Training plan executed, taper over, preparations complete. It’s Centurion Hundred Hills 50km go time!
I’m a little nervous. Understandably I’d say, given that it’s my first ultra. But, more than anything, I’m really looking forward to it. The weather forecast looks good. Dry, with some sunny spells, and the conditions underfoot are supposedly excellent in comparison to previous years. I’ve also heard so many good things about how well run Centurion events are. So I’m excited to get going.
Race plan
My target for the race is to finish in 5 and a half hours. This is based on my Broadway Marathon time back in November. There, I did 4:17. Add another six miles, with a similar course profile, add a touch of checkpoint admin (the checkpoints at Broadway were very basic and I continued straight through them) and that’s how I’ve arrived at 5:30. There’s no real plan on how I intend to manage the pace and achieve that target time. The course is too varied for me to go into that level of detail.
I do know that there is a fairly substantial hill right from the off. More than a 100 m climb over the first 5 km. This is the only part of the course that I’ve considered. First 5 km of my first ultra. Do I jog / walk it? Just gently trot up? I’m thinking the former. I don’t want to take too much out of my legs too early on, and I’m not concerning myself with losing time this early on into the race. For the rest of the course, I’m simply planning to play the course in front of me. If I’m feeling good, I’m going to attack it. If I’m flagging, or feeling it on a hill, I’m going to back off. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to do a recce of the course, and I’ve never walked or ran in this area, so I’ve settled on this as the best approach.
Nutrition plan
If you study ultra running at all, either through reading, Instagram posts or listening to podcasts, you will be familiar with the grams per hour fuelling phenomenon. What was an accepted optimum level of fuelling of 60 g/hour is now more like 90-120 g/hour. However, you can’t just drop straight into fuelling at that level. The gut is trainable, and you have to practice fuelling at high levels before opting for a high fuelling strategy during a race.
I’ve been doing exactly this during my recent training runs. Even if I haven’t needed the fuel, I’ve tried to take it. Even when the consumed food has been sitting heavy, I’ve still tried to take more on. Practice, practice, practice. I haven’t quite hit anywhere near 90 g/hour, but I have consistently hit 60 g. And, given how expensive sports nutrition is, I’ve been practicing with all kinds of fuelling. Flapjacks, cookies, soft flasks with maple syrup, breakfast bars, the lot. It’s gotten to the point where I can pretty much take anything on board while continuing to run, and it not affect me. The next step, is to increase the amount.
The checkpoints at Centurion races, I’m told, are very well stocked, and contain everything you could possibly want or need. They have even started stocking Precision Fuel products, which has been my sports nutrition of choice during training, along with Voom bars. However, I don’t want to be spending too long lingering in the checkpoints, and I want to be eating little and often as I go, rather than waiting for the checkpoints. So I plan to carry all the fuel that I hope to use, and just use the checkpoints for fluid top ups, and any extra snacks that I fancy. This is the fuel that I plan to carry:
- 1x Precision Fuel 30 carb and electrolyte drink mix (30 g of carbs)
- 1x PF 90 gel (90 g)
- 2x Voom bars (46 g each)
- 14x jelly babies (4 g each) (14 because that’s how many I have left in the pack)
- 3x fig roll biscuits (13 g each)
- 1x McVities Oaty Flapjack (17 g)
- 100ml of maple syrup in a soft flask (89 g)
- 1x Tesco chocolate and raspberry breakfast bar (16 g)
- 2x peanut butter cookies (9 g each)
- 1x Nakd baked bar (20 g)
That all would provide me with 467 g of carbs. Fuelling at 75 g/hour, that gives me more than 6 hours of fuelling. I don’t plan to be out for that long, and I don’t plan to take on all of that food, but at least it’s there if I need it. The peanut butter cookies do not offer many carbs, but I’m aware that there is a lot of sweet tasting food there, which may become too much at some point. It has during training, so I want to be prepared for that.
And that’s pretty much it to be honest. I accept that’s a very loose plan. Attack when I feel like, back off when I need to; eat as little and as often as I can. But, realistically, I haven’t got the experience yet to be more detailed. So flexible I shall be, and here’s hoping that I have a great day out in the process.
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