Post 50 mile malaise

We got round the Lakeland 50 fairly comfortably; we weren't fast, but we finished with some energy to spare. I'm sure we could have gone further, or maybe faster, but I'm not sure that it would have been as much fun.

So the effect it seems to have had on me has come as a bit of a surprise. I'm really tired. And really hungry. All of the time. Even more hungry than I usually am, and craving carbs.

It seems a strange sort of deep tiredness, almost like a fog; the first word that comes to mind is weary, and then maybe torpor...

The tiredness may have been enhanced by my almost sleep free 32 hours volunteering at the LEL (London Edinburgh London 1400Km audax) control in Brampton, and I may be getting a cold, but it feels like more than that.

It may be post-event blues; I had been so focussed on the Lakeland 50 (and so convinced that I was going to struggle to get round) that now that it is over everything seems a bit flat. The downside to a high driven by anticipation, adrenaline and endorphins.

I suppose all that I can do is wait and see what happens next. I'll keep sleeping a lot, and eating a lot of cake, and I'll avoid any hard exercise (and the bathroom scales) for a few more days and then I'll try to take myself in hand...

The perfect trail shoe? Inov8 TrailRoc 255 - long term review

A few months ago I published a blog about my apparently endless quest for the perfect trail or fell shoe. This boiled down to a shoe that was either wide enough to comfortably accommodate the bunion on my left foot, or soft enough to conform to the shape of my bunion, while at the same time strong enough not to split.

In February I bought a pair of Inov8 TrailRoc 255 shoes from Pete Bland in Kendal. As I commented in a blog post at the time they appeared to be promising, but after training in them regularly since then, and running the Allendale Challenge (26 miles) in April, the Swaledale Marathon (23 miles) in June and the Lakeland 50 in July I thought it was a good time to review their performance.

I bought the TrailRoc because it is an Inov8 with a "natural" fit, so based on my experience of other Inov8 shoes I expected it to accommodate my bunion. I chose the 255 with a 6mm drop (2 arrows in the world of Inov8) rather than any of the lighter models (zero drop 235 and 150, 3mm drop 245; the numbers refer to the weight of a single UK size 8 shoe) because I was looking for a more rugged shoe that would protect my feet and give me a little support in a 50 mile event.

This shoe also has a strip of stronger material (presumably this can be  described as a rand) running right round the front of the shoe above the sole, a couple of centimetres (or an inch) deep, starting in front of the heel. This makes the shoe stronger, although less flexible, less prone to damage from sharp rocks, and, most importantly, protects the foot from sharp projecting rocks.

In terms of my experience of the shoe, I found the upper to be very comfortable, and suffered very few blisters. Of the blisters I did have, most were between my toes, caused by my toes rubbing together. I don't think that this was shoe specific, and I seem to have resolved the problem by wearing Injinji toe socks.

The toe box is wide enough to accommodate my bunion without re-lacing, and the rand didn't cause any problems even though it clearly prevented the  material from deforming around my bunion. The rand is excellent at protecting the foot from sharp stones, and seems to have helped prevent the splitting I have experienced with other Inov8 shoes.

The grip isn't quite as aggressive as I might like, especially on wet rock, but it handles most other surfaces adequately. The rock plate protects the sole of the foot well, and on the very rough trails of the Lakeland 50 my soles (that is the soles of my feet) survived quite well.

The combination of the welt and the slightly more padded upper does retain water more than other Inov8 shoes I have used, but not to the point where it becomes an issue.

To summarise, I like them; maybe the grip isn't perfect, but at least I haven't destroyed them yet. They are comfortable when worn for long periods over very rough ground and they seem to be robust enough to survive for a good few hundred miles more. They aren't superlight racing shoes, and they aren't very aggressive fell shoes, but for long rough trails and general off-road training they are great.

Perfect? Probably not, but really quite good.

If you don't believe me, there is an excellent review here.

Cold porridge

It seems to be the consensus amongst runners and cyclists that a big bowl of porridge is the breakfast of choice before a long run, a long day in the saddle, or a race. Since I eat porridge almost every morning whatever I am doing, I find it hard to argue with this position.

However, in the summer I find that I don't always want a bowl of steaming hot porridge, but I still need the slow release carbs to get me through the morning. I came across the solution a few years ago (actually 8 years ago now I check) in a copy of The Times, a newspaper I never read, which had a recipe by Jill Dupleix for "summer porridge". I would give you a link to this as I know it is still on The Times' website, but unless you are willing to pay up, it is safely buried behind their paywall.

The idea is not really original, it is simply another reworking of Bircher muesli, and once you have the basic idea it can be easily customised to meet your preference. My version is very close to the Jill Dupleix version, and the main difference between this version and most of the current versions of Bircher muesli is that the oats are soaked in water and not in fruit juice.

For two medium sized servings, take a cup (250ml) of large oat flakes / porridge oats / jumbo oats (weighing about 100g or 3 3/4 oz) and soak in some water (say 300ml or 10 UK fluid oz) in a large bowl for 20 to 30 minutes. Then drain off the excess water and add the following:

3 generously heaped tablespoons (maybe 70 - 100ml) yogurt - I use full fat Greek style, use low fat if you enjoy being disappointed
1 dessert spoon of runny honey (about 10ml), more if you have a sweet tooth
1 banana - sliced thinly

This is my basic recipe, to which I add some (usually one or two fresh fruit, one nut or seed and maybe one dried fruit) of the following:

Fresh raspberries or strawberries
Fresh or frozen blueberries (I just add them straight from the freezer)
Sultanas or chopped dates or chopped dried apricots
Pumpkin seeds
Chopped nuts - almonds, pecans or brazils
Chopped pear or peach
A grated apple, unpeeled

Mix it all up and put it in two bowls. That's it.

Eat it.

Montane Lakeland 50 2013 - Food

Runners obsess about food and drink. Sometimes they make this sound more important by talking about "nutrition" and "hydration" "strategies", but it does come down to food and drink.

We had a plan, a strategy, perhaps even a philosophy about food and drink for the 50, based on experience of eating and drinking in marathons and in training; but even so, at the point of starting the 50 we had never covered more than 30 miles in a single session, so whatever we did was purely experimental.

The plan was simple; eat lots of food, often. Since we weren't going super fast we decided to take quite bulky real food, and chose not to rely on the food at checkpoints. Apart from water, when we set off we could have done the route entirely self supported (at least in terms of food, we may well have got lost!).

The real food versus sports / energy drinks / bars / gels discussion was straightforward. Most of those things seem to make me feel sick if I eat them in quantity, or in isolation for any period of time. I'm starting to think that although sports drinks and gels give me a short term boost (in a fast half marathon, for example), they tend to make me crash shortly afterwards, and from experience of very hot marathons, I am fairly convinced that the very high sugar concentrations actually prevent my stomach from absorbing water. So, we were expecting to be out for 14 hours or more, so no sports drinks, gels or bars. Easy.

What to take instead? First of all, we were required to take emergency food we didn't intend to eat, so I bagged up a big lump of shop bought marzipan and a handful of dates and dried apricots and hid them in the bottom of the rucksacks. For an emergency boost equivalent to a gel, we took a pouch of banana baby food (essentially, just mashed banana - very expensive mashed banana, but easy to carry). Apart from that, we took the following:

Cheese and pickle sandwiches
Home made flapjack - the Dan Lepard halva ones with figs and pecans
Chocolate and sea salt sticky rice and oat balls (recipe from Feed Zone Portables by Biju Thomas )
Dates and dried apricots
Salted boiled potatoes
Salted almonds
Nuun electrolyte tablets
Water

Yes, I realise that was a lot to carry, but we wanted to be sure that we had what worked. Having a choice meant we didn't need to eat anything we didn't fancy, or eat all the same thing until it caused a problem, and if something plainly wasn't working, we could have something else. And nutritionally it seemed to cover all of the bases; slow release carbs, fast carbs, protein, fat, salt...

Of the things in the list, we ate some of everything, and all of the rice balls and flapjack, most of the dried fruit and quite a lot of the sandwiches and almonds. The potatoes might have been a bit of a mistake, they were nice, but a bit messy and fiddly to get at, and too heavy. The salty almonds were great, and encouraged me to drink more; I was definitely dehydrated as a result of the hot climb out of Fusedale.

I also ate and drank a few things from the checkpoints; a flapjack and a fig roll at Howtown, a cup of tea at Mardale Head, more tea and a couple of bits of apple (delicious; quite a revelation) at Kentmere, tea and a cheese sandwich at Ambleside, tea and a bit of bread at Chapel Stile, and finally more tea at Tilberthwaite.


At the end, all I really wanted was a cup of tea and the remaining cheese sandwich.