Petestack Blog

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! :-)

Having climbed half a dozen times over the past 21 years on the granite slab paradise on its eastern flank and admired its striking profile from all the surrounding Munros, an outing to the summit of Beinn Trilleachan was long overdue. But it took a weekend of such changeable conditions that I was reluctant to go chasing hills further from home to send me down Glen Etive today on a quick Sunday afternoon raid to grab this lovely peak between heavy showers.

So that’s now six days on the trot running after two off to reestablish my 2011 term-time norm of ‘training’ Tuesday to Sunday with Monday evenings off, but still a consciously lighter week to follow the Fling with today’s 5.9-mile jaunt bringing up just 43 overall and the soberly amusing thought that that’s pretty well what I’ll be needing on the same day to finish the WHW after a 53-mile ‘Fling’ start! Although at least this week’s unexceptional 11,800 ft of ascent tops what I’ll have left to climb after Tyndrum by some considerable margin…

Have to admit I’d consciously avoided the Highland Fling before. Didn’t want to be pitted against my West Highland Way ‘peers’ over the same course earlier the same year, thought I just wouldn’t be fast enough over the shorter distance (53 miles) and didn’t want to deal with the psychology of being found wanting there! But last year’s Cateran Trail race (when I ran sub-10 over 55 miles to come 8th of 45 starters in what’s maybe still my best ultra performance to date) made a big difference and, while remaining non-committal about whether I was in it for a run or a race, thought I’d give it a go as my principal ‘tune-up’ this year. And so I did, quietly targeting a sub-10 finish as positive ‘psychology’ (went through Tyndrum in about 10:25 on last year’s WHW), thinking 9:30 might be possible given my Cateran time (so which is the harder course… who knows?), but probably never really expecting the same kind of dry, windy heat that made that WHW such an ordeal for those of us who’d have preferred to see clouds and maybe even some rain.

Not trying to write a blow-by-blow account here, so jumping to the finish now to tell you that my time of 9:53:48 for 51st place of 321 finishers (and apparently 383 starters) seems pretty well in line with my expectations/aspirations, providing a decent confidence booster for the WHW (positive psychology as above) while leaving no room for complacency, suggesting that I’ve now got the experience to pace a big trail ultra just as well without my heart rate monitor (John Kynaston’s souped-up results spreadsheet showing me moving from 204th fastest over the first ‘leg’ from Milngavie to Drymen to 23rd over the final one from Beinglas to Tyndrum), but also providing some valuable ‘last-minute’ lessons in fueling for such conditions. So perhaps it’s downright scary that I managed to eat nothing but a packet of crisps (which lasted from Rowardennan to Inversnaid) and six jelly babies after Rowardennan (just halfway on the ground), but I was by no means alone there, know how I came through it and know that my WHW support crew just have to accept that they can’t force-feed me if I can’t eat. That said, I’ve also got some new ideas and strategies to put to Angus, Jon and Eileen, see some productive discussion there and will consider anything so long as we all remember ‘the best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men’…

So what else have I got to say here just now? Some (left) ankle and (mainly right) knee niggles early on, but managed to run them off and (touch wood) seem to have developed a good feel over recent years for what’s a niggle, what means stop and what means go to the doc. Still (despite plenty food and drink later) 3.9kg lighter yesterday morning than when I set out on Saturday and 2.3kg down today, but not really wanting to see that all back again right now when calculating a good 0.5kg of it to be proper, fat-burning weight loss! Not used to the Fling’s staggered starts, so some new experiences in catching/being caught by folk from the different starts as well as placing amongst some (eg Ali Bryan-Jones, Michelle Hetherington) I never even saw despite similar splits. And just can’t say enough good about the organisation of the whole thing from morning registration through to the finish and evening buses, with (to cite just a couple of examples) the simplest, most convenient timing chip system I’ve seen (so much more user-friendly than SPORTident dibbers or things you have to lace to your shoes!), the drop-bag system under perfect control (find drop-bags so hard to get right as ‘best-laid schemes’, but their sorting and handling was exemplary here), and really just everything done well. So perhaps I was wryly amused by the marathon-style boards for ‘sub-10’, ‘sub-11’, ‘sub-12’ etc. at the start when such things seem completely at variance with my conception of trail-ultra pacing (just thought ‘no way am I standing at that ‘sub-10′ board when I’m never taking off with those who do!’), but think that was maybe just gilding the lily a touch when (sincerely hope I’m not upsetting anyone here) it was already growing beautifully as it was! :-)

Needed to squeeze in another hill day without overcooking things too close to the Fling, so it was off to the Monadh Liath today for a round as runnable as any of last week’s Drumochter Munros and a wee milestone in notching up my 200th discrete Munro on Carn Dearg. Not perhaps a big deal when it’s taken me over 30 years to collect that lot, but it’s approaching three-quarters of the total when I’ve also got nearly two-thirds of the Tops (just have to make things difficult for myself by maintaining that the Munros without the Tops are Munro-lite!) and maybe starts to bring the endgame within sight should I choose to really start attacking the rest instead of constantly repeating those I’ve already done. So of course I was tempted to extend today’s round to pick up the western outlier of Geal Charn (926m version and not the 889m or 766m ones you see on the map), but not tempted enough to stretch my 17 miles by another 10 (!) with the Fling just six days away, and that one got left for a rainy day with a pleasant run out through Glen Banchor ample compensation for the spurned opportunity. Amazed that today’s three-Munro round (at less than 3,800 ft ascent) was once a five-Munro round before the demotion of Carn Ballach and Carn Ban to Tops but, while I’m largely sceptical about tinkering with Munro’s Tables except where responding to new survey data, I’d have to agree they’d have been the softest of full Munros when there are many more significant Tops and typical of the anomalies you can only really reconcile by doing the lot!

Time for the wee hill running trip I’d promised myself this week, but where to go when all the most attractive rounds I had in mind were looking too big and/or strenuous to be taking on between the Highlander and the Fling? No real need for a decision till yesterday with a couple of days’ rejuvenating cycling (Monday/Tuesday) and a wee trail run (Wednesday) being what my legs, feet and brain seemed best able to agree on as ‘recovery’ but, with my Easter holidays in danger of running out while I quietly went nowhere, the Drumochter Munros finally sold themselves as starting high and being about as runnable as hills get (think straightforward trail running at 3,000 ft and you won’t be far wrong). So that’s where I went, and nearly turned back in disgust after my sensible decision cost me a cracked windscreen (chance stone thrown up by an oncoming car on the A889 to Dalwhinnie) before accepting that snatching defeat from the jaws of defeat (!) would be helping nobody and I might as well get what I’d come for. Which was a 15.4 mile/4,300 ft round of the hills to the west of the pass yesterday afternoon followed by a 16.3 mile/3,500 ft round of the eastern group this morning, with intentional diversions to Mam Ban (which Irvine Butterfield lists as an unofficial Top), Meall a’ Chaorainn (the deleted western top of A’ Bhuidheanach Beag) and some other minor bumps, but an unnecessary encounter with the great rift of Cama’ Choire caused by the kind of lazy navigation (aka running towards Am Meadar in the haze without checking map or compass) I’m (say it quietly!) still sometimes guilty of when running alone in benign conditions. So that’s about 77 miles of off-road running and 40-something of cycling over the past week, and I’m still not sure whether my Fling’s going to be a race or just a big run (a similar dilemma after an 82-mile running week just before the Cateran last year ultimately resulting in something closer to ‘race’), but hoping for one more good hill day before toning things down a bit next week (back at work Tuesday) and taking the same two days’ rest I had before that (NB I’ll be tapering properly for the WHW again). As for the windscreen (my beautiful heated windscreen!), things could be worse at ‘just’ £75 excess for glass, but that’s still £75 to get back to the van I had yesterday morning and I’m not expecting Autoglass till Wednesday because they’ve had to order it specially.

Just back from the Highlander Mountain Marathon at ‘Ullapool’ (the true centre given away by the T-shirts as Dundonell), where Jon and I came a slightly disappointing 15th from 22 starters in the A Class but still had a cracking (= hard!) weekend’s running in stunning surroundings…

Saturday’s course took us from Druim nam Fuath above Little Loch Broom back past Shenavall Bothy to Dundonell, although the optimum route (missed by half the class) on a day when we were permitted to visit the checkpoints in any order apparently skirted An Teallach to the north rather than south. But our real disaster came much earlier than that when taking completely the wrong line between our first and second checkpoints then compounding the error by making things ‘fit’ cost us about two miles of extra ground including some thigh-deep bog swimming! So that was us playing ‘catch up’ almost from the start, with a pretty decent run over the later stages sadly being more about damage limitation (lying 16th overnight but closing on those immediately above) than any kind of glory and my subsequent quick/crude calculation of our track (drawn from memory in the appropriately-named Memory-Map) suggesting about 38.6km/2,000m against the route planner’s ‘optimum’ 33.0km/1,540m.

Sunday was better, with the linear course (no choice of order) giving us a grand tour of the peninsula north of Dundonell before a final 40-knot RIB trip across Loch Broom back to Ullapool. But, despite a cracking start, we still surely lost time dropping too low too soon while skirting Beinn Ghobhlach to the north en route to a sea-level checkpoint at Camas a’ Mhaoraich, finishing 12th for the day (calculating 25.1km/1,300m against the nominal 23.8km/1,400m) and 15th overall. Physically a very hard weekend in increasingly bright conditions (NB arrived home 3kg lighter last night than I weighed on Friday morning), although both thankful for the good visibility when some of the controls could otherwise have been pretty tricky to locate and hampered by more muddy slips, slides and falls than I can ever remember while running! Also no question that Jon was dragging me round and, despite sometimes getting the better of him on training/fun runs (especially uphill), I’m not really fast enough to be competing with him at this level. But then again, neither of us are even on the same planet as the top guys, with the times recorded by the likes of Tim Higginbottom and Chris Near doubtless registering the same mixture of disbelief, awe and respect with most of the other also-rans as they do with me!

Think that’s most of what I really wanted to say said now, but mustn’t forget the number of mashed/bruised toenails (a regular problem with my truly weird feet) plaguing me today. Or the super-light, not-even-full, 20-litre weekend sacks that at least let us start feeling (and looking?) like elite athletes even if we didn’t/couldn’t behave as such in the end!

• Overall results
• Saturday results
• Saturday splits
• Sunday results
• Sunday splits

No joint training for the Highlander this past weekend with Jon and me heading for separate weddings (his brother, my cousin) on Saturday. But, with a high-level circuit of Glen Turret (or Loch Turret if you prefer) to grab Auchnafree Hill and Ben Chonzie (my only ‘unticked’ Munro or Top in the Southern Highlands) not too far off my direct route to Edinburgh, you can probably guess what I did on the way! So you might spot some interesting zigzags in my track as I played ‘join the dots’ with multiple, hilltop cairns to give 12.7 miles/3,700 ft of ascent on mostly rolling heathery terrain (not forgetting all those peat hags on the north-east side!) and might be interested to know that I’ve never seen so many mountain hares in my life (now all on the turn from winter to summer colouring) but, apart a quick mention for the burning April sun, I think that’s about it for now.

Another great training run for the Highlander with Jon yesterday, although we nearly canned our plans (to go ‘almost regardless of conditions’) for a two-Munro, three-Corbett circuit of Loch an Daimh after a night of wild weather and the MWIS forecast from hell. But a good thing we didn’t because, despite a fair breeze and a few showers, we were never fighting the grim battle implied by the forecast and conditions were both surprisingly benign and pretty enjoyable for most of the day.

Now, this circuit (cooked up mainly to let me ‘clean up’ Section 2 of Munro’s Tables with bonus Corbetts) proved to be a true runners’ round on rolling hills with well-spaced contours, straightforward climbs, largely carefree descents (periodically enhanced by lingering snow patches!) on gentle gradients, almost no ‘dancing’ through rocks or scree and only really a few awkward peat hags on some of the bealachs to impede progress at all. Should be pretty obvious from the maps where we went (NB the first shows the route I’d planned in blue and the second our actual track in red), but probably worth highlighting a couple of points in 1. our little triangular tour of the Corbett Meall Buidhe’s summit (where we changed direction to head for the cairn I spied as we arrived, then discovered another two with each one looking higher from the others!) and 2. our run southwards down the open scoop from the final Corbett of Cam Chreag (not what I’d drawn but a prettier shape on the map, right?). 21.9 miles and 6,900 ft of ascent all in, definitely a recommended running route and I still managed to hit 5:08 mile pace on a final ‘sprint’ down the last short section of track! :-)

Might just add that this was the first outing for my new OMM Cypher smock, which finally got christened on Cam Chreag after spending most of the day in my sack and looks like a great lightweight shell top (post edited 1 June 2011 by quoting email below!). 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’. So perhaps I’m still not wholly convinced by the cuff/thumb loop arrangement, but can see a trivial modification to improve that later if I’m not getting on with it exactly as supplied. Didn’t take the Kamleika pants (ordered simultaneously), however, which just aren’t cut for me at all and will be getting changed for some other waterproofs that fit.

Peter Duggan wrote (2011-05-22 19:40):
> Just discovered today that the front panel of my Cypher Smock has
> started delaminating badly after being worn just a handful of times, so
> afraid I’m looking for a refund (might have got a rogue sample, but
> couldn’t trust the eVent fabric in any like-for-like replacement) and
> think you might also want to pass this on to OMM.
>
> So how do I go about returning it to you and securing a refund?

(Note: tried plotting both tracks on a single map, but didn’t like the look of that!)