Monday, October 22, 2012

Le Vertical KM de Fully

A race like no other. It's hard to know where to start describing this one.
Perhaps with the numbers: 1000m of climb in 1920m total distance. Average gradient of over 50%. Almost 600 starters.
Or maybe with a picture:
See that straight line up the middle? That's the race route.
But the truth is that numbers and pictures do little to convey just how steep this course is, just how much it looms over you, just how intimidating it is. The course follows an old railway line used for carrying the grape harvest down the hill from the vineyards on the south facing slope. As such, apart from one bend a third of the way up the hill, it is completely straight. This means no switchback bends or well designed hiking path here, just a bullet straight line perpendicular to the contours and no place to hide or recover.

Let's make this clear from the start: I'm pretty bad at climbing the steep stuff. I'm a hill-runner not a hill-power-strider or hill-walker. If I can run all the way I will and I'll probably do ok, limited only by my shape on any given day. But when the gradient gets above 30% I'm reduced to a plod, one step at a time onwards and upwards. And while some hill "runners" are also very good hill walkers and have little difference in pace while walking or running, I may as well put my reversing lights on and start making beeping noises as that's what happens to my race position on the steel stuff: backwards through the field.

Somehow I'd managed to convince myself it was going to be different in this race. I've done some specific steep reps in training recently, searching out the longest steepest climbs near Edinburgh to scale multiple times and working on powerwalking technique. The nature of this course, with the railway sleepers forming steps and no rough terrain to get in the way would surely help too. Because of the narrow nature of the course the Fully VK is run as a time trial so I'd both be able to run my own pace and try and chase down the guys starting in front of me.

Sadly in the event it didn't turn out so well. There are laws that have to be obeyed and gravity is one of them. The course was relentless. The sleepers did make useful steps but every five or so there was a big cable guide wheel in the middle of the track which required a detour to the side. The first couple of hundred metres climb were not too bad, at a gradient of 30-40% and with fresh legs I was able to tap out a nice rhythm and run all the way. At 400m though the railway goes through a tunnel and in the eery darkness it is impossible to see where to put your feet. Walking was the only sensible option here but once you stop running it's hard to start again.
From there on it gets a bit blurry. A succession of runners came past, all skipoles and lycra. I tried in vain to stick with them. At times I managed a jog but soon the gradient would increase. At first this meant hands pushing on quads but in the worst sections it was so steep that you could just reach forwards and touch the railway line. Climbing hand over hand like that was more akin to climbing a ladder than any mountain path I've ever been on!
Like a 10km race has markers every km this race had markers after every 100m of ascent. I took a split at each one of these which means I can now work out the gradient for each 10th of the course. The steepest was 800-900m, which was covered in just 131m. A quick bit of trigonometry tells me that means an angle of 50° to the horizontal, or put another way: 1.15m up for every 1m along!
Eventually it was over. That's about all I can say. It took me 38:58 which at the start of the day would have been 10s outside the women's world record however four girls smashed the old record in this race which was pretty humbling for me! The men's record was also beaten by the impressive Urban Zemmer in an astonishing 30:26. I just can't comprehend that sort of speed. It seems even further away from me than the speed of Bekele's world record for 5000m and 10000m. At least with those I could hope to hang on for a couple of laps, I fear against Senõr Zemmer I would be left from the gun! Still, if you ignore your weaknesses they will never improve so I hope to gain from this experience, however humbling it was at the time. I know one thing is for sure: steep has a new definition in my mind!

50m from the finish. Photo thanks to @tessahill.
Results (pdf)

UKCup and UKRL Finals

A couple of weeks ago the UK orienteering season came to a conclusion at the Lancashire Hotpot weekend with the first ever UK Relay League (UKRL) final and the mass-start UKCup final.

In previous years the UKRL has comprised just the four "classic" relays of the JK, British and Scottish Camps and the Harvester with a clubs best three results counting. Having demolished the opposition in the first three of these Interløpers would normally have had the series long since sown up. However times change and this year BOF added two more events to the series, extending it into the autumn with a sprint relay in Sheffield and a new final to round it off.
The three victories in the spring did set us up well and we went into the final at Tockholes knowing that a top 5 result would guarantee us the title no matter what else happened. However we also went into the final with only 2/3s of our spring team available. Due to a combination of field trips to Greece, family commitments and 25manna we had to call up club captain Rob Lee to complete the team - although he's one of the top M50s in the country, he is still an M50 and wasn't expecting to be able to hang with the pace of the leaders. Our tactic was to put him out first and then rely on Oleg and I to chase down the leader. I thought that if Rob could limit his losses to 3-4 minutes then we might even have a chance of fighting for the win and maintaining our unbeaten record for the year.

As it happened Rob ran a strong first half but a miss in vague forest towards the end cost him a couple of minutes which sent Oleg out over 6 minutes down. He ran well to pull us up into that crucial top 5 position but we were still 4 minutes down on the leading teams of Aire, FVO and ShUOC.
I set off hard together with Duncan Archer who was running his second leg of the day. Unfortunately what had looked like nice fast terrain from the outside turned out to be completely waterlogged and really heavy going. That , combined with a lot of very steep sided river valleys, slowed my progress and zapped my motivation to chase for the win. I settled into defensive mode and orienteered carefully and cleanly, only making one miss where I overshot a boulder in some vague forest. Somewhere I must have passed Mike McIver of LOC because I came in in 4th place. Job done for Interløpers - only our second ever UKRL title. The last was 10 years ago and I only featured in the Harvester winning team back then so it was nice to run in all four this time.

The next day we were off to Hameldon for the mass start UKCup final. In last years final I knew that if I won I was guaranteed the title but in the end I finished second to Rich Robinson and the cup went down-under to Craney who had emigrated with an almost unassailable lead. This year it was a little more complex with 6 runners in with at least a mathematical chance of winning. From my point of view I had to win and hope that someone else could beat Dave Schorah and Ant Squire as 2nd was good enough for them to beat me overall. On the day Schorah was a DNS due to injury but I still had Squire to worry about.
Hameldon is a new area near Blackburn. It is 90% open with areas of very intricate old mine workings. The course made the most of this with 44 controls in 10.6km! The format of the mass start race was four short loops at the start, in full view on the slope above the assembly area then a long trip over the top of the hill and into some more butterfly loops in mine workings before a few controls in the forest to finish.

Mines. Crazy.
Because it was clearly going to be a tricky control pick at times I decided to orienteer cautiously, willing to sacrifice seconds here and there to avoid losing minutes unnecessarily. However I found myself alone on the early loops while everyone I crossed paths with seemed to be pushing hard with someone else. I guess this got my competitive juices flowing because after the second map exchange, at the start of the long final loop, I had a clear lead. The next leg was one of the longest of the course, steeply uphill into an intricate quarry area. I knew that I wasn't going to lose time climbing and when I spiked the control at the end of it I knew I was on my way. Aside from one scare on the final butterfly where I misread the layout of the quarries I was more or less clean all the way. When I returned to the common control of the final butterfly for the final time I saw Ant Squire just leaving so I was almost a whole loop ahead of him - and more importantly there were others ahead of him too. I had to keep my focus to the end though, especially with the change in terrain as we headed into the forest. I managed to do so and on a dog-leg saw I had at least a minutes lead over my nearest chasers. In the end I could cruise in for a safe victory and then properly celebrate when Chris Smithard outsprinted Jonny Crickmore and Nick Barrable to take 2nd and confirm my overall title.

Routegadget
View from the top of the hill down to Blackburn.

So I won the UKCup. In years gone by this would have been something to be hugely proud of however this year it just doesn't feel the same. Like the relay league the UKCup was extended this year, to be the best 9 races from 16 plus the final. However I managed to win the series despite only scoring in 8 races before the final (it would have been the requisite 9 if I hadn't mispunched at the WOC sprint selection race). If the UKCup truly was a title people wanted to win this would have been impossible: someone who was good enough to place top 5 in each race would have got to 9 events and comfortably beaten me. The truth is the very top orienteers in Britain are focussed on international competition and will choose the domestic races that will prepare them best for those events. In previous years that has largely coincided with the UKCup because the races in it were logically chosen and focussed on the spring and early summer. That can't be said for this year's drawn out season long series.

It looks even worse for next year with the introduction of the BO National O League - an all ages replacement for the UKCup with even more events and lasting even longer. Inspired by this I raised the possibility of a new "2015 cup" or "Scottish Cup" to give us athletes the competition we need to prepare optimally for our home Woc in three years time. My AP post and email to SEDS got a great response and I look forward to firming up these vague ideas with the key parties soon.

For now though, that is the 2012 "O" season over. Next up some hill and mountain races then the real fun - winter weekend up north laying down the foundations of the next 1000 days - until WOC2015!

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Summer 2012 Flashback


Life has been too busy for blogging it seems but now that we are back in the routine of cranking out the winter training I hope to post more regularly. To get started a quick recap of the summer’s main adventures!

Checking out the original Olympic stadium in Athens
June – a month of mad long weekends.
Loutraki Vertical KM – Greece.  Debut for Team Arc’teryx in the World Skyrunning Series. 5th. Sightseeing run round Athens a highlight too.
Scottish Hill Running Championships – Durisdeer. Funny race, chatting with Prasad Prasad most of the way then he took off up the final climb when I wasn’t paying attention. My first defeat in a Scottish hill race for 2.5 years.
PostFinance Orienteering World Cup –Switzerland. Good sprint training round Zurich then good run in the “B-final” at the WorldCup. Shame to be relegated by not running EOC but made the most of the situation.
SkyGames & Arc’teryx Camp – Pyrenees: Another Vertical KM followed by a great camp with journalists, Arc’teryx team and staff and a run up my first 3000m summit.

Celebrating my Snowdon victory with Tessa - the trophy weighs 7kg!



July – Big Races
WOC – Switzerland. 11th. An improvement on last year but not a great performance technically. Still hungry for more.
Snowdon International Mountain Race - Wales.  Win! Full write up on AttackPoint.








August & September – Long races
With WOC behind me it was time to look forwards and up. And up and up and up a bit higher. I like to go long after a spring and summer of sprint training.
First Sierre-Zinal –Switzerland. Write up here
The last km of the JungfrauMarathon is pretty spectacular.
It's also the only downhill in the race!
Then the Ochil 2000s – Scotland. 20 miles point to point across the home of “Highland Spring” taking in all the 2000 feet summits and Dumyat, one of my favourite hills. I ran strongly to break the record but with a couple better lines I could have gone even quicker.
Finally the Jungfrau Marathon – Switzerland. 21st, team 4th. A solid, safe run.  If I was running again I might take a risk and go out faster but I’m happy with how it went this time.  Blow-by-blow account here.

That’s it for now. The next few months will see winter training really kick off, two more Vertical Kilometres to complete the SkyRunning series and then an exciting trip to New Zealand for the start of the 2013 Orienteering World Cup Season!