Life is an ultramarathon

Well, everything is in the title... I've been increasingly asked to use GoogleEarth for my para-academic activities. Just to see how it looks like, I've imported some old GPS track into GoogleEarth. Note that the free version doesn't allow that directly, but a couple of lines of Python can convert very easily any route file into KML. The blue sections were missing and have been drawn by hand. Enjoy.


Click to download the file

Ultra track.

On Saturday I did my last long run before the UTMB. I ran from Eastbourne to Brighton following the South Downs Way in the hills, nearby the south coast. The route I chose was about 47km long. The aim for this week-end was to go to North Wales, but for various reasons I couldn't make it. Moreover, I was pretty tired by the end of the week and I only decided to go there on Friday night. Very little preparation !

The weather was quite good, very sunny but also very windy. As the wind usually comes from the West and I was mostly heading West, I had the wind in my face most of the time, or at best on my side. Unfortunately the relatively cool air combined with the wind made me forget that the sun was actually pretty strong. I'm now covered in sun burns...

The run went pretty good, although not very fast. I took my poles with me because the aim was to train in similar conditions as on the UTMB (*). I think they were a bit useless though, because the slopes were never steep enough to make good use of them. Moreover it's always a hard decision in this sort of gentle slopes whether I should run or walk... On the 3 Forts Marathon I decided to run all of them, but I took it much easier on this run. I could see lots of people seemed really suprised I used poles. A bit like when I was hiking in the Alps with them 5 years ago. Some even asked me whether I was injured !

My water tank started to leak at the beginning of the run, wasting the precious liquid and turning my map into papier maché. Well, better notice now than in the middle of the night on the Col du Bonhomme...

I eventually arrived in Brigthon after running 5h40. Compared to 4 hours on the 3 Forts Marathon, which follows a similar route, it doesn't look very good. I'm quite satisfied though because it was not prepared at all, because I had to navigate and find water, because the wind sucked a lot of power and because out of a competition I took more time to enjoy the landscape.

Ultra burnt.

(*) Mike: You'll be glad to learn that I haven't hit any nice Englishman in the **** with them

On Saturday, I ran from home (London, Hammersmith) to Mommas' Palace (Guildford). That's a nice 60km run along the Thames from London to Weybridge, then along the Wey River up to Guildford.

Given Mommas' aura, several pilgrimages have already been carried out. When he lived in Weybridge, we walked from Hyde Park by the Thames Path and Richmond Park (30km - see Original ultra feeling). Then Mommas decided to make it harder and moved to Guildford; we walked from Surbiton (36km) (*). This time Mommas gave me the force to run the whole way at once. The target was set to 6 hours.

When I left at about 8am, the clouds were threatening and I expected some rain on the way. But I didn't even get a tiny drizzle. The temperature was perfect: about 10°C. From the beginning I used the so-called Cyrano method: I walked 1 minute every 10. These micro-breaks allow to rest the muscles and potentially reduce the speed decay and avoid injuries. Moreover, they can be used to eat and drink at regular times. Hammersmith, Mortlake, Kew, Richmond, Kingston-upon-Tames, Walton-on-Thames, Weybridge: the section along the Thames went quite smoothly. I knew most of the path, except the swing around Hampton Court Park. Just before that, in Kingston, a runner tried to trick me and told me the tow path was following the South Bank. Fred and I have been there: no Thames Path on the South ! I trusted my map and my experience and crossed to the North Bank. Good choice ! Strangely I got some blisters and frictions at various places, but as often in ultra-running, those disappeared quickly. After 3h15, I was in Weybridge (35km).

At Weybridge, I left the Thames to follow the Wey tow path. This path is actually part of the E2 European Long Distance Path, which follows the GR5 in France. I didn't run quite as far as Nice, though The Thames was rather high, and so was the Wey. When I walked it with Fred, the Wey was just a small stream on the side of the Wey Navigation (a canal seconding the Wey). This time, not only the Wey Navigation was filled in to the top, but the Wey was a powerful river occupying all its bed. In fact the locks were not in use because of the flood. Last time, it was recommended to use them economically due to the drought!
From this point, the sun started to shine unexpectedly. That also means more water consumption, and I had to stop at a pub (The Anchor) to get some drink. I don't know why I did that, but I ordered a pint of ice-cold coke that I drank in less than a minute. Objectively, the best way to throw up, but it went surprisingly well ! The path was quite muddy and some sections in the riparian fields were really squelchy, difficult to run ... The Wey was on the way (**). I progressively started to feel stiff. Ache in my right hip and in my left ankle reminded me old injuries. I also experienced a novel form of pain: a sudden, intense, sharp, localised pain in my right calf. I think it's actually a sort of cramp. After 50-55km I had to walk every 7.5 minutes and even every 5 minutes. But when I was running I was still quite fast. That's the Cyrano effect. To make things a bit harder, Mommas obviously doesn't live nearby the river, but on a hill ... I planned to walk this last ascent, but surprisingly while approaching Guildford I felt much better and could run continuously even uphill. It's again a proof that pain, cold, and other unpleasant feelings are just a conception of mind. When you know you're about to arrive, the psychic removes all the pain.

Arrived after 6h05, mission accomplished ! Bredele, mulled wine and crêpes for replenishment

Ultra pilgrimage.

(*) This paragraph really looks like a short literature review (related work) at the beginning of a publication... I'm writing all day lately!
(**) I really needed to do this joke, sorry...

Last week-end I went to my favourite mountains in the UK for a training week-end in real conditions: 2 days of hard running in the hills.

When I left Betws-y-Coed on Saturday morning, after a full Welsh breakfast (1), the weather was relatively fine. I managed to run up to Capel Curig in the woods and meadows as a gentle introduction. The hard bit started from there, climbing the ridge up to Glyder Fawr (999m). Lots of ascent, lots of very steep descent in the rocks too ! This was a proper Alpine path, and actually even the UTMB route is not so exposed and technical. The time to arrive back down to Llyn (Lake) Ogwen, the weather started to be more threatening. I decided to try to climb quickly Carnedd Dafydd, in order to do the scramble before the rain. After 300m of quick ascent, I had to withdraw as the wind and the rain were far too strong (wind forecasted 100km/h). The horizontal rain was painful and it wouldn't be reasonable to keep on going, not only for the scramble but also probably later on the ridge. I then came back in the heavy rain through an escape route. Regarding to my previous days out in the area (summer hike, winter hike), it seems that the weather in Wales is quite moody ... Anyway, that was around 35km and 1700m (6h30) for the day.

On Sunday, after my second full Welsh breakfast (2), I left for a more gentle run. My thighs were a bit stiff at first (some would say painful) but after a short warming up, it went pretty fine. I headed towards the lovely Lake of Llyn y Foel that I reached after a couple of showers. Then back down to the youth hostel in the wet rocks that my shoes didn't particularly appreciated. That was not a very long run (around 15km +500m in 2h30), but it's very good to see how fast I "recovered", and also how I felt like keeping on running all the time.

I also used the occasion to test a couple of items:

• Raidlight mini-gaiters were pretty good to avoid mud and small stones to get into the shoes. They qualified for the UTMB .
• Raidlight shoulder strap bottle - there are 2 kinds of ultrarunners: the bottle aficionados and the water tanks ones . So far I was in the latter group. The advantage of the bottle is to be more accessible and much easier to refill. But this one was particularly unstable, whatever the website reads, with the bottle hitting my heart continuously while it was more than half full. Maybe my straps were not tight enough or maybe not the right shape, I don't know. I'm not sure yet if I will take it with me to the UTMB.
• SiS Go gel were a pretty good surprise. They actually taste like a sort of light jelly: this is much better than my usual PowerGel which are extremely sweet and sticky (3). Only drawback, the Go gels contains only 88KCal (against 110 for the PowerGels), while being sensibly bigger. Anyway, I think they qualified as well for the UTMB.

(1) I know I shouldn't eat that sort of things just before running (see Amsterdam Marathon), but I also need to train my stomach to be more resistant to change. Also, the run went fine anyway.
(2) A full Welsh breakfast apparently consists of: deep fried bread, baked beans, fried egg, fried mushrooms, tomato, fried bacon and sausage. Can anyone tell me the difference with an English breakfast ?
(3) And they also don't have a website with loads of useless and slow flash rubbish...

Ultra training.

I wrote a couple of months ago: I'll try to run the UTMB only if I manage to run a marathon with good feelings, whatever the time, by the 30th June. I then had a plan to increase progressively my training distance and to run a marathon on the last week-end of June. The second half of this plan was a bit messed up for various reasons. One of them is that I start to feel fed up with Hyde Park and pre-formatted training in general. I just want to run long distances on novel paths. Anyway, I had only ran up to 19km so far and planed to run 32km on the week-end of the 17th. But when I woke up on the Saturday morning I decided to go for 42.2km.
I took my water tank and left at 8:30. I crossed Kensington gardens, went down High Street Kensington up to Hammersmith where I caught the Thames Path. I then followed the Thames up to Kingston, where the GPS gave me 21.1km. The outward was pretty nice, good feelings and still relatively fresh under the trees and bushes. I made it in around 1h50, which is nothing outstanding, but not too bad either. However, from the middle I started to feel pretty dizzy, probably a bit dehydrated. The return was then quite hard, walking long bits far too often, but I managed to finish anyway in 4h20 (ie. 2h30 for the second half-marathon, arg! ). At least, I was just right on time to watch the airplane show for Her Majesty's birthday...

Good points:

• My hip didn't complain, neither during the run nor the following days - great news !
• I tested the so-called Cyrano method (*) to save up the legs. It consists of alternating running and walking in order to use different kinds of muscle cells. I started by 1 minute walking every 15 minutes. Then it was more once every 10 minutes. It is very important to do that since the beginning when everything is fine, not only when muscles start to be painful. The method worked quite well, as I didn't feel too much pain in the afternoon and the following days.
• Porridge went pretty fine.

Factors that didn't help:

• The temperature was already too high for such a run.
• I just started to train seriously again.
• I had no psychological preparation, I just left like that (and not a long night either).

What's still wrong:

• I'm clearly not at the level I was last year on that kind of distance. During London to Brighton (same kind of conditions), I ran the first 42km in about 4h, and didn't decrease so much afterwards.
• I'm still not very good at managing my drinking/eating during the race.

Yesterday I went with Fred to Guildford (where Mommas lives) from Surbiton. That's a lovely 36km walk along the Thames and the Wey, in the meadows and the reeds that went pretty easily in 9h, including breaks. Slightly encouraging as well.

So, unfortunately, no firm conclusion about my participation at the UTMB yet ... To be decided this week.

Ultra test.

(*) named after the nickname of a French ultrarunner that made a couple of experiments around this method - Run less to run more (in French).

This post is a adaptation of 'live' posts on my previous blog and some extra information.

On the 05th November 2005, I went again to Brighton from London, but without my bike this time (as it's been stolen...). I followed the roads, mostly the A23 and the B2036. I had to be at the same time the organiser, the volunteers and the runner. Which means that I had to navigate, to find some water on the way and ... to run ! This is what ultrarunners often call an 'OFF' as it's out of any kind of organisation.

I started from Westminster at 7am (official Big Ben time). I ran through Brixton, Streatham, Croydon, Purley and Coulsdon (km 23) before I started to see the countryside. Panoramas from Farthing Downs were pretty nice. Then Chaldon, Redhill (km 35) where I bought my first water refill. From this point I started to swap between short walks and longer runs. Salfords, marathon in 4h02, Horley (km 44). I started to feel a bit tired, so I had a short rest in a meadow nearby the road. Some policemen stopped to ask me if I was ok and then chatted a bit. This comforted me again to think that British policemen are much kinder that the French ones.
I continued to Crawley and started to have cramps after that. Immediately doubt took my mind, I looked at the map where was the next train station, etc. But, as often in ultras, after 10 minutes walking I felt fresh, running, enjoying the landscape, and never thought about withdrawing again ! Balcombe, Cuckfield, Ansty. On the narrow roads surrounded by hedges, I had to be very careful with cars, and once I was so close to the hedge (the car didn't leave me much space) that I didn't see a branch and fell down. Nice bleeding knee. At Burgess Hill someone stopped to ask me if I was fine. Then Hassocks and Ditchling, just before the ascent of Dictchling Beacon (150m elevation gain on a steep road) where I walked more than I ran. Pain in the legs started to increase and the descent to Brighton was not very pleasant. Finish at Brighton Pier at 4:42pm, just before the night.


Click to get the GPS record on GoogleEarth.

I took 9h42 to complete these 90.5km (GPS: 88.6km) while I expected around 10h. That's an average speed of 9.3km/h or 4h30 for a marathon, not too bad. During the official race, the time limit is only 9h50 (but the route is 1 or 2km shorter).

The following morning, after a not-so-good night, my legs were very stiff (not to say painful) especially while going downstairs or sitting down. Even my upper body (abds, shoulders, arms) was quite stiff. Funny to think that I felt better after 35h30 on the UTMB... But the London to Brigthon run, however shorter, was much more intense.

I got a nice GPS track of the route, although I miss the end because I ran out of batteries. I just acquired a couple of waypoints from Hassocks, not very precise. This is the speed graph of the run. Speed was integrated on 500m sections. Slow motion zones can be explained by the following:

• a: first stop at the beginning of Farthing Downs
• b: water stop at Redhill
• c: short rest after Horley
• d: cramps and moment of doubt at the exit of Crawley
• e: water stop at Cuckfield
• f: ascent of Dictchling Beacon

click for larger image
It's interesting to distinguish between 3 main parts: the first third (start to a) virtually always over 10km/h, the second third (a to d) at the constant average speed but with lots of slower parts and the last one (d to the end) slowing down constantly.

A couple of days after this run, my right hip started to be achy. I've then stopped running, although I can't say it was painful. It sometimes starts as soon as I wake up, sometimes I have to walk a bit. It's mostly located in the hip, but sometimes runs from the lower back down to the foot. See the following posts about my slow recovering:

• Resolutions
• A visit to the osteopath

Ultra free run.

It's a bit of a crazy idea and I'm not sure I can do it (but whoever doesn't try can't fail (*)). I had this idea for a while now, I just wanted to share it and get some more comments. I still don't know when I will have the time and the legs to do it, maybe right after my PhD.
(*) and not: whoever doesn't trail can't fy...

In a couple of bullet points, the idea is the following:

• run from Dover to Cape Wrath: UK SE to NW diagonal
• solo except maybe some days where I could try to organise "run with me" events
• without assistance, nobody will follow me with a car - I will have to carry a tent and to buy some food on the way
• the distance will be around 1600km (1000 miles), mostly following national paths
• technically I will run & walk 50km/day - this should take a month

The first challenge is obviously to finish. The second one, completely impalpable at the moment is how fast I can complete the diagonal, especially regarding to my knees, ankles and hips. One month is rather fast compare to a "typical" 3-month walk, but also very slow compared to the top runners, with assistance and on the road, that can run the Lands End to John O'Groats (the other diagonal that is longer) in around 9 days !

It's clear that I can walk 40km a day when the terrain is rather flat and not too technical (ie. 40 days). So for example if I swap continuously running and walking (one resting the other) I hope to reach 50 to 60km a day (ie. a total of 27 to 32 days). A fair daily objective would be: 8 x { 30min walking @ 5km/h + 30min running @ 10km/h } = 60km / 8h If it is possible along the Grand Union Canal, I don't think I can keep up such a pace while crossing the North-West Highlands.

The route is not very well defined now. I don't particularly want to run the shortest way. Actually, I'd like to follow the national trail paths as much as possible.

Dover to Medway Bridge	half of the North Downs Way	86.5km
Medway Bridge to London Paddington	to be defined	~52km
London Paddington to Birmingham	the Grand Union Canal (maybe quit around Coventry)	233km
Birmingham (Coventry) to Edale	to be defined	~160km
Edale to Kirk Yetholm	the Pennine Way (probably quit around Greenhead)	315km
Kirk Yetholm (Greenhead) to Milngavie	to be defined	~260km
Milngavie to Fort William	the West Highland Way	152km
Fort William to Cape Wrath	North to the Cape	326km

Rough map (not accurate at all !):


(The original image, that you can find on Wikipedia for example, is in the public domain.)

Regarding to the gear, I will need something in between hiking and trail running. Particularly ultra-light tent, sleeping bag and stove. I don't want to advertise too much, but RaidLight may be an interesting brand for that. I may also send some parcels to some 'relay' campsites on the way.

What do you think of that ? Interested ?

Ultra dream.