It's too damn hot

It’s hot, and I’m tired. Sensible people are sitting inside, enjoying the air conditioning. Or they’re still asleep. I got up at 6am in an attempt (in vain, it turns out) to beat the heat and humidity. All I did was beat up myself. Still, I got through my 20 km (13 miles), each step part of the base I need for the real event that’s coming. The first 12 km went pretty well but it started to get really hot (about 30 deg C, or 86 F, by 8 am) and I ran out of puff for the last 8. Then I got home, drank a litre of sports drink, and spent the rest of the day trying to fight off lethargy.

The reason I was out for two hours this morning in the tropical summer heat is that in five weeks today I’m going to try to run 100 miles. More than that, I’m running it in the legendary Western States Endurance Run, the original 100 miler that started as a horse trek until Gordy Ainsleigh decided to run it in 1974. Western States is an iconic event that a few thousand people try to enter every year, and only the lucky (and foolish) have their names drawn out of the hat that allows them to show up at the start line in Squaw Valley, near Lake Tahoe in northern California. I had the “luck” of having my name drawn last December. I didn’t expect to be drawn at all – as this was my first year in the draw I had only a 7% chance of success. You get more chances each year you miss out and some other people had missed up four or five times. But sometimes your number comes up, and this time it did. I got a huge surprise when I learned that I was in. Surprise quickly turned to terror. And I’ve been in non-stop training ever since.

It’s the last week in May 2013. So far this year I’ve run 1560 km (about 1000 miles). That’s about 10 km per day. As much as possible, I’ve run on trails, mainly around the interior of Hong Kong Island. Hong Kong may seem like an unlikely place to train for an ultramarathon, given its reputation as Manhattan of the East. But imagine that Manhattan was a series of steep hills, and all the buildings were just around the shores of the East and Hudson rivers. That’s Hong Kong, with a green interior made up largely of country parks and water catchment. Other areas like the New Territories and Lantau Island have even better, more remote trail systems, but Hong Kong Island remains a decent place to train. I walk out of my house, up 300 steps, and immediately start running for as long as I want (60 km is the furthest I’ve made it so far in one run).

This is my first 100 mile race. I’ve done a few other ultras; I started with the 60 km Kepler Challenge in New Zealand (where I’m originally from, and where I’m moving in January 2014), and then moved up to 100 km, which I’ve done several times. The most striking of these, and the race that qualified me for Western States, was the 100 km CCC (Courmayeur-Champex-Chamonix) race around Mont Blanc in Europe, the junior version of the 100 mile epic known as the Ultra-Trail du Mont Blanc. I did that in August 2012, running through a storm that had us climbing up to 2500 m above sea level in a blizzard. By the end of the race (18 hours after I started) I had lost feeling in most of my fingers, and it didn’t totally return for about six months. But I did have the best quiche of my life at a patisserie just across from the finish line at Chamonix.

In this blog I’ll document the last couple of weeks as I prepare for the race, and then write a race report no matter if I triumphantly finish or weakly pull out half way through. Just to be clear, I’m running this to finish, and that’s my only goal. You get a silver buckle if you break 24 hours, and maybe that’s possible for me, but all I want to do is finish is under 30 hours, which is the limit they give you. I have a team of local runners who for some reason have offered to help crew me and pace me, for which I am unbelievably thankful. Hopefully they can help get me to the finish. 

Many runner’s blogs are from the elite, telling the ease with which they glided along running their 6 minute miles at the end of their 100 miler. I’m a decent runner but I’ve never been overly burdened with talent. I’ve found the blogs of other mid-pack runners to be helpful in figuring out what to expect in races that I’ve entered, so maybe you'll find the same here. Or not. Let's see.