Bottrop 24hour Rave Report : better than washing 25kg Fosse Septique's Charcoal basket.

That went well!

A lot better than expected and I conquered my demons. More to the point I know where they come from and how to get rid of them now. 

Bottrop is less than an hour from the flat I stay in during the week so I  jumped on the trains and made my  way there.

I met an old friend Bridget Brady and a couple of her pals. Which is always nice.

 

Me and Bridget

 

Sarah & Bridget in the front, me a little bit behind

The race is a 1.2km loop around a park. Fairly flat and mostly tarmaced path. There is a well stocked refreshments tent staffed by very experienced people. 

I placed my gear just after the refreshments tent. I bought a chair with me to rest on and a couple of bags. One bag had clothes in and the other stocked with food.

Me & my gear

The clothes consisted of 

• Loads of t shirts
• Four pairs of shorts
• Undershorts( to cut down on chaffing)
• Loads of socks
• Several Warm layers
• A space blanket ( because sometimes I get very cold)
• Buffs, hats and gloves

The food consisted of

• A couple boxes of peanut butter porridge
• Rice puddings and greek yoghurt 
• Some snicker sticks
• Gels and tailwind 

The race started at 11am which I think is a good time. Those that start later mean you have longer to go after sunrises on the second day. As I wrote in the pre race blog I was determined to keep my head straight. Ian Hopkins my running pal in Germany was convinced that it was to do with the gels so I wanted to stay off them.

I coated my under carridge in vaseline and resolved to renew that very hour. The first couple of hours went well in the heat .  I was taking proper five minute walking breaks every 30 mins. I would eat a bit of peanut butter porridge each 30 minutes. I changed my shirt every three hours shorts & socks every six hours 

The timings I have are

18km in twos hours

33km four and a rice pudding

40km in five

47km in six and a complete kit change and a Greek yoghurt.

68km in nine and then eased off to keep my head straight 

100km  in 18! wow that was slow

 

Then my time keeping and note taking went a bit off. I was focusing on my four pebble breathing meditation. 

I also enjoyed myself chatting to people I know. One guy recognized me from my Spartathlon finish and said they used me as an example.

" You went back four times and finally finished it in your fifties" 

Which was nice. Another guy,  one of the official timers,  recognized me from TorTourdeRuhr from 2014 as he leant me  his phone so that I could quit.  This time  I was determined not to.

I know I  took a couple of half hour breaks overnight and walked a lot. An awful lot. I bored poor Sarah with my incessant chatter.

Some time around four am I was eating some peanut butter porridge and chucked it back up. This didn't upset me at all and I kept my head straight. I just walked back to my kit, sat down, brushed my teeth and took some mouthwash. Then I got up and kept going.

Zebra thinking!

I was mainly eating TUC biscuits and brezels. No gels at all. 

I liked that I continued to the end and covered just over 126 km in the 24 hours. So a rubbish distance to be expected as I am very heavy at nearly 80 kgs. 

I  felt really  good in the last few hours. So much so that I worked out with a bit of effort I could get my third best distance for a 24hour. Which I just went and did.

Very happy as you see from the medal picture. 

Lessons learned

• The biggest was that I can keep my head straight by staying off the gels
• Vaseline and lots of it stops chaffing
• just keeping going and mediating

I am now looking at another 24hour to get that pesky Spartathlon qualifier.  

Thanks to those that have inspired me ( Mark , Fish,  Jo & Nicky) and those that have cajoled me, you know who you are and what you are. But most of all to those that have supported me especially my wife and sister.

  

Bottrop 24 hour pre race preparation

I have taken a while to  update this blog.  I was going to add something about the lesson learned at the last 24hour,  then I really got  a writers block. Unlike at the 100km in Wuppertal where I broke through the mental barrier and completed, I failed to do this at the Stadtoldendorf 24hour. Ian Hopkins, who crewed me there, denied me sugary gels with the hope of making me have a small sugar crash early on and then recovering.  This was opposed to having a big unrecoverable one later on.This appeared to work  but then I had a serious case of chaffing.

This time I have bought some long trucks to go under the shorts and three tubs of vaseline to reduce the chaffing :-)

I will not wear a watch as this has a negative affect as I constantly look at it, wasting time and recalcuating the pace.  The aim is to just run for 25 minutes and then walk for 5 and repeat 48 times.

Frankly I just want to run for 24hours and be there at 11:00am Sunday.  If I reach 180KM that would be a bonus. This is only an average of  8 mins/km. Any other higher targets are just too much at them moment.  I want to break the mental barrier and complete the race on my own. 

In terms of a food plan I will have:

• Peanut Oat bars every 30mins
• Water per odd hour
• Tailwind per even hour
• Rice pudding or greek yoghurt every three hours

The weather is forcast to be  good.  No rain, sunny on Saturday with a high of 28° and low of 17°. Sunday is similar with just a little more cloud. . 

I need to remember that I may feel bad, but after 30 minutes everything will be  ok.

I just need to feed, rest and go again.  I have bought a chair to rest on. 
I may call Call Chrissy when I am feeling bad for encouragement.

• Every three hours I will change my shirt and add vaseline.
• Every six hours I will change shorts and socks.
• I have Caffeine gels and pills and music for overnight.
• I have lots of warm clothes including a space banklet.
• For those little uplifts I can brush my teeth or change shades/hats and I can also take extras from checkpoint.

For motivation I have three bands for the people I know who can't run any longer and I have my magic book  with the WAW plus other notes.

This is going to work because I am well prepared for running, my core is stronger, my food is better and I am mentally tougher than before.

The link to live results for during the race is below

https://my.raceresult.com/113583/participants?lang=en

Getting there

A week after the hundred km I fan in out local race, the Obernhain 10km. It was bucketing down at the start. I managed to get a third place in my age class. I put this down to it being very wet so not a lot of people did it.

This last week I ran 20 on Tuesday with Fatih. That was very tiring.

On  Sunday I 30km on a 450m loop. So at least 66 laps getting ready for the 24 on 22 June.

I kept up the weekday fast and furious Insanity sessions as well.

So getting there.

I am going add a stairs session and a swim in the morning  this week.

At bloody last.

Well I have completed an ultra. 100km done, that is the furthest I have run since this time last year. I knew I was woefully unfit and heavy, so a decent time was never on the cards. The only target I set myself was to finish. and finish I did in 12:25...bloody slow, but a finish is finish. 

The WHEW100 is a very nice course. Pretty much all asphalt all the way. It drops for the first forty km to the Ruhr, then you do twenty odd kms along the river, then a climb to ninety five and a slope to the finish.

The organization is second to to none. Race director Guido Gullenkamp and the team put in a very good race with 12 well stocked well run refreshment points.

I did my usual prepared labeled 75ml bottles with a scoop of  Tailwind and two gels fixed on with a rubber band. Not sure if that is actually enough. Two gels is around 50g of carbs and the scoop of Tailwind is another 10-15. Given my weight at around 78kg that's at least 10grams short, if I was taking only  an hour between refreshment points. Although these were on average eight kms apart there was no way I was going that fast.

 

The first sixty km I did at an average of 6:30mins a km then I had a toilet break and dropped to an average of 8:00mins a km only increasing slightly as the last ten kms came into sight. After 60kms I was alone on the course and bored. Extremely bored. Five hours of very slow running. Only my new JBL Endurance Dive headphones pre loaded with Patti Smith, Sisters of Mercy, Gang of Four, GoldFrapp  and many others stopped me going out of my mind. I didn't try and calculate finishing times or worry about any of that shite. I just adopted a routine of RFM and overtook loads of walking people in the last 20kms. I really don't see the point of walking when you can run with a little more effort.

 

It was worth it, I got a nice medal.  A nice t shirt,  which I will wear at next weeks Obernhain 10km. But most of all a lovely text from Chrissy saying how proud she was that I stuck it out despite being so slow.

No updates

There have been no updates for awhile due to a little accident. Weight has gone up and running has gone down. Almost better and I went climbing with Tom on Saturday.

Getting better

I did over 64 km this week. I ran every day apart from Thursday. I am really pleased with progress using more realistic goals.

I have some new headphones and will start to rejoin the 5:am club. I want to do a couple of early runs this week and swim

The trick is prepare my kit in the evening,   and then get out of bed really quickly as the alarm goes off.
Step 1 got to sleep early 9pm
Step 2 throw the covers off
Step 3 swing legs out of bed
Step 4 get out of bed
Step 5 quick exercise to get heart rate going
Step 6 kit on
Step 7 out the door

Kleva goals

I have run over 40km in the past week. Almost a marathon.
Slowly building up to something decent.
I have rarely run over 100km in a week so I see that as half way to getting back to a level of fitness.
My weekly visit to the doctors have highlighted almost nothing. My anemia is under control and the 24 hour monitoring of my heart rate and blood pressure only pointed out that I have a low pulse and a blood pressure to go with it.