Monday 21 February 2005

A slack week then BOOM! ~ 50km in the hills

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After a completely slack week because we were chaperoning some business visitors from my HQ in the USA and averaging about 3-4hrs per night I found myself in the unusual position of facing a diary that looked like this…

Saturday 12th Feb – 10km against the Virtual Competitor on the Garmin 301.

Sunday – Nothing

Monday – Nothing

Tuesday – Nothing

Wednesday – Nothing

Thursday – Nothing

Friday – Nothing

Saturday 19th Feb – 6km Easy

Realising that I had had a solid preparation up until this complete and slack departure from the program I decided that my planned race of 30km was perfectly tapered, in fact I was probably overtapered.

So I decided to take the 50km race option at the Aust Ultra Runners ~ Maroondah Dam Trail Run

Sunday 20th Feb – 50km

After a nothing week of training I figured I’d use this to my advantage and treat the Maroondah Dam Ultra as a 50km ultramarathon rather my planned 30km.

So I fronted up to the start with each of the rest of the field looking less than 50% of my body weight with three objectives.

To make the 20km in 2hr 45min cutoff. An easy task by anyone’s standard, right? Not as easy as you may think. The hills were steeper than I have ever experienced, in fact I was on all fours on one or two occasions just trying to scamper up them.

to finish, uninjured - Which I did

to beat 8hrs – which was the slowest finisher last year.. My time was about 7:20 according to my stopwatch

I learnt a few things yesterday

I learnt that hills and 100kg of bodyweight are not compatible and therefore I MUST reduce my body weight. No more wine during the week as defined by Sunday to Thursday. And look after my diet more. Water not Gatorade, less fizzy drinks, reduce starches after lunch etc….

I learnt that I can run 50km in the mountains at this point in the schedule therefore, I will be able to finish the Comrades 89km Marathon, in June if I keep up the training and lose weight.

I learnt that if always err on the side of eating and drinking more during runs this pays off at the end.

Finally, I have a pathway and schedule that will almost guarantee a finish in South Africa in June..

Plan for the Comrades 89km Marathon in Sth Africa on 16th June

20-Feb-05 Maroondah 50km - Done
13-Mar-05 6 foot track 46km
10-Apr-05 Canberra 50km
24-Apr-05 Brisbane 42km
8-May-05 Walhalla 55km
22-May-05 Williamstown 42km
16-June-05 Comrades 89km

Slight flaw here because I'll need to do a 65km training run in there somewhere so I may run for 10km prior to the beginning of Walhalla. (Is this weird? Running 10km before an ultramarathon?)

If I can do all this without an injury I should be right for the last one on the list.

The ultimate object COMRADES 2005!

1 Comments:

At 22 February 2005 at 7:02 am, Blogger Unknown said...

Congratulations, Brendan....great race & what a boost for Comrades!! LL (The Chickybabe Blogger!)

 

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