Swordfight

There’s a scene in my all-time favourite film, The Last Samurai, in which Tom Cruise’s character, Nathan Algren is getting an absolute shellacking with a wooden sword in an impromptu battle. It’s hammering down with rain. He fights to the best of his ability, but time and again he’s no match for his opponent and is thrown to the ground. He isn’t fully rehearsed in reading his enemy and knowing the right way to fight back. He hasn’t yet failed enough to have learned how not to fail. Every time you think he’s not going to get up again, he does. (All but the last time, but that’s not where we are for the purpose of this story!)

Where we are, is that a race that’s succeeded in throttling me twice is in my sights for the third time on 2 September. The Ridgeway 86 - Ivinghoe Beacon to the Avebury Stones. Basically you run a hilly trail marathon before you complete the Race to the Stones 100k route. There are certainly much bigger beasts to tame in the ultra world but this is my beast. 

To this race I say “you wanna dance? Let’s dance, you and me.” There are words that are a fair bit more blue but this is a family blog today.

I first booked this race on September 1st, 2019, intending to run the following August. Sadly Covid had other ideas, so I had to wait for my chance until August 2021, when I imploded 16 miles before the finish and decided to pack it in. Another postponed race, the Shropshire Way 80k, had been Covid-bumped to three weeks in advance of the R86, and my ridiculously poor foresight meant I thought I could do both unscathed. Unfortunately I got so desperately lost in Shropshire I spent far longer out than expected, eventually finishing but going into the R86 with shredded heels and an empty tank.

On my 50th birthday later that year, I went back to the location of the R86 Foxhill checkpoint where I’d stopped – not only to complete the race, but also to complete ‘My Race’. You see, I hadn’t just planned on finishing the R86, but I had planned to tack on an additional 14 miles to make a round 100. I figured if I’m going 86 I may never want to go that far again so let’s just get 100 done. (It really does sound a lot easier on paper!) I managed to get that 50th birthday 50k done but it wasn’t the race. It wasn’t My Race. 

So of course I booked it again.

Enter R86 2022, when despite my best intentions and total lack of foolishness, I only reached the halfway checkpoint before my T2 diabetes switched off my coherence while my tib ant tendon, fully trashed by the drought-packed trail, finally gave up the ghost. I had to retire again, concluding that particular adventure by getting rescued by my crew from a bench in the middle of Streatley in the middle of the night.

I went back to the Ridgeway yet again (do you see a pattern here?) on my 51st birthday to try and complete 51 miles for my 51st year on the section where I’d fallen apart, intent on understanding what could have set my blood sugar off on its strop and my heart rate into a samba. Unfortunately I ignored the ear infection I’d had for a few days, thinking it was only a bit of blockage. Halfway through the adventure, I was clearly not in a good way, having to lie down on the trail some 8 times from total exhaustion which had never happened before. I ended up ringing a taxi after 36 miles, then spent the last three months of the year with illness upon illness, asthma into pneumonia, diabetes complications, such total fatigue I thought I’d never be running another ultra. 

I was starting to become convinced that the Ridgeway was trying to kill me.

But that scene. That Samurai.

January 2023 rolled in with an asthma attack…and out with a completed virtual Spine Sprint to make up my little bit of training. Softly softly I was on my way back after all. There are no words but think ‘relief on steroids’ and you may be close.

Two springtime races followed, including a very muddy return to that Shropshire Way race, (well away from the date of the R86 this time, thank heavens) and a far more challenging than it should have been 20 mile romp around Hathersage. 

Fast forward to today, where I’m now staring down the barrel of Ridgeway 86 + 14, take 3. Sounds like a story problem and it really has been. And so much science! So much maths! Yet, as I type I’m thinking this training cycle has gone absolutely amazingly. I have never been so ready. 

Over the past three months I’ve carefully dissected everything that’s gone wrong in the past and mapped out a measured approach to solving each issue. I’ve practiced using diabetes-friendly fuelling across distances anywhere from 5 to 40 miles, to ensure I know how to sustain that ‘heading out the door for a run’ energy and minimise vicious and potentially damaging sugar spikes. I’ve studied when, where, and most importantly, why I’ve had problems with my sugar and heart rate, what’s potentially caused weakness when I’ve felt so flat, why I’m flagging when I do. I’ve considered each hill and undulation in terms of its exertional cost – what and how much are the notable hills taking out of me and when is the impact of the deficit hitting me the hardest? 

Had I been putting enough back in? Had I been fuelling the engine properly…on time? 

No! I hadn’t! OMG!

This answer when I reached it, was a shouty, resounding no. It’s the biggest running aha moment I’ve ever had. Interestingly it was intuitive by guessing that at a specific distance and time I needed to eat much more than I had been (earlier), but on studying the terrain and the route milestones I’d listed between two particular checkpoints, it was ridiculously obvious the terrain was markedly more challenging there than at any other point in the race, and I just hadn't been fuelling up enough to take it on.

How many times had I been at that very spot and not realised it? Both races, at least three recce runs, and that disastrous 51st birthday when I had to stop near the conclusion of the segment in question, fully spent, and call for a taxi.

That segment gave me the missing piece of the plan and now it is absolutely airtight. 

Here, two weeks out, I know I’m working a plan that bests every preceding plan, because I’ve been knocked down so much I’ve learned how to fight back and get up again.

My training plan is that practice sword, and I am the warrior wielding it. Knocking that chimp into the puddle. Over and over and over. My race plan is the victorious swing that bests him. The one he cannot defeat.

It’s funny – if heart alone could reach finish lines, I’d never ever cease to finish another race. And heart, grit, determination, these together had always been enough. But I’d never tried to run 86 miles, let alone 100. Yet I keep going back. I keep going back because I have unfinished business.

I keep going back because I will never be free of this challenge until I see three digits on my watch.

I know there are probably more people who think I’ll never do it than those who think I will. 

But here’s the rub - I think I will.

And that’s all that really matters.

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#relentlessforwardprogress