At my age the best years are probably behind me. Runners don’t tend to improve too much after 10 years running and getting close to 52 day by day. (February 2nd if anybody is interested, all major credit cards accepted for the BK Retirement Fund!) In my continual battle with ‘Father time’ today I sneaked off to the hills in sunny Perth, and believe me people it was sunny. I probably laced up at 9am and it was over 30 degrees, of course it got hotter by the minute as I moved into the trail. The plan was a 38k loop with time on feet the reason behind the adventure. This was reaccessed at 7k and I decided a 34k shorter loop was more in keeping with the conditions. A few kilometres later it turned into a 20k out and back as I about turned at 10k and struggled back to the car.  By the time I got back to the car I was in a right state, staggering around Darlington Oval looking for a water tap. Unbeknownst to me my tap had disappeared from the last time I visited Darlington and I was left high and dry scouring the surrounding houses for external water taps. Luckily for me the local volunteer fire brigade had what I was looking for and I treated myself to a tap shower.

The moral of the story , apart from not running in the Perth hills in a Perth summer alone and without water, is you need to continually assess how you feel while you train and if you ‘ain’t feeling it‘ pull the plug and live to fight another day. I could have forged on at 10k and probably even survived the 38k loop , I say probably, but what would it have achieved ? As I said earlier the 20k was a real test and I had to treat myself to a two hour ‘power nap’ when I eventually crawled through my front door, much to my current Wife’s disgust. In my defence I did manage to then take the family to the beach with the dogs and make a good effort playing with both. Even as I type this I feel I could probably manage a slow 10k this evening but know better and will save myself for tomorrow when I’ll get back on the GO  ( http://www.elliptigo.com ) and scoot off to work while treating myself to a lunch time trail run and a scoot home on the GO. This three exercise sessions a day has served me well these last 3-4 months and I’m hoping it’ll get me to the end of the ADU 100k in a few weeks. (  http://australiadayultra.com ) must admit thinking about running a 100k at the moment is filling me with dread,  not excitement, but it always takes me three to four weeks to fully recover from a marathon/ultra so maybe I’m not as badly off as I feel as the moment, maybe ? This concept of training on feel is one of the major building blocks of Arthur Lydiard and his distance training techniques, Lydiard together with Fitzgerald ( http://mattfitzgerald.org/8020training/ ) are my two favourite coaches , with a little bit of Maffetone ( https://philmaffetone.com ) thrown in for good measure.

So in 2019 what’s the plan ? As a runner you need, goals as I’ve said many times, if you don’t have goals as a runner you find yourself drifting into ‘jogging‘ and before you know it you start to not worry about time and just concentrate on the pure joy of running. Then before long you’ve dumped your Garmin and you stop logging runs to Strava, imagine that , not recording your runs on Strava ! I’m starting to ‘sweat‘ just typing that last sentence.. let’s move on quickly ! For new runners you can start to think about personal bests ( or personal records for our American cousins) . I miss the days of turning up at races and knowing you’re going to run a PB, those days are not as frequent as I’d like now, last year there was only one PB albeit it was a beauty setting a AURA record for the 100k for the 50-55  year old age group. (see certificate below) I’ll be racing this event again in a few weeks but am not seriously considering beating this time unless Jon can drag me to halfway in a good time and the legs feel they maybe have one more record in them. After this mornings runs it’ll be more about just surviving than setting records but I have a few weeks to recover, I suppose? That’s running of course, my number one mantra has always been ‘trust in your training‘ , that’s what I love about running , it’s the most honest sport, do the hard yards and on the day there is a good chance you’ll get your reward, miss your training runs and then aim for the time not mirrored to your training program will always end in tears.  You can’t ‘fluke’ a good marathon or ultra time unfortunately, or fortunately if you are prepared to put in the work.  This is why I’m not overly excited about the ADU but will be more than happy to finish around the 8 hour mark, of course with an ultra it’s the little things that can conspire against you. Examples would be no vaseline during the run (trust me on an 8 hour run a small chaffing can turn into a major issue very quickly without vaseline!) , the wrong hydration and nutrition (the engine cannot run if it runs out of fuel (nutrition) or there’s a radiator leak (hydration)) and finally the training needs to be tailored to the event. (For an ultra it’s about 80/20 training and time on legs, not too worried about pace just run, a lot!)

Of course speaking of coaches there is a new rooster in the hen house, my old mate the T-train has thrown his hat into the ring and now offers personalised training programs from his website , https://www.tonysmithruncoaching.com. If you need to be inspired Tony would be your man as personally I find him one of the nicest guys around but with a ruthless steak when it comes to racing as this photo of the T-Train mowing down the opposite in the last few hundred metres of a 50k race. I put this down to his army training, no prisoners were taken in this race that’s for sure.  Tony’s training is certainly unique but his results cannot be argued with. Even this year , on a comeback after a nasty case of Plantar Fasciitis, he’s won a 50k ultra a week after racing a marathon and always places top 5 in any ultra he enters, winning his fair share. Although he’s not as long in the tooth as yours truely he is the wrong side of forty but loves putting young pretenders to the sword, in the nicest possible way of course. Looking at his website he has the coaching credentials and experience to back up his racing pedigree so I can highly recommend Tone. Please note as a TRC Ambassador  ( http://therunningcentre.com.au ) I cannot mention coaching without plugging Raf and his crew as well, Perth is big enough for the both of them of course and the most important thing is selecting the right coach for you and that just takes experience.

Right that’s it for the first post of 2019. I’ll try and post more about running this year and less about injuries as the last couple of years there has probably been a 50-50 split. A nasty Calf tear in 2017 and Plantar Fasciitis in 2018 have been the major talking points on the blog and really its a running blog not an injury prevention blog, I mean its not called www.donotrunbkdonotrun.com is it ? Lets hope I can get though 2019 injury free and see if distance and the Elliptigo can’t propel me to maybe one or more PB’s before I get dragged back to the pack…..we’ll see. Happy new Year all..Yours in running… BK

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