So here we are, the final day of Juneathon 2015! As with last year, I've not found it much of a challenge to engage in some form of physical activity every day (there have been only a couple of fairly deliberate and really quite necessary rest days), the cycle commute helping significantly with that statistic on the few days when I didn't run. The main thing that I shall not be sorry to let go of is the daily blogging. I really do prefer to wait until I have something more interesting than 'went for a run' to say! Nevertheless, true to form I shall include a quick run down (oh those puns, won't you miss 'em!?) before a brief reflection on the month to close.

My next main challenge will be participation as a relay team member in the UKRunChat team at Adidas TR24, a 24 endurance challenge, much like the TrailBlaster12 but twice as far and twice as long (10k laps over 24 hours). I'm not sure what to expect. 12 hours of solo running was one challenge but it was all on my terms and no one was relying on me. In some senses, it might seem less of a challenge to be part of a team but having to perform on demand is going to be a very different experience. One of the main physical differences will be the stopping and starting. At TrailBlaster, though I slowed to a walk when I felt like it, I never had to actually stop. Running relay laps means I'll have to get used to running as well as I can for 10k, stopping, and then starting again. And again. And again. I don't actually know how many laps I'll do but without final numbers on the team it's hard to know. For this reason, after a blissful couple of days of running as far or as fast as I fancied, I'm back into 'I'd better run like this' mode and trying to train my body to get used to running more than once a day, possibly on tired legs. I think I'd better drop some off road running in too over the next week or so, given the ankle stiffness I experienced after TrailBlaster (really not a huge issue but it made me realise how much I'd been road running). So, taking all that into account, training for June 30th included a 5 mile breakfast run and then a 5k treadmill session squeezed in before my evening class. (Tuesday is a half day at work by the way if you're looking at those cycle commute times, I'm not a complete slacker!)

The morning started smoothly enough; not the best night’s sleep ever but that was only to be expected and I was at least well rested. A substantial breakfast and a couple of painkillers to be on the safe side (no, the pesky ITB still hasn’t totally settled down) and we were off to collect our timing chips and listen to the details of the day in the race briefing. There’s really very little of interest to say about this point in the day to be honest and that’s to the credit of Cannonball Events staff and their organisational skills. It was nice to see some familiar faces at the start though and I caught up with Scott and Nicola who formed the main part of the UKRunChat relay team and who I knew from Anglesey.

At 8am, on the dot, we were off. I had thought I might walk the first lap just to get the lie of the land but of course, with so much pent up enthusiasm that idea quickly evaporated. As I was planning to stick to the 4:45 marathon pace I’d been training to for Liverpool, a warm up hardly seemed necessary and I decided it was best to just get ‘in the groove’ as soon as I could. I was initially rattled by the number of people speeding off like rabbits at the first shot but the tell-tale batons they were invariably gripping soon gave away their alternative aims for the day; they weren’t expecting to be running non-stop for 12 hours and could afford a bit more speed! Shortly after we set off, I was delightfully unsurprised (I was expecting the pleasure!) to encounter Autumn Howard, an inspirational runner whose own adventures in the sport I have been following since meeting her at the first race of the Todmorden 5k series last summer. Her efforts have been impressive but strangely parallel to mine and this would also be her first ‘ultra’. We caught up for a while but she surprised me by dropping back to walk the first hill, telling me to go on ahead as she knew it went on for about a mile. Now, I had been expecting to walk at points myself but having eventually decided to set off running I was surprised that someone whom I perceive to be almost bionic was walking so early on. Nevertheless, we all have our own game plans and I was fairly sure our laps would cross again later when she overtook me! 

In terms of recovery, the last seven days have been every bit as surprisingly fine as the race itself. I knew due to my sheer bloody mindedness that I’d batter myself through as much of the race as I possibly could but I was absolutely dreading Monday morning. This time of year is incredibly busy at work and there was just no getting out of it. I had prepared for the worst as best I could, scheduling totally justifiable student one to one tutorials instead of full classroom sessions and I’d even made Monday lunch before I left on Saturday but there wasn’t much else I could do. I barely slept on Sunday night, waking up almost every hour for toilet trips as my body tried to balance my hydration levels and feeling strangely queasy. Bizarrely, I had no appetite for breakfast (unheard of!) and forced down some Weetabix and a sugary coffee (I never put sugar in my coffee!) as the only things I could stomach. Actually, though I did feel a bit odd, almost like I had a mild hangover, Monday was not even half as bad as I might have feared. I didn’t get my appetite back properly for a good few days though and for the first time in I cannot remember how long I actually left dinner on my plate on Monday night! I suspect, the jiggling up and down whist simultaneously putting food in it just didn’t sit well and perhaps I need to practise that a bit more before my next long distance attempt. Aside from that… Not much to report at all. Slightly sore ankles (Yes, I should have trained for the trails) and a blister or two is pretty much the worst of it. A week later and I’ve now done 3 runs, including a not badly timed 10k race and I feel what passes for normal. The only thing I am aware of really now is that the Recovery Advisor feature on my Garmin has been reporting my recovery as only ‘fair’ far more than usual (I’ve rarely seen it ever say anything other than ‘good’). From this I think I can learn that my biomechanical recovery may well be fine but perhaps there are other processes, such as the cardiovascular that are still getting over the beating. Generally though, it seems ultras are much quicker to get over than marathons, a fact I put down to the reduced speed.

Without turning this into a novella, I think I’ll stop there. (If you fancy a much briefer and far more entertaining summary of the day by the way, please do look at Autumn's 'video diary' of the event on her own blog here.) So yes, this is ‘late’ in terms of my usually prompt blog posts but I really think I’ve needed the time to reflect fully and digest what was a uniquely exceptional experience. It also seems timely to reflect on the achievement as I begin my 35th orbit on the 29th of June. I’ve run 1,470.47 miles in the last 365 days according to Garmin. But there were two laps I didn’t clock, right, so you can add 6.2 miles onto that and round it up to 1476.67... So there’s some distance covered, and there’s some lessons learned and in a year where I have been required to accept many of my own weaknesses, coming to know these better than I really might have liked, I have at once discovered depths to my strength that I could never have known existed.

I am genuinely excited about what the next 12 months will bring!

On Juneathon the 24th, and the third day after the amazing experience that was TrailBlaster12, I have been extremely surprised by just how fast I appear to be recovering. (Touch wood) not a hint of the ITB injury I have been dealing with, next to no soreness in my legs at all, feet still a little tender, an occasional twinge in my left ankle. I think the fact I have apparently got off so lightly is not by accident though, and am continuing to be as careful about my nutrition and training as I was in the lead up to the event. Eating well (despite an uncanny lack of 'runger'), continuing with my foam rolling and stretching routine even though I may not feel like I need it and engaging only in steady active recovery seems to be working so I'm running with it. Well. I'm not running. Yet. see how sensible I am? Today, feeling pretty awesome and realising that I had without thought broken into a jog a couple of times in the park with my students (if you can't let your hair down enough to jump on a climbing frame or two on the last day of term, when can you!?) I did a slow gentle 15 minutes on the stationary bike and then the same on the cross trainer before some very sensible weights/core work and 20 slow lengths of the (small!) pool. All good. We shall see what tomorrow brings!

Though recovery is progressing better than I might have dared hope, I have yet to make time in a busy last week of term for a full race report from Sunday and so you'll be treated to yet more retrospective drip feeding on TrailBlaster12, my first attempt at an ultra marathon on Sunday:

The details of the lap splits were released yesterday and whilst I had a fair idea of how things had gone from my fractured Garmin data (there were 2 laps where I had no watch while my mate charged it on a laptop in the race tent!) I tracked that in miles, so it was fascinating to see the details of the actual laps, at 5k measurements. While I did slow down in the second half of the day (after my slowest, walked, 'lunch lap'!) I'm surprised how consistent I actually was, and while my fastest, at at 31:36 is certainly no 5k PB, given just how hilly the trail was that's hardly a shock.

I've spent too long already trying to work out the gradient but suffice to say it got steeper as the day went! It looks from my data as if there was a total of about 55 meters of climb in the lap... but of course that wasn't evenly spaced over the 5km. Anyway. Other, fairly dull news for Juneathon 23rd is that I managed to double my time in the pool from 15 minutes of recovery swimming yesterday to half an hour today and have staved off a certain amount of post-race anticlimax by registering for two more races. I will be enjoying and certainly not racing the We <3 MCR 10k on July 12th (about 3 weeks recovery for that one!) and the inaugural Rochdale Half Marathon (another Cannonball Events special!) on the 23rd of August... Two whole months away!

I don't think my brain has returned to full capacity yet and I've found neither the time nor the motivation after managing what passes for a normal day in work to fully write up in blog form the incredible experience that was TrailBlaster12. In so far as Juneathon goes, I managed a 15 minute recovery swim and about an hour in the jaccuzi/steam room!
I did write this though: