If you are regular followers of this blog you will know that last year I attempted my first “100 miler” and got to mile 91 before missing the last checkpoint! (You can read the whole story here )
Well never one to give up gracefully I’ve decided to give it another go thanks to a late entry and in just a couple of weeks I will be lining up with the other 350 or so souls trying to complete one of the iconic UK 100 milers.
So what am I going to do differently this year? Well for a kick off I won’t be doing the London Marathon or the Polish marathon in the preceding weeks which probably wasn’t ideal preparation and I certainly won’t be taking one of my fellow competitors to the pub for a coke because he was feeling decidedly rough (it’s amazing how the excuses trip off the tongue isn’t it!)
I know in my mind I can run the distance, after all I recently ran 8 marathons in 8 countries in 8 days (catchup on that story here ) but my Achilles heel is the pacing – last year I was well ahead of all the cut offs (probably too far ahead) and I got cocky thinking I was going to cruise it. I got my come uppance after the pub incident and then the last stretch was incredibly muddy with the heavy rain and before I knew it the leeway that I had built into the cut off times had been eaten away.
So my full proof plan for this year is:-
don’t go to the pub
don’t waste time trying to update my social media in the aid stations
eat drink run, eat drink run
drop off some dry clothes at the specified aid stations thus avoiding hypothemia
don’t cry if it rains just accept it’s going to – it always does!
But above all have fun, keep laughing, don’t take it too seriously and remember just how lucky I am to be able to do all this stuff.
