7 was a success! After conceiving the idea a couple of years previously but
being too scared to even utter the words out loud it was an amazing feeling to
have attempted something original that no one else had done and said couldn’t
be done and to have pulled it off.
So in the
early part of 2014, plans came together and bit by bit the challenge became a
reality, with the ultimate reality being when I lined up on the start of the
2014 Greenlight: Round The Rock ultra-marathon on Aug 2nd. This was
day one for me, and when everyone else had finished their stint, I would have
to go home, recover and get up again and do it all over.
I won’t go
into too much detail here about the challenge itself as I am hoping to sell the
rights for the story to an award winning novelist or film maker and get Keanu
Reeves to play me in the film. Suffice to say the week was hard, took me places
I had never been in terms of despair and joy and is a definite cornerstone and
reference point in my life.
The day
after I had finished I woke up and was a little stiff and slightly hung over
after a few glasses of champagne after a big do to celebrate completing it as
well as the live televised lottery draw for the local charity I was raising
money for – Jersey Hospice Care. It was a lovely feeling to know that I
wouldn’t have to circumnavigate the island again that with the most testing
thing I had to do being interviewed by a local radio station at 9am and to not
say any swears inadvertently!
So what toll
did the challenge take on me? My feet and toes were in a bad way, for about 3
weeks afterwards I had really bad dry skin on my feet and it was flaking off
all over the show. I lost all my toenails bar one or two and had lots of
callouses at various pressure points on my feet. Physically in an injury sense
I was OK, going into the week I had a bit of a groin issue that I was a little
worried about but this didn’t really become too much of a problem which I was
thankful for. Injury was one of my biggest worries for the week as it was
something that I couldn’t account for or foresee if it did occur but for 336
miles I came out of the week quite lightly.
3 months
down the line I can now see that I was quite run down by the week after it was
over. I took a couple of weeks off running after rtrx7 but was quite keen to
get back into some form of exercise quite quickly as believe it or not I
started to put weight on after the challenge quite quickly. I ran for 90 hours
over the week and burnt and estimated 35,000 calories and was nowhere near
replacing these but seemed to not have any adverse weight loss, which was good.
During the MDS I lost a lot of weight quickly and people commented how
emaciated I looked at the end of the week, so I expected something similar for
RtRx7. I think my body was in shock to be honest and wasn’t sure what was going
on, almost as if it went into survival mode and wanted to then hang on to any
calories that I put into it. It is something that has continued over the last
couple of months with my weight going up and normal training not being enough
to sustain my usual running weight, which has been a little troublesome; being
lighter = going faster and my initial goal after RtRx7 was to run the Jersey
Marathon in early October. I started to speed train at the track and do shorter
more intense runs a few weeks later, reasoning that shorter runs would be good
for the body. The first track session I did was “interesting” to say the least
and I struggled, on a superficial level I felt recovered I think but under the
surface I was needing to rest or at least exercise at a much lower intensity.
Through
September I built the training with Jersey as my goal. It was good to have a
goal after the euphoria of completing RtRx7, it was a massive part of 2014 and
as happens after these things there was a come down, which I expected to a degree
having done things like this before. I was mostly pleased to have done it, but
it was taking time to process the week. It was intense; 90 hours of running
which when coupled with recovery, eating and sleeping didn’t leave much time
for reflection or leisure time. For the first week or so afterwards I was
dreaming I was running around the island and would wake up tired as if I had
done the actual run! Processing the week was an ongoing thing and one I
enjoyed, lots of photos were taken, lots of messages sent in support through
the week and lots of positive take aways in general, I would say now I have
processed it all and it is almost as if it never happened, just like being back
in work on a Monday morning after being away in Barbados for 2 weeks previously
and by lunch time it being as if you had never been away. The memories are
there, but almost as if it was someone else living it.
A big issue
for me over the 3 months since has been tiredness: I remember googling how to
recover from something like this and there weren’t many search results that
gave any meaningful advice as there are few documented precedents. There are
the usual rules of one days recovery for every mile you have ran, which would
have meant me not running til the following July, by which time had the weight
gain continued I would have been a wallowing blob sitting there unable to see
my feet and having to be lifted to the loo by a crane! I was back in work a
week later and I was going to bed at 10pm most nights and getting up at 8am to try
and recuperate, I became obsessed with sleep; how much I could get, how to make
it up if I couldn’t get my ten hours that night and when I could snooze over
the weekend. I have always like sleep to be fair but it took on an extra sense
of urgency and at the time I didn’t realise how much toll the challenge had
taken me, only now with the benefit of hindsight can I see it. I met a friend
of mine Graeme a few weeks ago who had completed the Grand Union Canal Race
back at the start of the summer, which is a 145 mile race along the Grand Union
Canal. He was in a similar boat to me and said that it took him 3 months to get
over it fully, likening running during that time to having an elastic band
attached and someone holding on to it whilst trying to run, a feeling I
completely empathised with.
I think it
is natural for us runners to want to do what we do best and to be in full
training and not to be tapering or recovering. I for one only paid lip service
to recovery runs, recovery periods, periodization and proper tapering, taking
them only when I started to feel jaded rather than being proactive. In the last
couple of weeks however I have started to read a book about the 80/20 training
principle which in short is a training method where 80 % of training done is
performed at sub lactic thresholds and the other 20% is done above as this is
the optimal ratio to get the benefits of training, the result being that when
an athlete comes to do the 20% aspect they are more rested to hit it hard. The
80% enables the athlete to increase volume of training and therefore strength
without stressing the body. I have enjoyed this book immensely and have adopted
the principle wholeheartedly, having worked out my optimal zones and now
training within them. It is early days but I feel more rested and relaxed after
the sub lactic runs and have been burning off a lot of the weight from RtRx7 as
a consequence of the training zones I have been working in. I think that had I
been aware of this method I would have definitely adopted this post RtRx7 as it
would have enabled me to train at a low intensity and maintain fitness but not
push too hard in the initial stages of getting back to full training.
Next for me
is the XNRG Druids Challenge this weekend; average of 29 miles per day for 3
days this will be a great test to see just how far down the recovery road I am.
The goal is to get out and enjoy the weekend primarily and hopefully get a good
solid performance in as well. Training in earnest will begin soon for the 2015
Marathon Des Sables in April, and I have secured a place for the race of all
races The Dragons Back which takes place in June 2015. Lots to train for and
lots to look forward to over the coming year!
The
fundraising and challenge is completed for RtRx7 for those of you who missed it
I put together a little video of the week to show what went into it, available
here:
The challenge would not have happened without the support of
the following companies: Marks and Spencer Jersey, Clink Hostels, BNP Paribas
Jersey and Mymemory.co.uk.
The people who helped me with the organisation of both the
fundraising and through the week were many: big thanks to Karl Moss, Ben
Garland, David Stokes, Bruno Francisco, Rod Bryans, Euros Williams, Steve
Hayes, Peter Wright, Simon Lester, Shane Hugill, Simon Mackenzie, Robbie
Campbell, James Hope, Dave Double, Will Evans, Anna Goncalves, Shaun Maloret,
Sam Horsfall, Neil Ginnis, Trisha and Darren from Yoga Matters, Piers De
Gruchy, Bryce Alford, Cameron Purcell, Brendan Roberts, Sam Wade, Mark Nicol, Lee
De St Croix, Jemma Jelley, Neil Walker, Thomas Robertson, John McGovern and the
one person who held the whole operation together Nicola Gott – without her I
could not have got through the week, she was there to take me to the start
every morning at 6:30am and to drop me home every night, sometimes at 10:15pm,
some might say she had a harder week than me and I would be inclined to agree!!
I have tried to name everyone there so hopefully I have got everyone..
Finally I would like to say that I hit the target of £15,000.00
raised for Jersey Hospice Care due to the massive generosity of everyone who
donated and big donations from Clink Hostels who gave £2000.00 to the cause and
my place of work BNP Paribas who donated £2,200.00. I would like to thank them
both as well as everyone else who donated and showed their support.
