"W" for Wales, Weston and Wrexham AC.
On Easter Sunday 2016 I got silver in the British 100km Road Championships 2016 at Perth, Scotland. It was 42 laps (each 2.4km long); measured by IAAF. The race also incorporated the Anglo Celtic Plate which I was part of the Welsh team.
Here is a bit of history on the ACP if you're interested.
Link (roll over me to see where I go)
I was very pleased with how consistently paced I was.
Fuel.
One of the main things people are interested in is the nutrition. If you're one of them then here's roughly what I ate. It's not perfect or necessary right:
Evening dinner the night before: Ate early, tinned mackeral, chicken wings, chips.
On the day
Breakfast
Coconut flour mixed with rice crispies and water, Cashew Nut Butter. Water.
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Whilst running
Miles 1-10
Water, 1/2 banana, savoury baby food in a pouch,
Miles 10-30, Water with salt tablet in, dark chocolate, nuts.
Miles 30-40 Pain killers (Ibuprofen) savoury baby food pouch
Miles 40-60 Coke, jelly babies, 1/2 banana. Paracetamol
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In hind sight I should have drank more. In total it was only 1.5 litres. The problem was that it was cold and it was hurting my tummy to drink.
Mental
The next question I'm often asked about these long races is to do with the mental aspect.
What do you think about?
How do you switch off the desire to stop?
How do you cope with the pain?
etc.
I've read up about this and have quite a few tricks that work for me, simple things like:
Remember you can only change what you can control (what food, what water I've had, what pace I'm doing, etc). Since you can't change other things don think about them.
Thinking about time and distance could only be thought about when I was in a good mood as it drained me too much. I tended to be in a better state about 10 mins after drinking or eating. Thinking about my pace was necessary to stay in the "game" but I preferred to think about things OUTSIDE of the self. Thinking inside, for me, focusses on me and my pain and what I need to do to endure; it's hard.
The other times, when I didn't need to think about the race/times/distance was fun; in a strange way. I focussed outside of the self. For example,
- counting the park benches on the looped course in the park for great (32 of them) and I even named some of them.
- counting the bins (8 or 9)
- encouraging people I lapped (keep smiling, you're looking strong etc)
- how are other people doing
- any funny babies or dogs
A good book, for those interested in Sports Mentality, is
"Elite Minds" by Dr. Stan Beecham.
The best parts of the day were seeing my support team Mike Robbins and Arwel Lewis on each lap. These two guys were there all day recording the times and handing me my food and drink. They were really supportive and I could see the excitement on their faces when I was working up the field in the final 10 laps.
I couldn't fault the organisation of the event one bit. Many thanks to all the volunteers on the day.
Here are my splits for the day:
Split Name
Time
Time From Prev Leg
L 1 00:10:18 00:10:18
L 2 00:20:31 00:10:12
L 3 00:30:42 00:10:11
L 4 00:40:51 00:10:09
L 5 00:50:51 00:09:59
L 6 01:01:08 00:10:17
L 7 01:11:01 00:09:52
L 8 01:20:58 00:09:57
L 9 01:30:59 00:10:00
L 10 01:41:02 00:10:03
L 11 01:51:25 00:10:22
L 12 02:01:42 00:10:17
L 13 02:11:46 00:10:03
L 14 02:21:55 00:10:09
L 15 02:31:55 00:09:59
L 16 02:42:12 00:10:17
L 17 02:52:34 00:10:21
L 18 03:02:54 00:10:20
L 19 03:13:09 00:10:14
L 20 03:23:30 00:10:21
L 21 03:34:04 00:10:33
L 22 03:44:14 00:10:10
L 23 03:54:15 00:10:00
L 24 04:04:14 00:09:58
L 25 04:14:13 00:09:59
L 26 04:24:31 00:10:17
L 27 04:35:04 00:10:33
L 28 04:45:43 00:10:38
L 29 04:56:25 00:10:42
L 30 05:07:01 00:10:36
L 31 05:17:15 00:10:13
L 32 05:27:38 00:10:23
L 33 05:37:59 00:10:20
L 34 05:48:38 00:10:38
L 35 05:58:57 00:10:19
L 36 06:09:24 00:10:27
L 37 06:20:02 00:10:38
L 38 06:30:36 00:10:33
L 39 06:41:09 00:10:32
L 40 06:51:28 00:10:19
L 41 07:01:38 00:10:09
L 42 07:11:47 00:10:09
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