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.

Montane Lakeland 50 2013 - A grand day (and night) out

Following on from my last post...

...we arrived at Coniston on Friday evening, found the event headquarters, parked and pitched the tent in cloudless, still conditions.

We did the weigh-in thing, signed in and had kit checked, then collected numbers, maps and road books, got some free stuff,  and had dibbers apparently permanently welded to our wrists.

Back at the tent we ate a couple of sandwiches and some rice pudding, then had an early night.

Next morning I was awake early, and surprised to see so many others up and about. I was a little dismayed to see that the sky was still cloud free, and promising to be warm.

After breakfast I sorted out the food I was taking with me, and added a change of socks and a vest to my rucksack. I stuck some magic tape onto my shoulders to help stop my rucksack rubbing (thank you to the neighbour in the camper van for the loan of a pair of scissors; the magic tape resisted my teeth) and A did some similar last minute faffing.

After a last minute cup of tea we went to the briefing in the hall, already full of sweating runners. Then we were on the coach and off to Dalemain to wait for the start.

And so it began with a quick dip of the dibber and a jog round the fields at Dalemain, in the blazing heat, then off towards Pooley Bridge. Once we were through Pooley Bridge we were soon out onto the track above Ullswater. It was still very warm as we dropped down to the first checkpoint at Howtown. Once we had dibbed, topped up water bottles and grabbed a piece of value flapjack, we were back off up the hill, pausing only to point out to a couple of competitors that they were about to head off up Fusedale without bothering with the first checkpoint.

And so to the first climb of the day; it was hot, humid and airless. Everybody seemed to be suffering, not just me, which was some consolation, but not much. At the top we ran over the soft bouncy turf, and actually found the correct cairn, and footpath straight down to Haweswater. A bit of a drag along the lakeside path and on to the second checkpoint at Mardale Head for a cup of tea and a sit down on the tarmac.

It was still warm on the drag out of Mardale Head to Gatesgarth Pass, but once we over the top there were ominous grumblings and rumblings of distant thunder, accompanied by one or two huge spots of rain. A few hundred metres further and it was pouring, it didn't last long, but it was worth putting on waterproof tops for.

There were more showers off and on all the way to the next checkpoint, making it difficult to decide whether to keep the waterproof on, and steam within, or chance taking it off, only to replace it again almost immediately when the next downpour started.

A more unusual side effect of the rain was the deluge of dilute sweat and sun cream finding its way into my eyes and causing some discomfort, as a bonus my steamed up and rain spattered spectacles weren't helping over the loose and rough surface of the descent. I had a choice, take my glasses off and see vague shapes, or leave them on and see a wet blur.

But still we managed  to arrive at the Kentmere  checkpoint for another cup of tea and a small piece of apple (don't worry, we were eating more than this, but the food deserves a blog post all to itself). We had been going for 7 and 3/4 hours and had covered 27 miles; not fast, but that wasn't the point, we wanted to be sure of getting round, and given the lack of training we didn't want to take chances.

Once the tea was drunk, we left the throbbing techno behind and we were back out into more rain. Waterproofs back on, we set off up over Garburn Pass. We met a few of the people we had overtaken earlier, and assumed that they had resisted the lure of the checkpoint, but apparently we just faffed more than anybody else.

We got over the top of the Garburn Pass fairly easily, and chatted to a hundred competitor, clearly not a local, who seemed to think the weather was just crazy, one minute warm, the next cold, then raining and then thundering. He was fed up with putting his waterproof on, then taking it off again, so he was leaving it in his bag.

On to Troutbeck, then to Ambleside, stumbling through the woods as it began to get dark. The checkpoint was packed, and steaming hot. We grabbed another cup of tea, and I had a cheese sandwich while trying to get a blister plaster to stick on A's Vaseline covered feet. We didn't stay long as it was too hot, but more faffing with head torches was required once we were back outside and realised that it was now dark.  

It wasn't a great surprise that it was dark, but it was earlier than we had been expecting. It was only 9:40, and we had been hoping not to need the headlights until 10:30 or so. Never mind, at least the rain had stopped.

The next section to Chapel Stile, was relatively easy. Mostly runnable after the initial climb, even by the light of our torches. And we got to within a few miles of the Chapel Stile checkpoint before the rain became heavy enough to warrant putting the waterproofs back on; this time they stayed on until the end.

The checkpoint at Chapel Stile is clearly best appreciated after dark; lit by blazing scented logs, it is a bizarre apparition in a tent pretty much in the middle of nowhere, but we tried not to get too comfortable, even though the offer of tea once more proved irresistible.

Now properly dark and properly raining, A took the opportunity to change out of shorts and into running tights, in a somewhat indiscreet manner. Then I took the opportunity to show my inability to navigate in the dark by leading a group past the stile I was looking for, despite A having pointed it out to me. I kept trying to explain to people not to follow me, but they wouldn't listen. Somewhat chastened, we fell in behind those who knew better than us, but for some reason we let them get away, and once more I was at the front. This time it worked out a little better, and we were soon heading down past Blea Tarn; but of course we couldn't see the tarn in the dark and my confidence was a bit shaken by now, and I  had to get a grid reference from my GPS to confirm we were on the correct path.

Another group caught up with us, and following some debate over whether we had strayed to far away from Blea Moss, we turned to head directly to the distant light on the self dib on the road. Entirely to everybody's surprise, this turned out to be about 20 metres away, when a moment before it seemed to be about half a mile away.

On towards Tilberthwaite the rain got heavier, the wind was blowing and A's headlight was fading. We stopped to change the batteries, but it wouldn't work. We could have tried another spare set, but the cold was starting to affect me and we agreed that she would take my headlight and I would manage with my (awesome Hope) hand torch.

The checkpoint at Tilberthwaite was a disappointment. This wasn't anybody's fault, it just didn't provide enough cover from the rain, and we were craving a dry spot to allow us to put on every additional piece of clothing we had; waterproof trousers (have I ever, in my life, worn waterproof trousers?), buff, extra Helly Hansen thermal shirt, Buff, hat, gloves...

And then back out into it, for the final stretch. It was now after 2 in the morning, and we had been out for 14 and a half hours, but we now had less than 4 miles to go. We weren't giving up, even with a horrific climb up the side of the quarry in front of us, with everything awash, and streams pouring along the paths. But it went reasonably well, we kept to the path and at the top found a safe way over the stream above the waterfall, now in spate. Then past the tarn, and very slowly down the very rough path down to the cottages and the track back to Coniston.

And so back to Coniston, still running, and into the school to be greeted like heroes... when in fact we had taken 16 hours to achieve what others had done in less than 8, and if we had only gone a bit faster we would have missed all of the rain and the dark. Although I'm not sure I really would have wanted to miss all of that.

Epic.

Montane Lakeland 50 2013 - getting to the start

Way back in September we entered the Lakeland 50; a 50 mile jog in the English Lake District from Dalemain near Ullswater to Coniston. It is open to runners and walkers, with the winner coming in somewhere around 8 hours and the last competitors completing the event just within the 24 hour cut-off. This generous cut-off time, and the fact that it is run in conjunction with the Lakeland 100 (almost a complete loop around the Lake District, 100 miles long) make it seem less daunting than it really is.

It is only 50 miles (only 50 when compared to the 100), and only 3100m of ascent, and back in September it seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to consider entering. And besides, it was filling up fast, so if we wanted to do it, we had to commit. So we entered, and then had 10 months to worry about it, and even do a wee bit of training.

Training didn't really go well. My partner in all things, A, had been injured since the Swaledale marathon in early June, and was just beginning to run again. After a horrible experience in the heat at the Windermere marathon, and then an enjoyable Swaledale marathon, I had pretty much abandoned running. Without A's encouragement, and the bike and wetsuit competing for my attention I had done as little running as the injured A.

Still, we had 10 months, so that was OK.

Then it was the new year and only 6 months to go, but the winter seemed to have almost run it's course in a fairly benign way for once, so we would start serious training in the spring. Then of course the snow came, later and heavier than I can remember it, and by the time of a slightly shortened (25 miles) and rerouted Allendale Challenge (on April 6th) we still hadn't really started any serious training. In June we ran the Swaledale Marathon (23 miles) reasonably comfortably on a warm day, and completed an official recce of the Lakeland 50 route from Pooley Bridge to Ambleside on a wet and windy day.

Then we had a heat wave, a couple of long hard walk / run days in the Lake District, a reasonable amount of cycling (including a 100Km sportive on the tandem), and an unofficial recce of the remaining part of the Lakeland 50 route from Ambleside to Coniston. This final recce was less successful than the earlier recce. With the combination of the logistics of bus travel to the start from Coniston and the car journey from home, we finally started this at midday on one of the hottest days of the year. While it was beautiful, it was also very, very hot, and we struggled. The result was that although we got to see the route, our confidence was seriously dinted.

We did do a bit more training than that, but I think we only managed one month between September and June with more than 100 miles in the month. Definitely lower volume than we had intended; and the longest run was barely 30 (very hilly) miles.

When the Lakeland 50 finally came around, we set off in the car to Coniston with a sense of trepidation bordering on dread. But at least the weather forecast looked OK...

Banana flapjack, golden plover & chicken pie

Banana flapjack

Snow was forecast to fall overnight again, but there was barely an inch this morning. Rain first thing, followed by sunshine meant that what little snow there had been was mostly gone by 10:30.
In the meantime I took the opportunity to chuck together some flapjacks to eat while out running later that morning. The basic recipe was deliberately less buttery than a typical flapjack to make it easier to eat when running. I turned out to be short of oats so had to eke out the posh big organic oats with some dusty looking oats from a mystery bag tucked away in a corner of the cupboard and of uncertain vintage. They smelled OK, so in they went. Still not quite enough oats, so a handful of rye flakes to make up the oats to 8oz.

I added half a banana to stop the flapjacks being too hard or too chewy, again to make them easier to eat when running, especially on a cold day. The banana makes the flapjack a bit cakey and probably not quite as flapjacky as I might like, and more banana flavoured than a flapjack should ideally be, but today I was more interested in eatability and digestibility, so the banana had to go in.

Recipe

8oz oats, crushed a little by hand if very coarse (to make a denser flapjack)
3oz butter
1.5oz sugar
3tbs golden syrup
1/2 a banana

Melt butter with sugar and syrup, but don't overcook. Mix in oats and mashed banana. Press into baking tray and bake for about 25 minutes at 180C, until golden.

Golden Plover

We ran up the riverside path to Allendale and then up towards the moor. There were large numbers of lapwing and curlew calling in the rough fields below the moorland edge. The weather was surprisingly good; the sun was shining, the sky was blue and the valley seemed to be sheltered from the wind making it fell almost warm.

Once on the moor proper there seemed to be golden plover calling from all directions, but no visible sign of them. Red grouse, by contrast, whirred about, noisily proclaiming their presence.

There was almost no snow on the ground here, and the rapid thaw had produced streams of water. The ground was wet, but strangely seemed to be too wet to be properly muddy. The tops across the valley were still covered in snow; probably simply down to the greater altitude.

We did about 6 miles across the moor, mostly on good tracks, plus a couple of miles at each end to get to and from home, making a fairly easy 10 miles or so. And one stop to sample the banana flapjack, which wasn't bad at all...

Chicken pie

Home to chicken pie for a late lunch, and chicken soup to make for supper from the bones of the chicken.

 

The weather - part 2

After the fog and wind on Friday, the weather forecasters were now promising snow and ice for Saturday. So we did the sensible thing and stayed in the house eating home made croissants.

The snow didn't come, so we ignored Sunday's forecast (more snow and ice) and planned a long(ish) run, mostly off the road.

 

When I got up on Sunday morning there was no snow. Then it started snowing, and an hour later there was about an inch . And then it stopped. So we ate breakfast (more croissants!), digested for a bit, then got ready to run.

 

We left the house, a covering of fresh snow on the ground, but the sun shining from a blue sky. By the time we got to the edge of the moor it was much greyer, and a strong, bitterly cold wind was blowing. The path was covered in two or three inches of frozen snow, topped with occasional deeper drifts of light dry snow, sculpted into delicate waves by the wind. Then it started to snow again, and the wind was blowing it horizontally. Who would have guessed that the snow would only start falling heavily once we were on the most exposed bit of ground on the entire route? Well, I for one would have put money on this happening...

 

We carried on past the chimneys, the drifted snow was deeper over the next part of the track, and finding areas of shallow or frozen snow to run on was difficult. Occasionally, our feet went through the snow and the ice below into deep muddy pools of icy water; sharp on your ankles as you go through the ice and surprising (to say the least) when your shoe fills up with cold water. Still, it gave us something else to think about.

 

We got to the road on the other side of the moor and headed down to the next track. Once we had removed the ice from the baler twine securing the gate, the track down, although covered in a few inches of frozen snow, made for good running. And so long as we kept moving we were warm enough.

 

Back on the road at the bottom of the track, a banana eaten, and then a run down the steep road and then up to Ninebanks. Still on the road, we were looking for a footpath we didn't really know, to take us back to the Carrshield to Allendale road. It was signposted through a farm yard, then the signs disappeared. We set out in what seemed like the right direction, but it quickly became clear we were off the path. We carried on regardless, climbing steeply through deep frozen snow and tussocky sedge. After scrambling over one gate we reached a second (padlocked) gate onto the road. Oh well, we got where we wanted to be (about 500m below the finger post for the path we had been looking for), and it is all access land, so no harm done.

 

The road was covered in ice, and the wind was blowing hard, cold in itself but carrying fine blown ice. Wrapping buffs around the bits of our faces that were the only remaining exposed skin we headed back up the road. Again the snow at the side of the road had been sculpted into waves and peaks; quite lovely but the wind that was creating these effects was a bit unpleasant.

 

Astonishingly we then saw a bicycle coming down the road. With skinny tyres and drop bars... and staying upright on the ice, despite the wind. I was quite impressed.

 

We got back to the track across the moor past the chimneys, and now the wind was blowing hard, creating a blizzard of blown snow (it wasn't snowing) about 6 feet high, making navigation difficult, and making forward progress difficult. We pushed on, past the chimneys, where the snow on the track was less deep, and then finally back to the road.

 

Going down the hill the conditions quickly became benign once more, making it hard to believe how severe they had been just a short time before.

 

Only a total of 14 miles, but definitely a small adventure.

 

Oh, and the Inov8 TrailRoc 255s mentioned here got their second outing, and were great in the snow. 

 

 

My left foot

I have a bunion on my left big toe. Properly known as a "hallux abducto valgus deformity" according to Wikipedia.

I am fairly certain that this is the result of genetics and not the result of wearing excessively pointy shoes, but whatever the cause, a " lateral deviation of the great toe" (and not apparently an enlarged or deformed toe joint - thanks again to Wikipedia) makes my foot a funny shape. I can't help but think that having "Morton's Toe", that is a big toe that is shorter than my second toe, in a world where all shoes assume that your big toe is your longest toe, has assisted in the development of my bunion.

But, whatever... I have a bunion on my left foot and the significance in the context of running, swimming and cycling is that it has an impact on the shoes I can comfortably wear. And to be fair it isn't much of a problem with swimming.

Because I need to comfortaly accommodate the bunion I need wide running shoes, and preferably ones that are made with quite soft fabric. This seems to be most difficult when it comes to off-road shoes which are often narrow and often have rigid protective welts directly over where my bunion goes. If the fabric won't stretch over my bunion, it is going to hurt. Sometimes some convenient stitching goes directly over my bunion; this won't stretch even if the fabric will, and it has the added benefit of often being abrasive.

So unless a shoe is really wide (and they may now exist, but as such shoes are a recent innovation, time will tell), it must be made of a soft stretchy fabric, with no welts and no stitching or seams in the area of  the bunion. And that is the sort of shoe I buy for trail running or fell running.

But all of this comes at a price; fell and trail shoes aren't made of strong fabric with welts and narrow fitting by chance. In particular the shoes I choose give little protection to the parts of the feet most likely to come into contact with sharp rocks (especially, you guessed, the bunion), they may also reduce precise control on very technical running sections, and most importantly they are not resilient.

Softer fabrics, stretched to an unusual shape, soaked with acid bog water and scraped against sharp rocks don't tend to last long. And if you look at the picture at the top of the post, the result is clear. All of the shoes have split at the point of the bunion, some after less than 100 miles use. The shoes in the picture are, from left to right, Inov8 f-lite 230, Inov8 x-talon 190 (both great shoes, but just too narrow), Saucony Peregrine, Inov8 terrafly 303 (disappointing as this is Inov8's new wider "anatomic" fit) and the New Balance 101.

I need to make it clear that I don't really blame the shoe manufacturers for failing to produce shoes suitable for one person with unusual feet, but I wish I could find comfortable, long lasting off-road shoes both for short technical blasts on the fell and longer days out on trails. Any suggestions?

Resurrection

I have decided that it is about time that I resurrected this blog, mostly so that I can document the great hybrid conversion project (see next post), but also to add a few running and cycling training notes.

The big goal for this year is the Lakeland 50 in July, which will be the furthest we have ever run. We entered a 50 mile ultra last year, but failed to even start let alone finish; hoping to at least reach the start line this year.

So far, as part of the build up we have the official Lakeland 50 recce at the end of March (and for some reason I have no idea how far this is), then the Allendale Challenge (26 miles) a week later in April, and then the  Swaledale Marathon (22 miles - ish) in June. Beyond that, the training is still a bit vague beyond get some long days on the hills under our collective belt; I'm working on the assumption that time on my feet is the key, and not the number of miles covered.

More importantly I now have the shoes I plan to wear on the big day. This is absurdly optimistic as most fell and trail shoes last me about three weeks before the uppers split, or my feet are shredded. This is entirely the result of  the bunion on my left big toe; if the shoes are soft enough to accomodate the bunion I split them, if not, then they are too uncomfortable to wear.

Shoes have become a bit easier with the latest Inov8 shoes now being made on a foot shaped last, rather than the narrow last they previously favoured... but I still split my Terraflys in about 100 miles in the same place as all the others (and to be fair, not just Inov8, but New Balance and Saucony...).

So the new shoes are Inov8 TrailRoc 255; the same shape as the Terraflys, but with a more aggressive sole, a 6mm drop, and a bit more protection than the other lighter TrailRocs. On paper they look like the right shoe for the job.

On their first outing today the TrailRocs were great; we did about 10 miles on track, footpath and road, in snow and ice and they were pretty much faultless.