One Hundred Mile Week
Last week I ran 100 miles. Not that it’s any sort of major achievement - I’m sure serious runners do this sort of weekly mileage all the time - but it was something I’ve wanted to try for a while so I’m pleased to tick it off.
I didn’t set out to do it last week, I just happened to go for a run on Monday that turned into 20 miles, and somewhere towards the end of it I wondered if I might run a hundred that week. I knew I had a run of around 34 miles planned the following Sunday with my brother and a friend, so I figured it wouldn’t be too hard to make up fifty-odd miles in the five days in between.
Easy, right?
Well, actually it kind of was. Much easier than I was expecting anyway.
The way it broke down was this (rounded to the nearest half mile):
Monday - 20
Tuesday - 15
Wednesday - 10.5
Thursday - 8
Friday - 10.5
Saturday - 2.5
Sunday - 33.5
Around 25 miles of it was on tarmac, 15 on canal towpath, and the rest on pretty well defined trail or singletrack. There were maybe 10 miles of pathless terrain on Monday’s long run.
In the past when I’ve thought about doing this I imagined aiming for 15 miles a day, maybe even breaking that into multiple shorter runs, but actually the way I ended up doing it was very manageable. It might even have been easier because I was only thinking about what I was doing each day with an eye on the end goal, rather than sticking to a rigid plan. If I know one thing about myself by now, it’s that rigid plans are not just something I can’t manage, but something I’m liable to actively avoid or sabotage.
I ran once a day and didn’t plan what I’d do aside from go out and see what I felt like.
I decided that I’d need to keep it simple and not overcomplicate my routes. I’d try to stick to runnable terrain but go somewhere different every day to keep it interesting. Apart from the end distance, those were my only thoughts.
I even managed a rest day on Saturday. My only run was a short loop from the house that passed a shop to buy beer.
Every run started from my house, which was handy since my van needs an MOT and more than a little TLC to get there. This suits me fine. As I’ve said more than once, it’s the simplicity of running that keeps me doing it, and there’s nothing more simple that just stepping outside your door and starting to run.
Being on holiday this week definitely helped. It gave me the freedom to run when I felt like it, and that’s all I really did.
There wasn’t a day where I felt I wouldn’t be able to run. My legs felt good throughout, even on the Monday following the 33 miles. I didn’t run that day because I thought it probably wasn’t a good idea to push just for the sake of pushing, but to be honest I was going by what I thought the general advice would be, not how I felt.
Somewhat disappointingly, there were only really two tough moments of the week. The first was the 15 miles I did on the canal towpath on a cold Tuesday into a biting easterly - which was somehow a headwind both ways! Apart from the cold, the main problem was that it just wasn’t very inspiring.
The second tough moment was around mile 26-27 of Sunday’s long run. From past experience this is often a marker where I start to flag. Maybe it’s to do with fuelling, but I also know by now that at 30 miles I’ll feel good again if I just push through.
It never always gets worse.
- David Horton
It was a bit of a bizarre week in terms of how I felt about running. More than once I wondered if I should get to the end of the week and just quit running altogether. This wasn’t because it was tough, or even that I didn’t enjoy it, it was just that I wasn’t sure where I was going with it. It was a feeling somewhere between boredom, disillusionment and apathy, and I’m not sure what to think about it. I definitely remember this feeling from the run along the canal, so maybe it was just that the run was a bit tough and uninspiring and it gave rise to a bit of negativity.
There were other moments, of course, where I loved every second and felt like I might want to race a 100-miler, or do a long mountain round, or go on a multi-day run. I was very surprised by how fresh my legs were every day and how easy I felt I could take things. There were few moments when I really had to push through anything.
I ate and drank very little during these runs. My cumulative total of fuelling for the first 66 miles was half a cereal bar and some water from the burns.
I know by now that I can run 15-20 miles comfortably without needing any food either before or during the run. I feel at my best if I’ve last eaten the night before and only had coffee in the morning. I’m not sure if this is optimum or advisable, but I know it seems to work for me. Perhaps that’s physiology, or perhaps I’m just eating the wrong things when I do try to eat.
I took plenty of food with me for the long run and left without breakfast. Over the first 25 miles I’d eaten a banana and drank about 750ml of flat Coke. It was the first time I’d tried flat Coke on a run (thanks Alan) but I’m completely sold on it.
Despite not feeling hungry I decided I should eat about the 25 mile mark. I had a small pork pie and a potato and cheese croquette from the previous night’s dinner, followed by some wine gums and jelly babies. This felt fine, but I’m fairly sure my struggles from miles 27-29 was the result of a sugar-crash.
(TLDR: Beyond eating nothing (which seems unlikely to be right) I still have no idea what or when to eat on a long run.)
In the end I felt like I could easily have done more mileage last week, not that I’m sure I want to.
It’s hardly a revolutionary conclusion, but with distance running it really does seem to be about what’s going on in your head rather than your body. Compare that 15 miles of flat canal path at the beginning of the week to the rough and undulating 33 miles I did at the end. I gritted my teeth and just tried to keep going on the canal. I wanted to stop every single minute and questioned why I was doing it in the first place. Yet on an objectively tougher and longer run, with many more miles in my legs, I was full of energy, simply because I was enjoying the company of my friend and my brother.
I hear ultra runners refer to the “pain cave”, but really I’ve got no idea what they mean by that. I’d like to find out. I’d guess it’s a point where everything in your conscious awareness is consumed by physical pain. A point at which you can no longer put one foot in front of the other. And although I’ve been on runs where I wanted to stop and walk, or where all I can do is sort of shuffle, I’ve never been to the point where I didn’t feel able to walk. I can’t imagine this point, but given I’ve only ran as far as 34 miles a handful of times, I know that really I haven’t tried hard enough to find it. I’d guess that a 100-miler is where I’d find this, and so maybe that’s a goal.
