Here's me

My name is Matt I'm a freelance music teacher. I teach whole classes, voice, and guitar both privately and in local schools.

I've been running since February 2010. I originally set this up to promote fund raising for Edale Mountain Rescue Team when I did the Nottingham Ultra in 2011. I raised over £500 but the race was so uneventful (in a good way) that I couldn't be bothered to do a write up.

Now I'm intending to use it to document the running stuff that I want to be able to remember.

Saturday 11 June 2011

The challenge I face


The Challenge

What exactly am I facing with this challenge? Well there's the 31.16 mile race in October which will be hard on its own; I've walked that distance in a day before and it was a very painful experience, the furthest I've ever run is 26.2 miles in a marathon, I've run 20 miles or more only three times so far.

The race is really only the culmination of the challenge though. I don't want to just get through it; I could probably do that tomorrow because there's no cut off for the race.

For me the real challenge will be in the lead up to the race. I have in mind that I'd like to run it at the same average pace as I ran the marathon a month ago which means just over 9 minutes per mile (4 hours 47 minutes target time). When I did the marathon I got severe cramps at around mile twenty and if that happens in this race then I'd be looking at a very slow last 10 miles.

The training will be hard because I need to try to find out what causes my cramps and what I can do about it. That means I'm going to have to do a lot of runs at the kind of distance and intensity that will cause the cramps in order to try different remedies.

Along with this training goes the risk of the various over use injuries which all runners face. I think as long as I start the race I will finish even if it means a very slow time and walking a lot. What's going to be harder is getting to the start line having got a good balance in training; too little and I won't reach my time target, too much and I'll risk not making the start line at all. I really need to up the intensity of the training runs, honestly I didn't train that much for the marathon; I ran a maximum of three times a week but usually twice and there were weeks in the build up when I ran once or not at all. More importantly though I didn't really ever push myself in training. The long runs were done slowly and the shorter runs (10 miles or so) I did at probably 9 minute miles. In the marathon we set of at 8:40 per mile and up to the cramps didn't find that hard, I was breathing in for 2 steps out for 4. So the marathon was a real learning experience for me, I learned that I can run a lot faster than I thought.

Honestly I probably won't be able to up the consistency; the situation with work and family means there will still be weeks in the build up to the ultra that I won't be able to run all that much. I'm going to alter the training by upping the speed in training. I'm going to be including sections of faster running in the long runs and in the mid distance I'm going to really up the intensity. I'll write in another post about exactly what types of runs I'll aim for and about my slightly unusual method of judging effort.

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