A 24-hour Race

The reason for my three laps of Carsington Water in early June was because there was a chance I was going to get a place in a 24-hour race 3 weeks later and, given my lack of training this year, I thought it would be wise to go out and see how a 6-hour effort felt.

I’m sure that there’s no coach in the world who would say a 24-hour race was a good idea in my state of fitness (after surgery late last year I had an enforced lay-off, followed by a very conservative return to running), but I also had no intention of treating this 24-hour race as a 24-hour race. My intention was to do two 6-hour stints, with 12 hours off overnight, hoping to cover a marathon in each stint.

The Saturday after the Carsington outing, a message came through that I had a place and thus with one training run under my belt, I started my taper (in case you can’t see from where you’re sitting, my tongue is in my cheek).

Travelling to the venue on the morning of the race, it was pleasing that Erica was given a pitch within paces of the start/finish line – the perfect position. I duly registered, got my number, and an hour and a half later (after a spot of early lunch and no small amount of faffing) I stepped out to join everyone else behind the start gantry.

At noon, off we went.

The most notable feature of the afternoon was the weather. Objectively, 21 degrees is not a hot day. The problem, as is so often the case in the UK, is that there had been no chance to acclimatize to warm weather, having seemingly been stuck in early spring for months. There had been some hot weather in the UK in May, but not on the east coast of Scotland, which is where we were at the time, where it was struggling to reach the mid-teens. As a result, 21 degrees felt awfully warm.

I finished my 4^th lap at 1812, and contemplated going out after tea for one more lap on the basis that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. However: a) I had a plan, so why not stick to it? and b) my left quad was feeling strained and I felt like I had a small blister on my left little toe, both of which would benefit from sticking to the plan. So, having had an ice cream the moment I stepped off the course, I set about demolishing not just one bowl of pasta but two huge bowls. Thanks to the hot weather, I didn’t feel any need to heat them up; they were just fine straight out of the coolbox.

Pudding before tea

My original plan had been to set out at 6am on Day 2, to give me the intended 6-hour window before the event finished at noon. However, my secondary objective was to cover two marathons, and by the end of Day 1 I’d realized that I’d likely be rather slow on Day 2, thus I brought my intended start time back to 5am.

As it went, I didn’t do much sleeping overnight, and with the forecast being for clear skies and even warmer temperatures, at 0300 I thought I may as well get out in time for sunrise and to take advantage of the cool morning. Waking Mick just enough to get him to put an eye-mask on and move across the bed, I then tried to disturb him as little as possible as I had breakfast and a cup of tea (had we been in Bertie, it would have been easy not to disturb him, but we were in Erica where space is limited, particularly when there’s running gear strewn everywhere too). At 4am, out I went.

Sunrise approaching

I was sluggish on that first lap of the day, such that four laps was hard to contemplate and I was slightly regretting not doing that fifth lap last night (whilst also knowing that could have tipped the strained quad over the edge; it was much more gruntled after a night of rest).

The turn-around in my energy level came about 3km before the end of the lap, when I came upon a chap who was jogging along slowly but steadily. Using my usual opener of asking how he was doing, he confessed that he was struggling, pointing out the evidence: that he was running and I was overtaking him at a walk. I slowed down a bit to continue the conversation, and as we chatted he sped up, then sped up some more until I had to burst into a jog to keep up with him. We ended up jogging the rest of that lap together and I would happily have gone out on the next lap with him, had our timings coincided. He ended up coming first male.

By the end of the second lap of the second day, I had no doubt that I would meet my distance objective, even if I was going to go over my intended 6-hour stint.

At 1048 I crossed the finish line for the final time, having covered an official total of 84.4km, whereupon I confirmed to the timing chap that I wasn’t going out again. The benefit of the earlier finish (other than avoiding the worst of the heat) was that it gave me time for a shower before the massage Mick had arranged for me for 1145.

We didn’t stick around for the prize presentations, but only because we’d become aware on our outward drive of a scheduled closure of the motorway, and it seemed prudent to join the traffic queuing for the diversion route sooner rather than later.

It was a good, fun weekend – for me at least. With Mick even less able to walk on his poorly Achilles than he was 3 weeks ago, he was rather confined to Erica and her immediate environs. He did an admirable job of supporting my efforts though, particularly with timing the making of cups of tea so that they were cold by the time I arrived at the end of each lap (exactly as I wanted).

My lap stats:

Lap (10.5km)	Lap Time	Time in camp after lap	Rank
1	01:19:31	3:09	77th
2	01:21:39	15:33	27th
3	01:24:09	19:30	9th
4	01:25:42	9:53:53	9th
5	01:25:48	16:33	14th
6	01:26:10	20:57	10th
7	01:31:55	17:22	9th
8	01:26:40	1:12:00 (to end of event)	7th