Decided to open my own page. I use to have my logbook and have all the info recored everyday. Temp ,food, distace, pace, heart rate etc. I lost focus of the enjoyment of just running. I have thrown it all away and since then I have been diagnosed with D I have also not run a race. I am 54 years old. It has been difficult to train the last couple of years. However I am now in a place were there is limited trainning avaialable. I have a route around the compound that gives me about 4 km. So I do two to three laps everyday. I have run over a hundred marathons and half marathons. Done a number of altra marathons and also Completed Racing the Planet 7 day stage race in the Sahara desert. Marathon sub 3 hours and best 56kn 04:15
Thats the background.I have decided to enter in a multi day trail race on my next rotation home in September. This is going to be my account of my training amd preperations until race day. I will also have the final blog of the race and how it came together or falls apart. Never run a race with D so this is a new game plan totally. All I want is a finish and to be able to get the most out of the race that I can. Training up to now has been a little irratic but I have been able to get enough base trainning in to give me a good foundation now for the last 6 weeks. I have also added the pack to the trainnig and have found that the hips had fogotten about pack running. The core muscles I have been working all along so this is a great advantage.I do not have the pack that I will use in the race however I have used it a lot and am very comfortable with it and sure it will take all my D equipment.
I have been thinking of getting a CGM for the race. I am not sure if I will have enough time to get one as I land the 17th and the race is the 19th. I will have to leave home on the 18th as the prerace brief is the eavening of the 18th. I am going to ask my wife to get it for me and hopefully she will be able to. She is a ICU Sister so this is a great advantage. She will also be doing the last day of the race with me so that is the best. I think running with a CGM will be a lot easier than having to stop and test all the time. I have been good up to 15km without having lows however since I have added the pack this also has changed. I am going to be testing banana's for the race. So during trainning I am going to eat them to see how they effect me. In the past I use to go on a high fat diet before the race to teach the body to break down fat fast enough to give me fuel I still carboloaded three days before the race as well. That I doubt is possible.
Well the traiing went tough yesterday. Just one of those days that it seems a lot tougher than it should be. II have started the banana race idea and it worked well yesterday and had no issues with lows in the run. This plan may just work. I have found that my anckels are taking a lot of strain as the route is quite technical. I am currently using Brooks Trail shoes but will go back to the tride and tested Solomons. I find them perfect and great for the desert as the heat does not come through the sole so bad. It has cooled a litte so that is good. I am sure it is under 50 C by the time I run at 17:00. I have to add more weight tomorrow so the runs are going to get tougher and tougher. At the end of the month I will run both in the moring and afternoon so the body can get use ot the punishment of a multi day race. I take the training distance and devide it into two sessions and a 1km to each session. This will also test the banana theory of mine. If anyone has ideas comments or think I should try something jump right in.
Brad this is all trial and error. All my previous training and running was all withou D. So it is basically back to the drawing board. So far the big thing is what I find works this week does not next week. This D throws curve balls all the time but hey it is also fun trying new things
I awoke this morning with sore shoulders.I was wondering what I had done. I know I did not gym yesterday. I suddenly realized that I had added 1.5kg to the backpack and hense the sore shoulders. One can not believe how sensitive the body is to change. Well I will have to wait another week before I can add the last of the weight to the pack.
The banana run is working well. However I do have to watch the levels about an hour after the run as these are tending to go onto the low side as well. Might have to have a half after the run. What I do realize is that during the race I will have to have a banana evert 10km. This will ensure that I should be good to go. During the race brief I will hear what they have in the line of fuel stations. So for the planning I am excluding any fuel stations and will take all I need with me. I can adjust once I know what and if there will be fuel stations. Was thinking the run will most likely take me 3 and half hours. In days gone by I would have finished a marathon and been at home. One thing is for sure I am going to enjoy this. I am going to have the Rep demo me a CGM on the 18th. My wife was able to arrange this. I will also be able to test it during the race at no cost. The rep was a little reluctant that I use it straight away for the race but eventually agreed. I have a good back-up team:) Currently the training runs have been 70min. I will have to start to increase this more and more. I am not sure that work is going to allow this so may have to start with the split training a lot earlier than I really wanted to.
