A couple of days ago saw the end of my peak training volume section for this 300km challenge. With my injury history, it was always the knifes-edge stage of training for me both physically and mentally. I say this as I had a fair amount of anxiety due to memories of wrecking my ankle last year at the peak volume stage of my training last year for the 100km.
I have so much further to go for this challenge, and my training since January has needed to be a careful balance of risk, intensity, volume and effort. It's unknown how I will survive or respond; and it's a distance so far for me that it's incredibly tricky to train for.
If chronic injury issues flare up I need to back off. If I train too much or scale up volume/intensity too quickly, then I can rapidly hit overtraining levels, over-stress my body and my nervous system, get ill or injured, or simply hit a wall of fatigue that I can't come back enough from which could lead to detraining (getting unfit) much of the higher end gains and progress I've made.
As I said, tricky.
The balance is harder than you might think, as I have to balance risks with stressing myself enough to force my body to respond (i.e. adaptations to get fitter, stronger, more resilient, etc). I then have to think about how to recover quick enough to hit the next training session for it to be productive, while leaving enough time for new adaptations to set in to my body and nervous system.... and all without hammering myself too hard to hit a zone of diminishing returns.
Simply put... train too little and you don't build the strength and resilience needed to complete a big challenge.... Train too hard (and too frequently) and you don't get the adaptations, because your body gets stronger when you you 'rest it AFTER you stressed it'. If it's a marathon, or half marathon it's much more straight forward; but, being a multi-day ultra, the variables are massive (weather, temperature, terrain, time on feet, cut offs, travel and it's simply just not feasible as a busy-life amateur to put in 150-200km training weeks in. This is because of the damage you end up doing to yourself along the way before you even get to the start line. Wrecked before you even begin.
"I just got to takes my chances" that I'm doing enough.
I've just come off the back of almost 150km in 10 days. I put in an 80km weekend (50/20/10k and a big thanks to my buddy Graham in keeping me company on the 50 last weekend), after pre-exhausting myself for the 7 days preceding it with an additional 60km of running work. And I absolutely f*cking felt it!
I'm 4 weeks out, so there is still a lot to do. Even with me moving into tapering. I have to cut the volume back (just enough, but not too far) and then leave enough recovery time to heal and adapt after the last couple of weeks between the ongoing sessions. All the while still pushing forward with enough intensity so that I keep the stimulus and stress high enough to keep adapting (supercompensation), while also healing and recovering from what has been a pretty intense training block through Jun/Jul/Aug.
Definitely walking a tight-rope now between getting the path right, or a single misstep leading to a huge fall.
Is it enough?
...Probably not, but it simply has to be. For something like this, someone like me can never be entirely ready as I have no benchmark to measure against for 300km of running in less than a week. It's hard, though to see how much harder I could have trained when I look at all the other factors come into play such as age, experience (or lack of), time, energy, injury, body-weight, recovery, work, family, etc. etc.
What I know for certain is I've covered a HUGE amount of ground since I started running again only 9 months ago after a 6 month injury lay-off. I've put almost 1500 KM of training through my feet in 9 months in preparation for this (Thank you Suunto Watch for recording all of it)!!! Add to that another 40 hours of bike work and that's pretty extraordinary for me. ( I'm certainly proud of where I am today versus where I started in January . I just have to trust in the training, my consistency and my mindset to get me further than I've ever gone before.
My strength has improved, my VO2 MAX, lactic threshold, body composition, diet, zone 2 heart rate pace, injuries, form, efficiency and lung capacity has all drastically improved the last 4 months. All to the point I can safely say that I am leaner, fitter, faster and stronger than I have been at any stage of this journey. Time will tell during challenge week if that's enough, but by Christ it's a paradigm shift forward from where i was. I've overhauled so much of my life to even dare to tackle this, let alone finish it. I can trust in that at the very least.
As for this business end of the training calendar for me? It's not easy, and I'm having to get quite creative with recovery strategy. This last week has all been about testing what works best for me while also trying out some new stuff. Here's what I landed on:
Sleep. 8 hours target of decent quality sleep. The most powerful recovery tool but the hardest to get right after pushing yourself further than ever. This is something that could be hard on the challenge as it's shared rooms in minimal accommodations. After i did the 50 last weekend my sleep quality was terrible as my body was very stressed. This is a big factor I need to think about on the 6 days challenge itself.
Heat. Hot water bottle on my injury prone areas morning and evening. Get good blood flow to speed healing and adaptation
Compression. Full leg compression leggings overnight to help blood flow/Venous return and recovery, reduce soreness (though it doesn't exactly feel that way and i can imagine how awful it might feel if I hadn't). I have pneumatic compression but I can't exactly take that with me on the challenge.
Massage. Mini massage gun (which is great) to loosen overtight areas, and help recover.
Anti-Inflammation approach (not NSAIDS for many reasons for ultra endurance including destroying gut health, damage to kidneys, etc). I've discovered Tart Cherry Juice concentrate that's been quite effective in reducing inflammation, and eating very clean and green diet generally to keep inflammation lower. I'm also testing Green Tea Extract and Quercetin (both plant based polyphenols) that are meant to be effective at limiting inflammation. It's probably a bit of a band-aid solution, but even a tiny reduction in inflammation is going to be worth it.
Protein. I've increased my whole-food based protein (meat eggs, nuts, etc) by about 40%. A big factor in this is breakfast being a couple of boiled eggs and snacks are all nut based. Right now I need the calories, mindful of eating too much carb (though having plenty of better quality carb for the energy). Carbs are quite strong triggers for inflammation, and I'm unlikely to do much more fasting now so my body has everything it needs to build and repair over the next couple of weeks.
Now I move into unknown territory given the challenge ahead. The Balance of recovery and adaptation, while holding onto as many of the gains as possible and getting as fresh as I possibly can without undercooking so much that I become stale.. It's bloody complex, and ask 10 different specialists in this area and you will get 20 different answers as to how to best do it.
The only real solution is to keep it simple. Trust how my feeling from day to day and hour to hour for the next couple of weeks while the volume is still quite high. Avoid the risks now and listen very carefully to the signals and feedback I'm getting from what I'm doing.
In the meantime, I've got more runs to do, life to live and kit to start to arrange.
Thanks for reading...
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