Today I chat with Matthew Smith from Stockholm
Hi Coach,
Well, the dust has most definitely settled on my attempt last week.
And I’m happy to report that I made it to the Hundred. Only I had to settle for 100Kilometers rather than Miles!
I know the full description below is too long for the show!!! Perhaps the simple summary is the following:
I gave the hundred a good go, and learned a lot about the need to do the walking training to get used to slow miles, because they burned out my legs far worse than running at tempo would have I think. But I also learned that I can run fine on very tired legs, which tells me I will crack the miler in the future. I made it to 100KM and I’m very happy with that!!! This included my longest single run without stopping of 50K. I loved the Road to Yarraman song, and was singing it aloud on the trails of the northern Stockholm suburbs ”we are all stars”!
And here’s the long version!
It was a big and sudden learning curve…
Funny thing though – when I was bonking worst – I had just realized that the podcasts I’d setup to play were actually from the time you didn’t make it to the Hundred startline (Puffing Billy on the road to Yarraman). And although I really loved the song with the kids, as the shows went on it got more and more depressing and was matching my mood on the trail. Eventually I realized I should’ve gone back some years earlier to the real project 100 – but by then I had started to know that my own attempt was failing also.
And it goes like this:
I started waaay too slow. Walked the hills as I’d heard that was good. But soon realized that at that pace I would be out way too long during the night, and it was sub-zero that day. So I picked up the pace a little, and ran the hills (slowly) after about 10K. I wanted to run the first 50K on day 1 in under 7 hours. I’d perhaps chosen a trail with too many hills, as I wanted a soft surface away from roads – so this also took a lot out of my legs. I felt great at the half marathon and took a very quick stop to refill water – had been taking a little food on board every now and then – but didn’t want to stop long. I should’ve taken a longer stop and put my legs up… But the time was basically an hour or more longer than I usually run a half in. Of course I bonked at 30KM pretty bad (about the moment you’d started arguing with the race director from Yarraman)… And I struggled to the marathon point. A full 2 hours longer than I could have ‘run’ it in and feeling far far worse. My legs were like lead. And then I ended up stumbling home, in the cold dark and feeling terrible in my legs. The last 8K was extremely slow. 7 and a half hours for 50K and although I felt pretty fine, not much hunger or thirst, no upset stomach etc – my legs were toast! I gave up on my previous plan to do another run that night – and went to bed and tossed and turned all night.
Woke in the morning and realized I couldn’t do 4 days of this. The slow pace was not good for me at all. Hindsight is great of course. But I figured that long time on my feet was not for me. If I’d done that 50K in 5ish hours like I know I could – it would’ve been so much better than the 7.5 I actually did! So I set myself up for something different. I was happy to have completed my longest ever single run on 50K, so decided to see what I could do on very tired legs. So I took a couple of hours to loosen up from the ‘so stiff I can’t walk’ state – and went out at a normal tempo pace for 10K. And that was fine. And later the same day I did the same again some more times. Nice long recoveries between. Then I took another sleep and then decided to round it all off with a 20K run on the track to finish as fast as I could manage. Even though I had enough time left to complete 100 miles – it wouldn’t have meant so much to me. My legs were shot and I was just keen to do one more run. So in just under two hours for the final 20K on the track – I called it time on the whole thing. Actually that means I did 100K in 48hours. The ‘race’ I was in had a total time of 96 hours – and I don’t want to call it throwing in the towel anymore than just being so content with what I’d done, I was really happy – and I didn’t need to carry on. Nothing to prove. And that final marathon and a half was going to be too much to risk. I was so happy with 100K!
Conclusions:
Slow pace is not for me unless I do a lot of training for it. And learn how to fuel the legs! Lactic acid ruined me.
I can run pretty quick on exhausted legs. And nothing else went wrong.
One week later I am back to my daily runs and feeling great.
I will do a Hundred in a race when there are aid stations and other facilities – it was too weird doing it on my own!
I will visit Yarraman.
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