Well out of the other side of the marathon training block I  have come to the realisation that running had begun to feel like a bit of a chore. Not noticeable at the time but there must have been a point where the joy of just getting out there had slowly seeped away. Slow enough to not be noticeable until I surfaced on the other side. These last couple of weeks have been joyful again, I am really enjoying the runs again, even the intervals and especially the hills! I’m now back to the point where I am looking forward to a run. The reduced mileage and the step change in training have provided the physical and mental break to get back to where I was before. This is a lesson I must carry with me into the summer/autumn marathon training block. Try to approach it differently with this new found knowledge and understanding.

When I’d booked the two marathons for this year I wanted something to look forward to in the gap in between them both, and another Ultra seemed like the perfect fit. The only real criteria I had in mind then was the distance and cut-off times. I finished a 55km run in around 8 hours last year, so I didn’t view a slightly shorter 50km as a challenge anymore. It needed to be a 50 mile or 100km as a minimum. During my searches one stuck out for me. The Race to the King. Two looping 50km runs in a figure eight. This meant I would get to my bag at the halfway point for a pit stop and the cut off times were generous enough. The only issue was the date, just 8 weeks after the London Marathon. Would I have time to switch my training as well as recover from the run before? Did it really matter to me? I was entering this for fun, for a challenge in the summer to look forward to. If I ended up with a DNF then it didn’t matter too much to me as long as I enjoyed the day out. After a call with Jenny to talk about fitting this into the year it was in the diary.

So, the training has shifted now. After a lovely couple of weeks resting the weekday running has started to go back what it was before, with club runs, hills, intervals and easy runs. I have hikes added to the mix now though, so this weekend I took myself out on the first one to try out the new Speedgoat 5 shoes, carrying the pack and the different nutrition and hydration. Jenny had me down for a 3hr hike, but not having done any real hiking since Kilimanjaro I had no idea how to equate this to a distance. I also had no idea of my speed over the ascents and descents so picked out a circular Box Hill hiking route from the Saturday Walkers Club website and added the GPX file to my Garmin. A short 16km course with 540m of elevation along the way it had a suggested walk time of around 4.5 hours. Sounded like it would fit right in.

The Bank Holiday weekend started with a special Coronation themed 5k race in Queen Elizabeth Park with Runthrough which was down in the training plan as a tempo effort. So on Saturday morning I did a little warm-up, ran the race and straight into a cool-down with the medal in my pocket. It was so much fun running this race, I had been trying for a progression but got a little hemmed in for the second kilometre spoiling the graph a little. I dutifully entered my post run synopsis into Training Peaks for Jenny to read later and went shopping for more gear for the upcoming long run. It was while I was in the shop trying on waterproof jackets that would pass kit check for the race that it dawned on me that there was no pain or discomfort at all from any of the areas that had been giving me trouble since January. Yeah, I was more aware of my right knee than I was the left, but that was it, just an awareness. Let’s see how long this lasts. It feels great to be running in relative comfort again.

Sunday morning rolled around with the alarm sounding at 4am. I wanted to get out on the trails as early as possible. Greeted with grey overcast skies I was happy to see it wasn’t going to be raining. Shower, coffee and porridge for breakfast and I finished packing the kit I would be taking out with me into my Inov8 Ultra running vest to get used to carrying it.

• 500ml of water
• 500ml of water with Tailwind
• Bag of ready salted crisps (crushed up)
• Bag of mini cheddars
• 2x Gu gels
• Flapjack
• 2 packs of Sesame Snaps
• First aid kit
• Survival blanket
• Warm base layer
• Waterproof jacket

Not quite everything I will need on the actual day, but a good start to practice with and different nutrition to see what works and what doesn’t.

The train from Waterloo to Box Hill was very quiet at that time on a Bank Holiday Sunday morning, and I used the hour to finish getting ready. Zipping off the bottom of the legs to the hiking trousers I was wearing, sorting out the heel lock on the shoes and putting the snacks into the correct pockets and pouches on the pack. Leaving the station and turning left I was very soon disappearing through a gap between two stone walls and into a field full of cow and their sloppy droppings everywhere! New shoes christened within the first kilometre. Straight into the countryside, leaving the tarmac behind for a change. I hadn’t really decided how much I was going to run and how much I was going to walk but while it was fairly flat I broke into an easy jog. Leaving the field behind I was into the woods, a roof of green above and a carpet of small white flowers. I followed the directions on my Garmin and carried on jogging along until I got to patches of path with roots sticking up or fallen trees across the path. Then the first ascent. Stairs, lots of them, four flights that seemingly never ended. My heart was pounding, lungs burning by the time I reached the top. The first of many climbs on this route, who’s idea was this?!?

Having the maps on my watch showing me the way kept me from going astray or having to try a decipher some written instructions from a website where the scenery may have changed in the intervening months since the author had been this way. I strayed off track only once where I was busy tucking into one of the bags of mini cheddars and not keeping an eye on the watch instructions at junctions. This only needed a few hundred meters of doubling back to find the right path though. The rest of the way there were no missed turns, no missed steps. The elevation is also shown on the watch so you can see how steep and how long that particular hell is going to be and plan ahead.

It was tough, terrain I’m not used to, hills steeper and slicker than any you’re likely to find on any road run. Some uphill efforts so tough I was blowing out of my hoop. The ascent up to the view point on the top of Box Hill had me stopping three times to ‘admire the view’ and practice not dying. It was so good for the soul though and, like all type 2 fun, left me with a big smile across my face when it was done. The pace wasn’t great compared to the Ultra from last year, but the terrain was very different with so much more elevation, so difficult to use this as a comparison and use it to make an assessment of the paces I need to hit out on the RTTK. 2hr54m though, cutting a third off the listed hiking time from the SWC website.

This run out answered a lot of questions for me though, helped me start to evaluate what works and what doesn’t. There are new questions now, like “where did these muscles come from?!?” now that new aches were settling in that I haven’t really felt since my days lifting heavy. All sorts of new muscles being activated on the trails that are given an easy time of it on the road. The glutes and quads especially. They are trashed. 

Think I’m going to enjoy this trail running lark.