Ultra_Tales_Issue_13

ARTICLEEAT 2 COMPLETE• 2003 Enduroman Arch To Arc (London-Paris)triathlon and getting carried away on asection on the road run during a lovely calmnight between 20-35 miles with lots ofdownhill accelerated the trashing of myquads that eventually forced me to walk thefinal 17 miles to Dover• 2010 and my first Fellsman outing over 62miles in the Yorkshire Dales. I wrestled withCompetitive Bloke all day repeatedly stuffinghim back into my pack when he emerged totry sabotage my ‘complete not compete’goal. I won – but he took me the full 12rounds• 2011 UTMB in grim conditions. 30km in andI’m already very cold. I recover but the spiralhas started. Throw in some less than totalmotivation and I will DNF at halfwayThen there’s the flip side of being conditionedenough for this ultra game so that you’re running adiesel engine that gives you lotsa miles for verylittle intake: The early warning signals are hiddenand you are well practiced at being frugal.‘So how much fluid are you all taking in an hour?’asks Sarah Garton recently.There’s a pause as adventure racing teamies JoeFaulkner, Jill Eccleston and Sharon Mcdonald and Ilook searchingly at each other, do the maths andcome up with very little. Sarah fills in the gap:A glorified picnic punctuated by bits of runningand walking.Let Competitive Bloke have his head and finelybalanced equilibrium can quickly become marginal– and after marginal comes pain and suffering andthat, as all disciples of Yoda will tell you, will leadyou downwards to The Dark Side.Once the slide begins is it possible to completelyrecover it? Well, that depends…As Paul Fowlerwww.onehundredpercentswimming.co.uk put it tome as we were comparing cold experiences aftermy Keswick gig:‘I was well prepared, highly motivated and it really didmatter, and yet there still came a point where I couldnot fight the physiology.’* Get To The Bottom Of ItAre you ready to reflect with certainty and get theto real reasons behind your race underperformancesand DNFs?Email Andy andy@bigandscaryrunning.com and hewill send you the key questions he constructed thatallowed him to make the knowledge breakthroughhe talks about in this piece. In return he would liketo feature your case study in future writing on thissubject so other people can benefit.‘About 800ml?’Er, no Sarah. That would do each of us for at leasthalf a day on the hill actually…Ah.Herein lies another part of the problem: Focusingon becoming more fuel-efficient by steadilyreducing the amount we eat and drink in certaintraining sessions has meant that when the energyrequirements go up (e.g. when racing / in cold/changeable weather and if we are solo for longperiods) our habits lag behind. That’s right: We havebecome less used to eating and drinking frequently– which is what we were doing when we firststarted this ultra game! Remember those first races?Andy MounceyWebsitewww.bigandscaryrunning.com24ULTRA TALES | OCTOBER 2014Sponsored by thehttp://