Petestack Blog

Having run 90 miles last week, found that surprisingly straightforward but knowing it’s still a big week by my standards, I thought it might be fun to mix in some mountain biking (something that’s still pretty new to me) to give me a break from the pounding for a day or two. So I’ve been out on the bike these past two evenings, getting to the Dam (via Penstock, at c.12 miles and 2,100 ft of ascent) last night and Blar a’ Chaorainn (aka Lundavra, at c.18 miles and 2,700 ft) tonight… taking nearly as long as I might to run the same courses and discovering just how rough even what I’d normally consider easy ground can be when ridden on a bicycle (except for pure road trips like ’round the Loch’, which I can ride in half the time I can run)! But I’m also thinking I’m starting to handle the bike a bit better, learning to keep steering straighter uphill (it’s not pedal power that’s the limiting factor here) without getting caught in so many gravel/stone traps and riding down some stuff that I might not have taken on before (even if I’m still too much of a wuss to really go for it and took the chicken run of the Mamore Lodge road rather than the path tonight).

Should be running again tomorrow… dunno where yet, but guess I’ll be looking for at least 10 miles (so ‘no rest for the wicked’, although I took a rest day on Sunday)!

To the non-runners among you, it’s not what you think! A runners’ bonk (aka hitting the wall) is basically grinding to a halt when you run out of fuel, as might happen when you’re nearly finished that afternoon double crossing of Rannoch Moor you set out to do without any lunch, in which case you probably deserve it…

So I’m on my second week of holiday and (freed by the forecast from imminent climbing or walking plans) chasing a 70 mile target for the week. Which starts well with 30 miles salvaged from the rain over Monday and Tuesday, and continues with this daft notion of breaking the back of it by running another 25 miles over the Moor from Kings House to Rannoch Station and back (which I might have saved for Thursday or Friday to give myself a rest and let the ground dry out a bit, but decided to chance on a fine-looking Wednesday afternoon). All well and good but for the 1:16pm start with just a banana eaten since breakfast, but I’m feeling strong at Rannoch (where I drink my bottle of water and eat my two cereal bars before turning for home) and most of the way back before hitting a bit of a wall with just two or three miles to go. And the reason? Not enough fuel, I guess, but I’m partially revived by thoughts of more liquid and another two bananas in the van and get there in the end. 4hrs 40mins for the 25 miles, which doesn’t sound that fast but really isn’t too bad at all when the central section of ‘path’ between the good tracks at either end is heavy going (tip… if you lose the path, as I did on the way out, make for the telegraph poles to locate it again). So that’s that, I did it and can afford to take the rest of the week a little easier now. Except that I’m now thinking of 80 miles, but can’t see another 25 in four days being that much harder than another 15!

When I bought my Forerunner 310XT, I also decided to get the new soft-strap heart rate monitor, and said (in my brief 310XT review) that ‘The new soft-strap heart rate monitor is nice and was worth getting even though the 305’s monitor will work.’ But I’m not so sure now, and thinking of trying the old one again because the new one seems more temperamental and has quite simply been telling me lies today (see trace below, where I was attempting to maintain a heart rate in the low 130s but it’s trying to tell me I was hitting 160s and more, which I can pretty well only do in a flat-out sprint, between 2:00:00 and 2:30:00!). Now, the old one also tended to produce an early spike (although never the monster spike-and-dip this one gave me on Saturday) but thereafter stayed wholly reliable for the rest of the run, and that’s what I need for my ultra-marathon pacing. So I’ve got to work out why the new one’s tending to lie after a while (seems like it might simply not be maintaining such good body contact, but that’s not good enough if it’s going to keep happening) or get the old HRM going again.

Must also just revisit one other Forerunner feature before moving on, and that’s the altitude readings (as already briefly discussed in another blog post). On which note, I discovered changes to Garmin Connect when I uploaded today’s run, with ‘Elevation Corrections’ now enabled by default and defined (to paraphrase a wordy explanation) as your GPS positions cross-referenced with elevation data from professional surveys to give you more realistic figures. And they’re certainly quoting you significantly reduced elevation gain and loss (maybe too much in some cases, which makes me wonder how many points of reference they’re using) when it’s enabled, because I tried it both ways with tracks from several runs.

And so to ‘ringing the changes’, which is just a way of suggesting that I’m trying to get away from constant repetition of my old stalwart routes (even though I ran one of them twice yesterday!) and get out to enjoy a more varied programme now that I’m on holiday for a fortnight and longer evenings are here until the big race. So this afternoon I tried an anticlockwise loop from the forestry west of Ballachulish along the partially completed cycleway (very nice while it lasted) towards Duror, then up Glen Duror through trees and snow to Gleann an Fhiodh and back by Ballachulish. Which came in at 15.6 miles and a fair bit of ascent including some curious diversions through the Glen Duror forest, where I’d planned to take the LH track the whole way if I could locate it above Lagnaha but things weren’t always quite as straightforward (they rarely are with forestry) as you’d think from the map!

No, I haven’t being buying more shoes since yesterday! But I’ve been out again in the same ones, trying the same HRM pacing trick on a 14 mile round trip to Luibeilt that starts with a climb I’d rate more severe than any on the West Highland Way. So perhaps it was a mug’s game trying to keep to 125 when I was backing off big time and even 130 was only giving me an average of 2.9 mph up that first, steep mile, but the ease with which I was able to maintain mid to high 120s for the rest of the course suggests that I’m still running well within myself at that, which is basically what I was wanting to know. Since it also took the remaining 13 miles to drag the average speed up to just 5.4 mph, and said average was clearly still affected by two short stops (to don Pertex smock and trousers when the weather turned nasty and remove an annoying stone from my shoe), it seems stupefyingly obvious that you can never regain what you lose by moving too slowly (as likely to result from setting out too quickly and blowing up later as being too cautious early on) or not at all. Which leaves a WHW race strategy based on perfect pacing and minimal stopping (neither of which I achieved last time) looking crucial if I’m to hit my target (which I still regard as ‘on’!).

Might just add that the two obvious heart rate ‘spikes’ late on (approaching and starting the final descent) are possibly rogue readings and the Gel-Enduros seemed little more secure (although certainly no slippier) than standard road shoes on that same descent (which I’ve covered significantly faster with more serious studs and attitude to match!).

Since I’m running on rough ground all the time, pushing my road shoes beyond their designed remit on almost every outing and like to have several viable pairs on the go, I rarely buy running shoes a pair at a time. So, with the mileage steadily building towards June’s West Highland Way Race, my last two pairs of Asics GT-2130s becoming ever more bashed up and most of my existing off-road alternatives somewhat out of favour, I really needed to stock up, spent part of Monday evening trawling the net for good deals (aka sale prices) and now have five new pairs of shoes!

So what did I get, and why?

• Two pairs of Asics GT-2150s because (bar a single failed experiment with ill-fitting Saucony Hurricanes in 2006), Asics 2000 series have served so well as my ‘main’ shoes over the years that I’ll quite happily take a new pair of UK 11/Euro 46.5s out of the box and run 30 miles or more in them just like that. But these are my first black ones (chosen because the white ones might as well start black with the usage they get from me!).
• Two pairs of Asics Gel-Enduro 5s because I’ve kept looking for road-type shoes (which are generally kinder to my funny feet) with trail-type sole patterns, these were pretty cheap and (despite what I’d call a fairly ‘token’ trail sole compared to more specialist designs) had to be worth a gamble. Also in black, and maybe that little bit more ‘appropriate’ to some of my rougher local courses.
• A pair of Inov-8 Flyroc 310s because they were also on sale and, out of the many different Inov-8 hill and trail shoes I’ve owned, the similar (but slightly heavier) Terroc 330s have probably fitted said funny feet best. To which I might add that the Gel-Enduros seemed a bigger gamble because I was banking on the fit being similar to my previous Asics 2000 series, and thought I was on pretty safe ground with the Flyrocs because all those different Inov-8s I’ve owned (think that’s Mudrocs, Mudclaws, Roclites and two pairs of Terrocs) have been UK 11.5/Euro 46.5s. But the Flyrocs are maybe feeling just a little short at that (although maybe still OK with a bit of wear since they’re not looking any shorter than my existing Mudclaws and Roclites), whereas I took out a pair of the Gel-Enduros today, popped in my magic insoles (with the 7° sideways slope!), ran 17.2 miles on the West Highland Way and was well pleased with them.

Now that’s the shoes dealt with, what about the heart rate? Well, being absolutely convinced that 90% of the WHW field are setting off too fast and even pace (or perhaps more accurately even effort) will get you there quicker in the end, today’s run was an exercise in maintaining an even level of effort by monitoring my heart rate (IMHO so much better suited to this aim on anything other than flat courses than going by either minutes-per-mile pace or simply gut feeling). Which is basically what I did for the first 19 miles of the 2007 race (so who remembers that ‘four hours to Balmaha’ mantra?) before starting to let gut feeling interfere with the HRM’s infallible judgement. So today I was trying to keep the heart rate to something approaching (or just above) ultra-marathon rate, set a top alarm for 125 and lower alarm for 115 and happily achieved exactly what I wanted in covering the ground (from Blackrock Cottage to Inveroran and back) well quicker than I’ll need for the race while having to keep backing off to stay below my chosen upper limit. Which hopefully both makes this limit sustainable through some longer training runs and suggests that whatever sustainable limit I set myself for the big race should still produce the pace I need over the long run. And that would be the end of today’s story but for the late decision to make Inveroran rather than Victoria Bridge my turning point leading to a serendipitous meeting with WHW record holder Jez Bragg and friends there. So I stopped to chat for five minutes (about, amongst other things, his winter WHW run in December) before leaving to get running again when my heart rate had dropped to 75 and lips probably started to turn blue. And arriving home to open Jez’s blog account of that winter run and receive an email from Murdo McEwan (who was involved in it) about his published account of the very same. Now, how amazing is that?

To anyone interested in the heart rate trace below, I’d say ignore the opening spike and succeeding drop (causing false readings for longer than normal until I stopped to wet the HRM band), but note the evenness thereafter which brought me home on a predominantly uphill leg not much slower than I went out!

It’s a logical circuit I’ve had my eye on for years but somehow (despite having run just about everything else you can run in this area) never got round to doing as a whole. So this afternoon I ran round the base of the Buachaille Etive Beag by the Lairig Eilde and Lairig Gartain, and have to say that, if it was all as delightfully runnable as the Lairig Eilde, it might just be the best mid-level off-road circuit round here. But the Lairig Gartain, while not looking that much longer on the ground, is quite simply bigger, rougher, wetter and slower, and comparatively marred by a less continuous path that’s eminently losable through some quite awkward ground at the Etive end. So, while still well worth doing (and how could it not be in such spectacular surroundings?), it’s not the ‘best of the best’ it promised to be for the first three miles, and Dalness and back by the Lairig Eilde should be a more pleasant course to pick up the pace and maintain some rhythm for those more carefree days.