Petestack Blog

Not many gear reviews on this blog so far, but afraid this is one I just have to write. And, while I wish it related to a positive experience, I’m afraid the reverse is true with a tale of initial satisfaction followed by such disappointment, frustration and ultimate letdown that I’ve resolved not to buy from the manufacturer concerned again…

So I needed a top quality lightweight waterproof top for hill running/adventure racing, spent my usual hours and days conducting exhaustive online research and concluded that the OMM Cypher smock looked perfect for my needs. So I bought one (at the end of March), tried it out briefly in April and was impressed enough to write this:

which finally got christened on Cam Chreag after spending most of the day in my sack and looks like a great lightweight shell top. Quite snug (but not tight) in a ‘large’ size (specified for height 5’10” to 6’2″ and chest up to 43″ when I’m 5’11” and would normally buy 42″ for 40″ chest), with a nice ‘drop tail’ and truly excellent hood which somehow manages to provide good protection while overcoming my normal dislike of hoods as making me feel ‘blinkered’.

But then it remained unused for a month with April’s increasingly arid course (only sustained dry spell of the year so far up here!) leaving little need for a top quality lightweight waterproof top until the normally pleasant month of May started drowning under increasingly biblical downpours. And here it really started to show its worth, with a delighted user on the point of telling everyone how good it was until (just seven outings into its life with a maximum of 16 hours’ wear) suddenly discovering it wasn’t nearly robust enough (see photos) for a careful user who’d been treating it with kid gloves because it was new and he loved it…

So it got discussed with/sent back to the supplier, who sent it back to the manufacturer, who (instead of the requested refund) simply returned it to me via the supplier with a letter stating that, despite the ‘inner scrim’ and ‘outer rip-stop material’ being damaged, the ‘laminate shows no damage’… and continuing to ‘suggest that the condition of the jacket is due to something the wearer has subjected it to’ (his further suggestion of ‘a trouser buckle with a prominent prong and under a rucksack harness’ being completely unfair).

Now, while I’d already conceded the possibility of a rucksack (made by OMM!) being involved, this smock had never been near a trouser belt or buckle in its life as my subsequent email to the manufacturer (name of supplier removed) will show:

Peter Duggan wrote (2011-06-11 12:03):
> Tried to ring you yesterday to discuss my Cypher Smock recently returned
> to ********, but was told you were in a meeting, said I had to get back
> to work myself and understood you’d try to ring me back after 4:00pm.
> Would still like (far prefer!) to discuss this with you by phone but,
> given that it may not be easy for either of us to catch you during
> working hours, covering my main points here first (starting with the
> history of the garment’s usage emailed to **** at ********, which I
> hope you’ve already seen)…
>
> Peter Duggan wrote (2011-05-23 22:10):
>> It was ordered from you on 27 March 2011 (for the Highlander Mountain
>> Marathon in April, but not used there in fine weather), tested once
>> briefly on 2 April then not used again till 10 May. Since then it’s been
>> used another six times (four of them in conjunction with an almost empty
>> OMM Adventure Light 20 sack) for trail/hill running in this wet May
>> weather, totaling max. 16 hours wear, so not washed yet but simply hung
>> up to dry after each run.
>>
>> The delamination (photographs attached) to the front panel was
>> discovered yesterday and assumed to be fresh because I’d have noticed it
>> before. While it has occurred to me that this could be in the area of
>> the rucksack belt, both smock and sack are of OMM manufacture, intended
>> to be used together for adventure racing etc. and there are no
>> comparable marks in the areas of shoulder or sternum straps.
>
> So, to comment on your letter to **** re. the damage, which I received
> on Friday with the returned smock, you say that the ‘laminate shows no
> damage’ and this may well be true depending on how you define laminate.
> But I’m sure you can see why I’ve called it laminate when what we’ve got
> is essentially a puckered-up outer ripstop layer separating from some
> kind of inner layer whether or not this constitutes the core eVent
> laminate in technical terms.
>
> Might also point out that I’d already acknowledged the possibility of a
> rucksack belt being involved (see my quoted remarks above), but here I
> must take issue with your suggestion of a ‘trouser buckle with a
> prominent prong’ to state categorically that:
>
> 1. The smock has never been worn over any belt or such buckle, but only
> with lightweight running gear, all having drawstring or elasticated
> waists with the sole exception of my Montane Atomic DT pants (ironically
> bought from ******** at the same time) which have two *tiny* spring
> toggles on the waist cord.
>
> 2. The only sack that’s ever been carried with it is my OMM Adventure
> Light 20, and that always almost empty (carried mainly as somewhere to
> put smock/leggings when not worn + single 500ml bottle and some snacks),
> so never really weighted or ‘loading’ the hip belt area.
>
> To which I’d like to add the following more detailed breakdown of its
> history to amplify my brief description above and clarify how little
> it’s been worn along with *both* Montane pants (if you’re looking for
> anything that could even possibly have caused rubbing damage) and OMM sack:
> ———————————————————————-
> Ordered 27 March 2011 (for the Highlander Mountain Marathon in April,
> but not used there in fine weather).
>
> Tested once briefly (max. half hour, with OMM Adventure Light 20 sack +
> drawstring leggings) on 2 April then not used again till 10 May.
>
> Used another six times since then:
> 1. To Blackwater Dam, c.1:50, with Montane pants but no sack.
> 2. WHW to Lairigmor ruin, 11 May, c.1:38 but not worn continuously, no
> sack, can’t remember what leggings (drawstring or elastic).
> 3. Creach Bheinn, 12 May, 2:22, with OMM sack + Montane pants.
> 4. Glencoe Ski Centre/Bridge of Orchy, 15 May, 3:29 but not worn
> continuously, with OMM sack + Montane pants (not worn continuously either).
> 5. Lairig Mor, 20 May, 2:21 but not worn continuously, with OMM sack but
> other (elasticated waist) leggings.
> 6. Glencoe Ski Centre, 21 May, 4:03, with OMM sack + Montane pants.
>
> NB The ‘max. 16 hours wear’ previously quoted is allowing for periods on
> these runs carried but not worn.
> ———————————————————————-
> Now, given everything said above, I’m sure you can see why I’m surprised
> by both the damage itself and the fact that no-one else appears to have
> reported similar problems. Because from my perspective I appear to have
> bought an expensive top that can’t be worn with a natural partner sack
> from the same manufacturer and/or apparently appropriate partner
> leggings from another when nobody’s said, ‘careful… don’t wear your
> OMM Cypher Smock with anything else because it will damage it’ (please,
> I’m being serious here!). So **** tells me she’s never had any OMM
> products returned before and I’m surprised to hear that given my
> experience with this smock, but thought it was genuinely in your
> interests to hear/see what’s happened to this one and disappointed to
> see your letter apparently blaming me for the damage when I’d at least
> be concerned by my story if I was the manufacturer. To wrap this up (for
> now, because I still very much hope to discuss it with you by phone),
> **** tells me it’s a fabulous product (I thought so too!) but I’ve had
> to tell her that in this case you now have one very disappointed
> customer with 100% dissatisfaction with this particular product.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, after several attempts to contact the company director by phone, I finally caught up with him when I was off work with the inflamed tendon sheath in mid-June and had quite a long and civil chat during which he stressed the integrity of his company, restated that my smock had been the only one returned with this problem, said he wasn’t blaming me despite the suggestion of ‘something the wearer has subjected it to’, offered to sell me another for a reduced price (an offer I first turned down, then turned down again after asking what price he had in mind) and finally conceded that he’d be willing to exchange it if examination by a local supplier concluded that faulty materials or workmanship were to blame. And this, with nothing to lose after otherwise getting nowhere, I accepted… except that he didn’t phone back to confirm as promised and I had to email him days later only to be told (after his apologies for that) that he’d talked to them, ‘felt that it was putting then in an unfair position to act as referee when they were there to provide a broader service to you’ and was suggesting another independent referee in Lancashire. At which point, with ‘hiding to nothing’ springing to mind at the thought of sending the thing at my expense to another unsuspecting third party, I’ve finally decided enough is enough when any local shop would simply have replaced it and OMM could surely afford to do so, am just relating the whole story here instead, will be emailing him to tell him so and doubt I’ll ever buy another OMM product (pity, because I like that wee rucksack and thought I liked this smock). Whether or not you do is up to you, but that’s all I’ve got to say here.

 eventually get hold of the assistant manager, the manager was not in
the shop.  Having discussed the issue with him I felt that it was putting
then in an unfair position to act as referee when they were there to provide
a broader service to you.

So… with a week already slipping by since the big race to mull things over and post-mortems apparently all the rage (well, John Kynaston’s got two big blog posts of them!), I thought I’d try one too. But there’s really not that much to say apart from the one thing I was reluctant to highlight too strongly before, with me now thinking my performance was impacted (and possibly significantly) by the cold/infection I picked up the week before the race and still haven’t fully shaken off yet. So my failure to sustain my easy pace for longer, quite severe Ba Bridge/Glen Nevis nosebleeds (not things that normally afflict my running) and continuing blocked(ish) nose/rough throat this week all point to a compromised performance and I don’t think it’s clutching at straws to say so. How much it was affected is harder to say, but instinct tells me that, having maintained 5mph average on a much hotter day last year to round about Inveroran/Forest Lodge before fading with dying quads, I should have been able to sustain 12-minute miling in conditions that suited me better (and off a more measured start) to Glencoe or even Kinlochleven this time round. For sure, the splits will show me to have run more evenly than most with an almost unwavering 12-minute pace to Inversnaid and my race time of 20:44:26 equating to a 13:06 average over the full course… but Inversnaid is barely half the distance I should have been able to keep up my starting pace and, between you, me and the internet, I thought (despite my public target remaining sub-20) I was going to duck under 19:30 (there, I’ve told you all now)!

So perhaps I should be considering another go if I was ‘robbed’? But no… because, while staking all those months of effort on peaking for a specific day to see it so compromised by random chance might be the way of competitive athletes the world over, I’m afraid it’s just not terribly appealing to me and if anything strengthens my resolve not to keep coming back and banging my head off a potential brick wall. And, while I should maybe have gone much faster this year, it’s only numbers in the end and I’ve already found the acceptance over 2010/11 to deal with that. So let’s just leave it there for now, with a wee footnote to add that, after a lazy week when I’ve been resting the inflamed tendon (probably not, in only really flaring up Sunday/Monday, a significant factor in my performance) and eating too much, I’m starting to get out again with a walk over the school cross-country course (c.2 miles) yesterday to check for storm damage and 20-mile cycle (= low impact with the tendon still not quite fit for running over rough ground) round the Loch this afternoon. :-)

Another West Highland Way Race (my third and last as a competitor!), another mixed experience and another style of report to set alongside 2007’s dual-perspective runner’s/support crew narratives and 2010’s bullet-point summary…

Now, this was the race that wasn’t supposed to be (with 2010 my sole serious attempt to go sub-20 hours) but allowed to happen on the assumption (maybe presumption!) that I could still run sub-20, was going to and basically had to to justify the obsessional effort and sustained sacrifice (not much climbing done this winter after juggling WHW training with WML preparation!) required to get there. So why am I apparently happy with a new (5 min) PB of 20:44:26 when I should be gutted to miss the big target and the effort that’s gone into this year’s marginal improvement doesn’t even begin to compute?

Well (for a start), it doesn’t have to ‘compute’. So it might have been (was!) obsessional and sustained enough to stop me doing much else and might even have cost (at a quick guestimate) an hour’s training per second improvement, but scoring it purely on those terms can only belittle so many independently worthwhile days and evenings (things that bring me alive regardless of ‘purpose’) spent on hill and trail. What’s more, it’s the absurdity of this training/improvement ratio that ultimately brings (rather than denies) satisfaction with the achievement and the acceptance (knowing I’m still wide of the mark despite my best shape and strategy ever) that was still eluding me after last year’s race. You might think me defeatist for conceding an element of wishful thinking and abandoning the quest now but, with three finishes from three starts (2007, 2010 and 2011, and each quicker than the last), Saturday’s race completed in pretty good shape (no blistered soles, trashed quads/hams etc.) bar the tibialis anterior tendon sheath inflammation (nope, I hadn’t heard of it either!) that’s kept me off work for the first time on a post-race Monday (+ Tuesday!) and no evidence whatsoever to suggest I’m capable of going much faster, it’s time to call it a day as a competitor in this race.

So what about this ‘best shape and strategy ever’? Taking the shape as read (best training/taper, most miles and fewest niggles, with only last week’s cold really messing things up at all) and concentrating on the strategy, my even-paced 12-minute miling (no partying on the hills!) was spot-on in taking me a long way on fresh legs and proving that I’d learned not to spoil previous steady starts with the kind of romps over Conic Hill and up Loch Lomondside that bite back 50 miles later. Might add that, in also managing to follow another of my golden rules (don’t sit down… and I never did!) from start to finish, it was never my legs that were the problem (with only the increasing discomfort at the base of my right shin a concern) when they’ve more often than not been the limiting factor before. Since it wasn’t my heart or lungs (neither of which were ever stressed) either, that pretty well just leaves my head and stomach, and here’s where things start getting more difficult to assess. You’d think your head should be able to keep pushing you along fine when legs, heart and lungs all seem to be going well, but it’s just not that simple. So I wasn’t surprised to drop off the 12-minute pace for a bit north of Inversnaid with the most tortuous section of the course made slow and slippery by conditions otherwise suiting me much better than the 2011 Fling/2010 WHW heat, but more at a loss to explain why I couldn’t get back on it through Beinglas and beyond (Angus sounded so disappointed when I phoned him my time) when experience told me I should have been able to maintain it most of the way. But sometimes you just can’t maintain voluntary control of your head… you might think ‘mind over matter’ and all that and assume that finding the pace many hours later to cover the final 3.5 miles down Glen Nevis in just over half an hour equates to holding back too much earlier, but take note of Matt Fitzgerald’s words in Brain Training for Runners, where he says ‘the fact that exercise fatigue is brain-centered rather than muscle-based does not make it any less real or any more surmountable by willpower.’ So it’s not necessarily a sign of mental weakness to find yourself struggling (as I did) to maintain 13- to 14-minute miles when you’re convinced you should be doing 12s and yet be able to pull those 7s, 8s and 9s out of the bag with the end in sight (Fitzgerald’s ‘end spurt phenomenon’). As for my stomach, ultra hydration/nutrition is never easy but, with Angus’s records showing me to have been maintaining as steady an input as reasonable, some occasional inability to keep taking more on is no more or less than you’d expect… although whether I could forgive anyone but my brother, three-times support crew and companion on many, many adventures for feeding me hot Accelerade some 60 or 70 miles up the course is another matter!

Some bad patches to report where at one point I’d (delusionally!) seen myself serenely 12-minute miling up the course without any, but nothing especially grim by ultra standards with one slight ‘can’t eat or drink’ queasy spell somewhere I can’t quite remember and a series of minor mishaps (spontaneously bleeding nose, falling asleep on my feet after a mere 20 minutes’ in-car kip since Friday morning and a tortuously slow walking climb from Ba Bridge) between Forest Lodge and Glencoe about the worst of it. Some moments shared with friends whose plans were unfolding with varying degrees of success including Keith Hughes (on his way to a PB) early on, Gav McKinlay at Beinglas (surprised to catch him there, but happy to see him finishing strongly later) and John Kynaston not much further north (in a bright green top and about to become embroiled in a unpredictably prolonged battle to the finish). Then a surprisingly tired-looking Mike Raffan, who caught me again later in time to start playing leapfrog (along with Neil Rutherford) through Glencoe Ski Centre and Kings House, and a succession of encounters up to and through the Lairig Mor with Ross Moreland (‘no, Ross, I’m not showboating on home ground when I should be going much faster and I don’t care if I get beaten by a ginger!’), Ali Bryan-Jones and Drew Sheffield… with Ali and Drew nearly paying the price (quote, ‘there’s some guy catching us up’) for waltzing past in my own backyard when a mere 50 seconds separated the three of us at the end (not to mention Craig Stewart, who I don’t remember seeing, just another 119 seconds ahead of Drew) after my second- or third-wind, bringing-back-the-nosebleed, Glen Nevis sprint!

So what’s left after all that? The usual inadequate but heartfelt thanks to my indispensible support crew of Angus, Jon (who finally got to join me at Lundavra after being told I was still too fast at Kinloch!) and Eileen, and same to the whole race team and everybody involved. Congrats to Richie and Jan-Albert for the sharp-end battle that once again left me four hours adrift at the final checkpoint, to Thomas for his stunning PB in 4th place and to Kate, Sharon and Debs for a ladies’ battle of equal class. So perhaps I might have hoped to beat all the girls till I heard Kate was running, but now also concede Sharon (who by all accounts gave Kate the fright/fight of her life) and Debs (who told me at the start she was going to whip my ass… and did!) to have been out of my league (PS you’re a warrior, Debs). As for me, think things went well enough even if we could argue that I was found wanting in the end… it’s so easy to say you’re targeting sub-20 (or whatever), it’s non-negotiable and nothing else will do, but so hard to actually go get it. And hard to be sorry when I managed to salvage both sub-21 and the PB with that kick all the way down Glen Nevis (what a buzz that was)… not to mention the small bonus of later realising that I’d got (just) within 5 hours of Jez’s record! So I’m done with competing in this race and comfortable with that where I wasn’t last time. But of course there are other things to go for… not sure they’ll necessarily be racing when I’m wanting to get back to climbing, sailing (incuding yacht racing, yes!), the big hill rounds and running for the sheer joy of it rather than because I have to (please, I’m just a guy who likes running!), but we’ll see.

All photos © Angus Duggan

Too many ‘what if’s in this all-your-eggs-in-one-basket, big-ultra game! So you’ve trained sensibly but (necessarily) obsessively for seven months to hit your best ultra shape ever and tapered conscientiously to be strong and fresh for the big day. But what if, you jokingly muse, it all goes belly-up through factors outwith your control? What if the whole thing’s called off at the last minute (as nearly happened to my first WHW Race in 2007) for flash-flooding danger? What if the roads are blocked (as happens quite regularly on our single-carriageway trunk roads) and the race team/support crews can’t get through? What if you pick up some nasty chest infection through constantly working with children who don’t stay at home when they’re ill? What if you find yourself at the doctor’s on the Tuesday of race week looking at an upper respiratory tract infection? Oh, wait… now where was I at 9:15am this morning?

So I’d initially put Friday’s headache down to dehydration from the D of E exped over Wednesday/Thursday and run on Thursday evening and just drunk some more. Likewise Saturday’s dizzy turn on Beinn Mhic Chasgaig to under-fueling and just ate some more. Hoped I could simply put other symptoms down to runners’ hypochondria but, knowing things actually felt a bit rougher than that yesterday and this morning, was lucky to get a very prompt appointment with one of our resident miracle workers… who asks about the symptoms, checks my ears, temperature, pulse, blood pressure, throat (bit raw), lymph nodes (bit tender, but that shows my immune system’s working), breathing (listening all over my front and back) and tells me yes, it’s real (not just psychosomatic) but no, I’m probably not needing a miracle because I’m likely over the worst of it already, should have ample time to recover for Saturday but to come back Thursday if still not right. Not advising antibiotics just now because my chest’s absolutely clear, there’s nothing gooey (my own sanitised term!) for them to attack and they could be counter-productive in terms of side effects, but to keep hydrated and take Paracetamol (my Lemsip Max will do fine) because it’s got some other useful property (I forget what) beyond pain-killing. Also agreed that my suggestion of ditching tonight and tomorrow’s last little tapering runs might be a good one, but of course I was feeling better this evening, did my last little hill run and think I’m still likely to do tomorrow morning’s planned last little jog round the village. So am I playing with fire here? Hmmm, maybe, dunno, don’t think so but, if I am, I’m a big boy now and hopefully experienced enough to play with fire… on which note Saturday’s race plan remains a real slow burner in attempting to maintain close to even pace at something like 12-minute miling for as long as possible, which I’m expecting to see me well down the field through Balmaha, Rowardennan, Inversnaid and maybe even Beinglas before hopefully taking me through to a top-20 finish. So stuff the respiratory tract, hope (as seems increasingly likely) we get weather that lets me run the way I like and bring it on!

Tapering for a big effort can be so hard to judge, being theoretically simple but practically affected by other (external/immutable) factors. So how do you score that two-day D of E expedition (Wednesday/Thursday) from Corrour to Kinloch in a ‘tapering’ context, being low-intensity but significant time-on-feet when tapering should maybe be more about maintaining the intensity and reducing the volume? (The answer after some thought in my case being to almost dismiss the c.18 miles of walking involved and head back out after a couple of hours’ break for a proper wee 7.9-mile burn up to Tigh-na-sleubhaich and back in the hope of salvaging about 30 of the 35–40 miles of running I’d have had down for this week without the exped… although whether the trade-off should be scored on quite those terms is anyone’s guess!)

Fancied a short but interesting hill run today to keep on track for said 30-mile target, and that’s exactly what I got this afternoon with a 6.7 mile/2,600 ft traverse of Beinn Mhic Chasgaig in Glen Etive (a proper west coast hill where last weekend’s trip to Ben Wyvis was more akin to a run through a 3,000 ft high ‘park’!). So I crossed the single-plank bridge at the bottom of the Allt Coire Ghiubhasan and turned from one gorge to another to follow the bouldery gully of Coire Aiteil before taking the northerly ridge off for the stunning prospect of Stob Dearg ahead, but ultimately couldn’t give that much attention to the view as I found myself having to pick my dizzily undernourished way down with some care (not to mention craving for the banana I’d left in the van for my return)! Happy with the taper, however (need 5 or 6 miles tomorrow then another big mileage cut to a 15–20 mile ‘week’ with some rest over the final few days), feeling strong (maybe in the best shape I’ve ever been for this kind of thing) and hoping everything’s coming together just right for something special in Saturday’s 95-mile monster…

Spent this afternoon up at Outward Bound Loch Eil tree climbing with a group of our first year pupils (who are there for the week), so was still looking for a run when I left at back of 7pm. Thinking time (as much as weather) might be against me to go bagging the fine Corbetts of Sgurr Ghuibhsachain and Sgorr Craobh a’ Chaorainn, I decided just to grab what I could on the mileage front by setting off on an intended 10- or 12-miler from the same start point along the tremendous track down the east side of Loch Shiel, but found the going so good that I ended up doing 16! At 8:28-mile average (8:40 out, so must have come home at 8:16 pace), apparently hitting 5:36 (don’t often go that fast!) at one point and still strong enough at the end to know it had been quite comfortable. So truly a case of grabbing what you can! :-)

Some further thoughts here to follow Thursday’s Pacing by feel post, with a potentially hugely significant conclusion about my optimum WHW pacing strategy. So, to skip briefly over yesterday’s run (Fort to Kinloch by the Lairig Mor after work at an average 9:35 mile pace, and notable only for another soaking plus chance encounters with John O’Neill as I left the Fort and Ian and Sandra coming the other way just north of Blar a’ Chaorainn) to start explaining, here we go…

Two days ago I wrote that ‘the point […] is finding myself able to match HRM pacing by feel and a new confidence that I can do this just as effectively for 11-, 12- or 13-minute miles as 9:37’ (this last figure referring to the run under discussion there but having no precise significance of its own). But could I really? Well, there was only one way to found out, so I headed out for another run of similar length (to Glencoe Ski Centre and back at 21.2 miles) this afternoon with the goal of trying to maintain true ‘ultra-marathon’ pace by feel and setting myself just a few simple rules to follow:

1. I was allowed to check the watch twice only (once at the turn and once on arriving home).
2. I should be prepared to walk up parts of the steepest/longest hills (where I’ve been running literally everything over the past week), but could pick up the pace a bit downhill so long as there was no ‘romping’.
3. I should be aiming for a negative split with this course being easier in the homeward direction, but not by too much because I’d have overcooked things if I didn’t get back feeling like I could keep going forever.

So what was it like, how did I do and what did I learn? Very, very wet (again, again, with parts of the ‘hill’ path between Altnafeadh and Kings House especially being under continuous running water) for starters, but I hit Glencoe Ski Centre bang on 12-minute miling, which is just about perfect (about which more shortly). Then back at 11:03 pace (faster than I thought, but it felt so comfortable!) for an 11:31 average, and feeling very, very good. At which point I just have to note my growing suspicion that it’s never been my aerobic capacity letting me down on big runs (with my heart and lungs still capable of sustaining far more pace than my legs) but aching knees and/or shot thighs (the slowing heart rates previously recorded more likely resulting from slowing pace than causing it), and the realisation that these are going to survive ever so much further by backing off even more at the start (especially with WHW quantities of early tarmac). Or, to put it another way, start at 12-minute miling and I’ll probably still be doing that 15 to 20 hours later on WHW terrain, but buy into the popular (mis?)conception that you should make use of the ‘easy’ start to get ahead and (even at 9- or 10-minute miling, which half the field maybe think ‘slow’ for that bit) I probably won’t after starting to hurt more 30 or 40 miles up the course.

While today’s outing was also satisfying for bringing up 90+ miles of trail running over the past seven days with the bonus (not lost on me when choosing the route) of covering the whole WHW from Tyndrum northwards (and all but the Lairig Mor in both directions) within that time, its true significance (most important run of the year?) is probably in confirming the magic number to be 12. Run 12-minute miles up the WHW (when that seems to be my ‘run forever’ pace on this terrain) and I’ve got an hour’s leeway (for the inevitable mistakes, mishaps and misjudgements) in chasing my goal. Can’t tell you till 18 June whether I’ll be brave enough to start that slowly (come on, Pete, you know it makes sense!) because I probably won’t even know myself till crunch time but, if I end up running sub-20 off c.3:45 to Balmaha (won’t actually be chucking away the watch, but nice to know I can interpret the important signals without it), just remember you heard it here first!

So you’re training for a big trail ultra like the West Highland Way Race, have discovered that even what you’d normally class as ‘easy’ pace is not only going to be unsustainable for the duration but disproportionately damaging later if indulged in early, need to find out what’s actually ‘safe’ to run and how to stick to it… but how? For WHW 2007 it took me ‘three months of work with a heart rate monitor to slow myself down and establish a pace I could truly maintain for the long haul’, followed by strict adherence to my self-imposed limit early in the race, then a similar strategy for last year’s WHW and Cateran Trail races. But, since I’ve hopefully taken all these lessons on board by now, am rarely using the HRM for anything else and more often than not running with no watch at all these days, I decided to try pacing this year’s Highland Fling with just the GPS watch (no HRM) in the intention of doing same for the WHW if I ‘got it right’. And here’s where things start to get interesting because not only did that work out OK, but my pacing for a return trip from Glencoe Ski Centre to Bridge of Orchy this Sunday with no HRM and barely a glance at the watch turned out to be absolutely identical (at 9:37 miling, which is 3 min/mile quicker than sub-20 WHW pace) to that from Blackrock Cottage to Inveroran (same course, but 4.6 miles shorter) achieved in March last year through religious adherence to a very narrow heart-rate band! Now, of course that’s way too fast for the whole WHW when I’m talking about pacing to slow myself down, but the point (with the key words being ‘absolutely identical’) is finding myself able to match HRM pacing by feel and a new confidence that I can do this just as effectively for 11-, 12- or 13-minute miles as 9:37.

Anyway, thought I’d try another ‘blind’ run on Tuesday evening, pushing the pace a bit more (but always comfortably) on an easier return trip from Bridge of Orchy to Tyndrum, looking at the watch just once at the turn (8:47 average out) and again at the end (8:30 overall, so 8:13 back in the easier direction?). Then to the Blackwater Dam and back last night with (as usual on my regular courses) no watch at all, but (from a glance at the clock on my return) bang on 9-minute miling. Might add that all three runs described here were undertaken in foul (wet and often windy) conditions, with Sunday’s producing a staggering 4kg weight loss in 3½ hours (even good breathable waterproofs still being unwanted layers in terms of overheating!) after consuming just two cereal bars and c.400ml of Accelerade while out and the other two done (as normal when I’m just out for a couple of hours) with nothing to eat or drink. Haven’t quite decided yet how this all affects my strategy for the all-important WHW (will probably still be deliberating through Mugdock Park!), but it’s always reassuring to know I can maintain a respectably consistent pace over fair distances without the sustenance you might assume that requires (but can’t always take on in the ‘ultra’ context). Also maybe leaning towards starting ‘slower’ rather than ‘faster’, but know I’ll be running my own race whatever anyone else does and it should (assuming no cat-among-the-pigeons, oppressive blue-sky heat!) be the right race at the right pace for me.

So it’s May, the big hills are fair game for daylight evening runs again and it’s time to start hitting them during the working week. But, with some truly pish conditions now replacing this April’s (excessively) hot, dry ending, what can you do? Well (if you’re me), just go anyway… which is why I was up Creach Bheinn above Loch Creran tonight for some fresh air (got the wind, got the rain, but thankfully not the thunderstorm). Sorry, no photos, but not much point carrying (and needing to protect) a good camera when everything’s soaking and there’s nothing to see anyway (think I saw more of this hill from neighbouring Beinn Sgulaird four years ago than I did tonight), but it’s a good run and (dare I say it?) started to feel suspiciously like ‘fun’ in the end! :-)