Petestack Blog

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!