2013 season review

This may seem like an odd time to do an end of season review given that I've still got several races to do before the end of the year. However, my season was meant to end with the RAT on 17th August. And so I thought it would be useful to explore why that ended up being my first (rather than last) race of the year.

My number one learning is that I should have never ever ever thought I could keep up ultra training while moving house. Especially when that house move involved selling a flat, buying a house that needs a not insignificant amount of work, moving to an entirely new area, extending my commute by about 25 mins in each direction and meaning I no longer have the option of running from home to work.  I massively underestimated the huge impact this would have in me.

We did decide not to do any racing until after the move and our first race wasn't until 2 months after the move. But that was a 20 miler and with a 50k scheduled for a month after that and my first 100k a month later it definitely added an extra layer of stress that I didn't need.

I've also learned some useful lessons about training for long single day events. Knowing that long training runs are key we scheduled a lot of these. So many that there were points when we were running around 30 miles every Saturday. During the heat wave I just don't think this was sensible - I took myself into some very dark places and don't think I helped myself psychologically as I didn't enjoy many of these sessions. I also had to dig so deep that I struggled to get good consistent sessions for the rest of the week. Next year I'll schedule a long run every 3-4 weeks rather than every weekend. And follow it with a rest week.

Consistency has been the main issue for me this year. I've been ill quite a bit (mainly due to stress) and with time needed for admin related to the move this means I've never really got to the point where I'm in a consistent routine. I believe that this sort of consistency (e.g. 3-6 months of averaging 50-70 miles per week) is key to ultra running success. It also helps me to keep my weight down.

My main objective for next year will be consistency. I definitely feel more settled now in terms of our new home and my commute. And I've had a rethink in terms of how I structure my week. I've recently realised that I can get off the train at Clapham Junction and do a 9 mile run to work through the parks and along the river. It's a nice route and that's important to me. My plan is to do it Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday mornings. Then on Friday I'll work from home and have a rest day before the weekend which will include an hour of yoga.

That's been a good learning from this year - I've bought some yoga DVDs and have been using them whenever I can. Being able to do an instructed yoga session at home and in my own time has made this much easier to fit in than going to a class.

On that note, we're buying some gym equipment for our front room. I did quite a bit of leg work over the winter this year and aim to get to the gym at lunch time for 30 mins 2-3 times per week to do core exercises. This helps me to maintain my form over the longer distances and builds my small stabilising muscles (e.g. knees and ankles). By having some basic weights and a wobble board at home it'll be easy for us to do this together in the evenings.

We're also looking at buying mountain bikes. This is something we always promised ourselves we'd do when we moved out of London. And we're both keen to start cycling again. It should be great cross-training, prevent us from doing massively high running mileage year round and will also be a good way of recce-ing running routes - for example the South Downs Way which we've entered as our "A race" for next year.

One of the main reasons for picking this race is that it's close by and we'll be able to train on terrain that's the same as we'll be racing on. We both loved the transalpine run but will be hard-pressed to "race" any of the big mountain races as we just can't train on similar terrain where we live. While we'll definitely look to spend time abroad training, we realised this year that we both got enjoyment from being able to race the RAT and be competitive.

 We've now got a couple of marathons scheduled before the end of October and then we'll be buying our mountain bikes and doing some shorter faster runs over the winter before we start ramping up for the South Downs Way and hopefully learning some of the lessons from this year...