After sixteen weeks of training, the big date has finally arrived – the Great Naseby Water Race is less than a week away.
My training has been tapering for the past couple of weeks, so I am feeling good and have plenty of spare energy building-up.
I’ve been back over the stats of my training programme (thanks to a combination of my Garmin Forerunner 305 and SportsTracks). Here’s a quick breakdown….
- 16 weeks of training completed.
- Running five days a week.
- 1,420kms of running distance.
- I ran the marathon distance (42km) seven times during my training (two of those runs were also ultras at greater than 50km).
- 132.5 hours of running time.
- 13,500 metres of vertical gain during my training runs.
- Average pace of 5:36 per km (which matches my target pace for the race).
- July was the biggest month for me, with 452km running distance.
- Over 130,000 calories burnt – time for a burger!
It’s been a big commitment in terms of time – I am very fortunate in that my family are very understanding and patient. Probably the biggest adjustment has been the early morning starts during the week – I have typically been getting up at 4:30am to do my midweek runs.
The back-to-back long runs have been successful, at least in terms of my ability to complete them 
I only really had one incident attributable to the double long runs; on my last “big” weekend I had a 42km on the Saturday and a 50km on the Sunday. I had done the same distances the previous week, but this time around I found it much more difficult. At one point I found myself hunched over on the trail, vomiting and struggling to breath, tears running down my face. All part of running an ultra (some call it a rite of passage), and after a few minutes I was able to laugh about it and carry on with my run.
So, looking forward to the big one now – my next post will cover the race itself and my thoughts on whether or not my training programme was a good one.
