“I think I’ve seen this film before, and I didn’t like the ending”

Taylor Swift, ‘Exile’

Running ultras is hard. It breaks your body and it punishes your mind. It will pummel your feet, shred your quads and rub your skin raw. It will make you vomit, poop your pants and question every decision you have ever made in your life.

But every now and then a rainbow appears from behind the storm clouds and you have a day as rare as a unicorn, where everything falls into place, your body feels great, the time just flies and you feel like you are unstoppable and can do no wrong.

This is not the story of a unicorn day.

It is a strange sport where you can practice and train, for months on end, and then on the day, the body just refuses to participate or you make a mistake and it snowballs into an avalanche of undoing.

The longer I sit and look at my race, the more things I find that I could have done better. These are just a few.

Fueling/Nutrition

The first inkling I had that things might not go to plan was not until about 30k into the race. I was eating well and plodding along. Chipper and chatty and moving pretty well.

I’d been to the bathroom a few times but I felt ok, I just figured it was my body waking up since we did get up at 1am to be on a bus at 2am for the 4am start.

Unfortunately I hadn’t exactly trained by body to desire its morning poo at 4am instead of 7am.

It wasn’t until it started getting hot that everything went to shit (pardon the pun). The bouncing of running hurt my stomach and put pressure on my lower back. I’m not sure what came first, the back pain or the stomach but they were definitely conspiring against me.

This was all anticipated. I had listened to a podcast the week before the race and knew that things could go sour in the food department. I had even saved the acronym as a prompt on my phone. The problem was I didn’t plan an alternative. When my stomach went and I didn’t want sugar anymore, I didn’t have another option until I got to the next checkpoint with a drop bag. I didn’t have another option in my pack, it was all sugar in one form or another. I managed to keep drinking when it got hot and kept reminding myself to nibble, nibble, sip sip. I took the bag of chips and pretzels from the drop bag at 65k and had a sandwich with chips in it at the Isthums checkpoint. That seemed to be what I wanted so I made sure I had sandwich’s and chips at each checkpoint from then because I couldn’t stomach my sweets. It also made my teeth hurt.

How weird is this sport? This approach has worked perfectly fine for my 100k PB only a few months before and countless races before. I’d practised it so many times! But on this day, it was a big no to all the sugar and sports products.

Takeaway: Have an alternative ready to go, not in a drop bag ages away. It might be too late to save your race before you get to it!

Shoe Choice/Feet care

I’m cocky about my feet. When everyone online is stressing about what shoes and socks to wear, I’m annoyingly cocky. I haven’t had blisters since my first road races back in 2012 (ish). I generally don’t have foot dramas. At the 2019 Old Ghost I wore shoes that weren’t solid enough for the rocky terrain and I paid for it terribly. I thought I had learnt from that mistake.

When choosing my shoes, I wanted an all day shoe. One that I knew would drain well if it got wet, that would work well on different terrains and that wouldn’t cause me any issues. I went with the Altra Mont Blanc, the same shoe I had worn at the SCC PB and Peaks and Trails 50k earlier in the year.

But I hadn’t anticipated how hard and rocky the ground was. By the time I got to the road section at around 50k, I could barely run. My bottom of my feet ached with each step. I had picked the wrong shoe. I had another pair in my drop bag at Okataina, which was about 60km away. I had planned to not have a crew that I was relying on. They were a “nice to have” not a “must have”. I wanted them to have a good day, not be stressed about making it to certain checkpoints caring all my shit. So I planned out my drop bags as if I was by myself and seeing familar faces checkpoints was just an added bonus.

Ideally, I would have had a crew at the first crewed checkpoint, 65k, with a new pair of shoes. But even if they had showed up there, I’d already put my shoes in the 115km drop bag! Fail.

But it gets worse.

Somewhere around 90k (I think) I noticed something in my shoe, a small rock or something. I didn’t think anything too much of it and just shuffled my foot around to get it to move so it wasn’t annoying me.

I came into the checkpoint at Millar Road in the dark. I didn’t want to dilly dally, I went to the loo, got my sandwich with chips in it (the only thing I could stomach) and wanted to get the hell out of there. I walked about 300 metres down the trail when that stone was really bugging me. I had to stop and fix it. I would have been so much easier to do it with a chair and some light etc at the aid station but no, I decided to try to fix it on the side of the single track in the bush at 10:30 PM.

Having never had blisters before, it was just pot luck that I even had bandaids and a first aid kit in my pack (a lesson I actually learnt from my fall on the cheese grater at Kosci!) I was a bit shocked to find a blister and a bruise where the rock had been. Crap! I had no idea what to do, so I used a wet wipe to clean it, shoved some bandaids on it and kept going. Well that did nothing and I had to stop again and again to fix it. What a massive time suck for something that wouldn’t have been an issue if I fixed it when it was first an issue. Rookie error.

So I suffered with the pounded feet and blister situation until 115k and changed both my socks and shoes there.

Takeaway: Fix small things early. Duh!

Music

I generally don’t run with music in a race but I often have headphones with me just in case I hit a really bad patch and need something to help get me out of it. I had a plan in place at Surf Coast, but I failed to download my playlists so when I went to listen to them to get me up a hill, I didn’t have any phone service and couldn’t.

I wasn’t going to have that happen again, so I downloaded all my playlists and had everything ready to go. I had two sets of headphones, one blue tooth and an old school cable set to plug into my phone, which was required to be charged and carried as part of the mandatory gear.

I had my phone set to battery saver mode and flight mode for the majority of the race. I took it out a few times to take photos but that was pretty much it. I think I finished with about 15% battery left and I didn’t play any music.

I pulled it out at one point and thought about it but I was worried I was going to run down my battery and the last thing I wanted was a random gear spot check and to get disqualified for not having charge.

Takeway: Carry a portable battery pack or work out how to use that 20 year old ipod you refused to throw out!

Watch out for fatigue!

I made some dumb decisions because I was fatigued. I spent about an hour in a checkpoint doing god knows what. Actually I know what, I changed my clothes, cleaned and changed my feet and made two minute noodles. It shouldn’t have taken an hour. Then I threw my hat and sunnies into the drop bag because for some reason I thought I wouldn’t need them again. As soon as the sun came up, I was texting the crew that I wasn’t relying on, asking for them to find me a hat and some sunnies. Just as well they came up with the goods because it got so hot on that last section that I’m not sure I would have made it without them.

I guess this is where crew come in handy. As much as you can feel like they are slowing you down with all their questions and concerns, they actually keep you on track as well and stop you faffing around or doing something dumb that could ruin the rest of your race.

There are so many other things I could have improved on. My run/walk method that I was ready to deploy, that just became a walk method. I didn’t even try to re-deploy it.