The weather has been so mild recently, and I have done so little exercise in the last month that I really needed to restart my training routine ! Mentally I’ve really been waiting for winter arrive when I’d be skiing and cross country skiing, but no more, got to get back to it.
So today started with a 4k run with about 160m of ascent, and it hurt. Another mental note to self - don’t stop the training for any length of time because it seriously difficult to get going again. Anyway, pace overall was reasonable and at least it’s a start. The run was superb with beautiful morning light filtering through the winter foliage of the trees on the run down towards Le Fayet, all snow free.
Inscriptions for the Ultra Trail Mont Blanc opened today at 8am, and I was up an on the internet to sign up as soon as it opened.
So as far as I can tell I am now signed up, and all I need to do now is send in a special medical certificate before the end of May. This was a little confusing on the site, as it seemed to suggest after signing up that I may miss out if I don’t get my certificate in before others do ? I don’t like contradictory information (I’m going to take it as a miss-translation as the French Reglement seem fairly clear ?!). Still I’d better get my medical done and sent off soon just to make sure ! This is the second one I’ve had to do as the one I got for the Mont Blanc Marathon isn’t accepted for the UTMB - you need a special one unique to this event !
**EDIT**
It looks like a few other people have also got worried by what it says after you sign up, regarding the medical certificate, and there has been a confirmation of the rules on the [news][] page.
>vous vous êtes inscrits par internet ET vous avez payé par Carte Bancaire : votre inscription est OK. Il suffit désormais de nous envoyer l’original du certificat 2007, par courrier uniquement, avant le 31 mai 2007. Ce n’est qu’en cas de non présentation dans ce délais de votre certificat que votre inscription peut être remise en cause,
So roughly if you have signed up via the internet, AND payed by credit card then your registration is fine, as long as you send your medical cretificate before the 31 May.
So i am registered, which is fantastic, now I have to make sure I get fit!
[news]: http://www.ultratrailmb.com/news.php “UTMB News Page”
It’s been nearly 2 weeks since I last went out running - partially because I have just not been able to find the time, with these short days, partially because my 8month old has been keeping me awake a lot at night, and also because the weather has been pretty fowl !
Today was a beautiful day and so I dragged myself out, and I really enjoyed the run. I also went further than before, by quite a long way, and discoverd some parts of the commune that I’d never visited before! In fact some of the route reminded me of hiking in Nepal - Little granges with the smell of wood-smoke in the air. Of course magnificent mountain views everywhere as well!
It’s kind of tough staying motivated at the moment, as I know that very soon, most, well *all*, of my running routes will be under an awful lot of snow, and the running will have to be cut back a lot, to be resumed when the snow starts to melt in spring. I’ll be replacing the running with Cross-Country skiing, and I’ll let you know how that goes when the snow finally arrives ! No sign at the moment.
For the Record, todays run was 11.4Km, 576m of ascent and took me 1hr 31Min.
The first of November brought with it a real winter feel, and today the sky was clear and the temperature crisp - a great day to go out for a run.
Today I took water for the first time and wore a ‘Bum Bag’ to carry it in. I usually use the bag for cycling but this seem to work OK for running, staying reasonably stable for most of the run. At some stage I’ll have to make the decision as to whether to do the Ultra with a light backpack - probably with a hydration system, or to run with a bum bag, staying really light weight. This worked fine today, but I don’t know how well it will work with more weight in it - it may press against my stomach which I don’t think will be good. But we will see - I’ll test out the options and see which works best.
Carrying the water and sipping it as I go seemed to work realy well. I’m definitely going to carry water from now on.
For the record, the run was the same as the last - 8.1km, 450m Ascent, done in 1Hour 5Mins. Felt fairly good at the end - almost did further in fact, so the training must be having some impact !
This is a milestone in my training as I ran for longer than an hour today ! I know this sounds like nothing in comparison to the 15hrs that I’m aiming to do the Ultra Trail CCC in but it’s still a good feeling to have got past this milestone.
Of course the time isn’t the only important thing, and distance wise it was 8.1Km and Ascent wise I did 450m of ascent / descent, so it is getting close to a tenth the total distance and ascent that I am going to have to do (90km, 5000m of Ascent).
I’m trying to match my training runs to the sort of terrain that I’ll encounter on the Ultra, as I’ve always believed that the best training is doing the thing you are training for! So far this is what I’ve been doing. It’s definitely tough going - running up these hills is not easy ! But then this is exactly what I’m going to have to do, so pain now is pain saved later.
Since I’ve missed a lot of my early training (Often the worst bit) as I started this blog a little late, I’ll give a recap in a later post.
