C2C starts with a 10km prologue @ Lake Burley Griffin on the Friday evening. This is the time to be the most cautious in this event in that it is very tempting to run as fast as you can on a flat 10km when you have tapered off and are all excited about getting stuck into this event. Be aware! Not heeding this caution has been the undoing of many C2C 100km solo runners. With that in mind, I ran a conservative 49min 10km on Friday.
After the Friday 10km prologue, times for distance become highly relative and less and less relevant in this event. C2C is so unique and each stage is so different in terms of terrain and distance that there's really nothing or no one else you can usefully compare your running times to. Plus for me, my only goals for the whole event were to (a) finish and (b) finish without being injured, and so I wasn't really interested in my times let alone anyone else's.
Here are the profiles for each of the 8 stages so you can see what I am talking about.
As it turned out, things overall went really well for me. I pulled up fine from the 10km prologue and at the end of day one - ie, prologue + 4 stages - I felt like I normally would post marathon - nothing more, nothing less. At this point in time I apparently had a 1 second lead in the women's 100km solo event. The fact that I didn't know that at the time - or hadn't cared enough to find out - shows how true my two race goals were.
Day two and the final 4 stages were always going to be tough. The cummulative fatigue and DOMS hits everyone in events like this. Both certainly hit me. However, a good night's sleep and I ran a good stage 5 and apparently maintained my lead by a few seconds, although again, I didn't know any of this until after the event.
Stage 6 was a tough hilly one and I really started to feel drained. I got there in the end though, comfortably before the cut off. (The cut offs by the way were 7min/km regardless of terrain/stage and strictly enforced - yikes!). This stage was the only stage in which I sailed close to the cut off wind. Whew!
Stage 7 was all about getting to stage 8 and there was a lot of camaraderie in the solo runners' bus as we were all starting to feel the hurt, and the bus was starting to stink big time(!!).
The start of stage 8 brought with it a weird sense of anticipated relief as well as dread before the relief. We were all soooooooooooooo tired and "just 11kms" is not "just 11kms" when mind and body are completely over it. However, "just 11kms" was the means to the end and so we all set off at a conservative pace with two goals - ie, (1) get in before the cut, and (2) finish - as in FINISH!!!
The finish line was a mix of happiness, tears and relief. This had been an amazing experience.
POSTSCRIPT: To be the 2nd placed 100km solo female runner (finishing in 9.58) was the icing on the cake :).
Would I do this event again? YES!!! And well before I'd do lots of other events I've done before. This one is truly unique, truly tough, truly "fun".
3 comments:
Well done on getting through this event with a good result & injury free. Backing up after a rest is not easy & totally different to running without stopping. I did have this event pencilled in but did the Bush Capital ultra instead to give me more recovery time. May be another time.
Well done Liz. Only 'fun' for an ultra runner! The final stage would do me in on its own. Did they supply climbing ropes for stages 3 and 6?
I think "keeping on going" is easier Two Fruits - both physically and psychologically.
There were certainly some tough climbs Ewen. The good thing about that though is that it evens everyone out in that not even the fast or "elite" (hate that term) runners can run up some of the inclines we faced.
I wish I knew why things came together as well as they did for me to run 9.58. I think it was just luck on top of reasonable training, sensible tapering and the successful nutrition strategy I used @ Kep 100km which I've continued to fine tune.
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