South Downs Way 100 Miler 2013 Race Report

Aw bollocks (spoiler alert...).

Well okay, that didn't quite go to plan. The Centurion Running South Downs Way had always been my focus race for the year, as I had a target time to beat from last year that I felt was ripe for smashing (with a bit of focussed training). And if you had asked me 6 weeks ago how I felt, I would have been incredibly positive. My pace was increasing, my legs felt strong, the training was going well (despite the arrival of my little angel Lottie), and with several particularly long distance races under my belt I was confident in my endurance. In addition, my kit choice and nutrition were proving to be robust, and in particular a recurring stomach problem which slowed me down last year seemed to be under control. 

Beautiful weather for a run! Are you sure this a Centurion Running event?!

Then Transvulcania happened. I had a bit of an issue with cramping in my calves, something that I think may have been lying dormant for a while and only really showed up by running up a volcano. I really don't get any practice at that - there are very few volcanoes in Cambridge.

Putting it all on the line

In just over a week, I will be lining up at the start of the Centurion Running South Downs Way 100 mile race, following the National Trail from Winchester through the South Downs down to Eastbourne. This race holds somewhat of a special place for me, as it was the first proper ultra race that I did way back in the distant summer of 2011. It went quite well and I managed to come 5th in 22:10. Not too shabby for my first 100 miler.

The following year, the race was absorbed into the race calendar of Centurion Running by James Elson, who made a few changes including switching the direction to run West to East (so we could get blown along by the Westerly wind for a nice easy run), avoiding the cliffs and the Seven Sisters at the Eastbourne end (hundreds of fatigued runners piling off a cliff like lemmings probably wouldn't be a great advert for future events), and adding in more aid stations along the way. I ran the updated race last year and smashed my PB, finishing 2nd in 17:23. This year, I will be lining up again to try and smash that time again, and maybe even improve on that position as well. 

Now I'm no statistician (oh wait), but based on the last two years it's looking good for a world record...

Stats don't lie. Statisticians on the other hand... Fox News would be proud.

Centurion Running End of Year Analysis - 2012

I recently performed another bit of analysis, this time using the Centurion Running data from throughout the year as a kind of retrospective study of 2012, and also to look for any interesting trends. This wasn't anywhere near as in depth as the survey that we ran for the South Downs Way (there'll be more of that later this year), and the data that I used was just the checkpoint times available on the Centurion Running website. Despite this being a relatively simple look at pace profiles, we actually found some potentially interesting things, particularly relating to dropout rates. 

The nice thing about having access to the checkpoint times and not just the finishing times is that it gives us more scope to look at trends in pacing throughout the entire course. Also it is very useful to be able to pull out the dropout point of runners who were unable to complete the course, as I believe that this has highlighted some potentially quite interesting points relating to how runners are able to decide on which point to pull out at. I plan on doing something similar with the Western States data that I have played with in the past to see if we see similar trends to those shown below. More on that in a few weeks.

The report can be downloaded from the Centurion Running website here, but I have added the report below as well. Enjoy!

1 Introduction

2012 has been a fantastic year for Centurion Running. Following on from the inaugural North Downs Way 50 mile and 100 mile events in 2011, this year has seen a full timetable of ultrarunning events including the Thames Path 100 miler, South Downs Way 100 miler, North Downs Way 50 and 100 milers, Winter 100 and the now infamous Piece of String Fun Run. With the completion of the Winter 100, we have reached the end of the racing season and include here a retrospective for the main races in the Centurion Running 100 mile event calendar.

For the South Downs Way 100, we ran a survey of runners in a pilot project to look at factors relating to successful ultramarathon running completion. In 2013 we hope to roll this survey out to the other events to build up a database of information for 100 mile runners and allow us to look for interesting trends amongst the people who choose to run 100 mile events for fun. Please keep your eyes open for more information on this in the new year, and please take part as the more information that we are able to collect the better the findings will be.

For now, enjoy the holiday season and have a wonderful New Year. Happy running everybody!

Ultramarathon Running Research Project - Pilot Study

Towards the start of the year, I contacted James Elson (Race Director of Centurion Running) about an idea that I had had. I had recently read a few papers by Martin Hoffman's group from the Western States Research Committee looking at factors that affected a runner's ability to complete the Western States 100 mile race. I had also signed up to the Ultrarunners Longitudinal TRAcking project at Stanford, which aims to follow ultrarunners and track their health over many years. I thought that it might be quite interesting to do some of our own researchr here in this country, and thought that James' series of 100 mile races was a perfect opportunity to do something similar, as they are very well organised, they are quite homogenous in their organisation, and James has a particular interest in delving into the stats behind ultra running.

The plan that I proposed to him was to create a couple of surveys for runners of his events to fill in: one before the race, asking questions relating to the runners themselves (biometrics, professional status, running history, etc.); and another survey after the event asking questions relating to how the race went, what their strategy was for the race, their nutrition, etc. By putting this information together with the split times from the event itself, my hypothesis was that we may be able to see some trends dropping out from the data. Yes, this is the kind of thing that I do for "fun"!

In the short term, this approach would give us a good overview of the race itself, the sorts of people who entered, and which runners took a sensible approach to racing. But my main aim was for the long term, building up a database of survey results and race performances for ultrarunners that, over time, will allow us to look at more specific questions relating to performance: Do certain training choices improve your chances of finishing a 100 mile race? Are certain racing strategies more likely to result in a finish/win? Do people with green eyes run faster than people with blue eyes? These burning questions and more may well be answerable in the future from such a database.

To kick things off, we organised a pilot project for the South Downs Way 100 at the end of June. This went very well, and we found some (I think at least) very interesting things from this that bode very well for the future. James has created a research page on the Centurion Running website where you can download the report that I put together (using my official "Dr" title to make it seem to people that don't know me that I have some air of professionalism about me...). Alternatively, I have replicated the report below so that I have a record of it on my little blog. Hopefully you find it interesting, and any comments will be gratefully received. Hopefully we can get even more people interested in taking part in the full project at next year's races!

South Downs Way 100, June 2012

Well. What a difference a year can make!

This weekend marked my "official" return to ultra running after my DNF at the Thames Path 100 miler in March. Since coming off my bike a week before the race, then running over 70 miles on what would later turn out to be a pretty dodgy ankle, I have been desperately attempting to recover and avoid missing any further races (already failing to make the Viking Way and a Bob Graham Round attempt with Chris Baynham-Hughes). Some aggressive electro-accupuncture from my physio Chelsea Harding and slowly building up my training seemed to be working well. A top 10 finish at the Northants Shires and Spires 35 mile ultra, 3rd place at the Willingham 7.7 mile Fun Run, and a first place finish at a random 5 Km Fun Run in Swavesy that I joined by accident after spotting it on my cycle ride home suggested that things were on the mend. But the big question was; could my ankle withstand a full 100 miler?

This time last year I ran my second ultra - the South Downs Way 100 mile race, running along the beautiful SDW between Eastbourne and Winchester. This was somewhat of a passion project for the race director Jen Jackson, who organised the first event in 2010 with about 35 runners. The 2011 event would be her last event, but she decided to hand over the reigns to someone who could do the route justice. Step in James Elson from Centurion Running, who had wanted to organise an event on the SDW National Trail but had not wanted to step on Jen's toes. He took over the race (with a few tweaks including changing the direction to take advantage of the westerly winds) and added it to his set of 100 mile races (Jen took part in the inaugural rebirth of the race and you can read her report here). Last year I came 5th in a time of 22:10:00, so I was really looking forward to seeing how much difference I had made in the last year.

Despite only having a month or so to really build my training back up, I was feeling strong. Chelsea seemed much happier to let me run this race than she had been at the Thames Path. I was therefore a little peeved to wake up on the Wednesday before the race with a fever coming on and... let's just say "stomach problems". I was a bit worried that I was coming down with something, but a day of drinking water and dioralyte to stay hydrated seemed to keep things in check. So when race weekend finally came around, I was feeling happy. There was no excuse this time!