First Ultra

So one week on after my first ultra race, my thoughts.

I said it was going to be a learning experience, and it certainly was!

First of all I thoroughly enjoyed it, as I thought, it was great to not be chasing a PB and to just enjoy the run out in the countryside. Even in the really heavy rain.

All in all an excellent event organised by Go Beyond

The only real problem, and it was a major frustration, was the navigation which I really struggled with. I suspected this might be the main difficulty, but I had no idea it would be such a problem. In the end, after a "few" mistakes I covered an 5 extra miles! The main issues were the the scale of the map, the degree of usage and a lack of preparation. Not that this was ever about time but I must have lost at least an hour. Must work on this before Trans Britain in September!

On the positive side, I seem to have judged the pace just right, even with the extra miles, I was still doing 10 mms by the end. Also I now know I can run 40 miles, nice t know with the 44 mile Quarter classic coming up in two weeks

The following day the legs were pretty tired of course and I had a reasonable amount of knee pain, but I was ready to run again by Wednesday. I did 12 + miles of reasonably paced off road running across Thursday & Friday with no ill effect. The plan was then to do 20 yesterday and then 10 today, but I started cramping in the last 9 miles yesterday, and the knee pain came back so gave running a miss today.

Plan for this week - Further rest day tomorrow, 5mile race at Market Harborough on Tuesday, the Colworth Marathon challenge (& camping) over the weekend.