Calibrating The Mind On The Track

It’s like the joggers who go round and round and round…

The full moon shines brightly on this cold night. My headtorch shows me the way ahead, sometimes illuminating my breath as it hits the cold air. The route is one where even navigationally challenged runners like me can’t get lost. I’m running without any aural distraction, no music, podcasts or audio books for company to take my mind off the task I’ve challenged myself with this time. There’s no hiding from the inner voices making their presence felt with increasing frequency as the hours and the miles build.

“You can’t keep running like this for the rest of the race. A few more walk breaks will be fine.”

“How much longer can you keep going? Just stop and walk for a bit. “

“Why don’t you just stop at the aid station for a bit to recharge? A few minutes won’t matter. And there’s cake.”

I keep going.

I started this race without a pacing strategy. One thing I had committed to was to keep going for the full 6 hours and to minimise time spent faffing at the aid stations. Of which there is only one. That we pass every 400m.

Yep. I talked myself into running a track race. One that started at midnight (I arrive early and am allowed to get started as it’s bloody freezing outside) and where I have 6 hours to run as many laps as I choose, or can, during that time.

A get out of jail free card is offered to everyone taking part in this Phoenix Running event, the main feature the 24 hour race that began at 8am on Friday morning. The race information on the website and pre-race enail remind me of this:

“You need to complete one lap to qualify for the finishers’ medal “

If I hate it then i can walk away, medal in hand, and it won’t count as a DNF (the frustrating, sometimes welcome buy often feared Did Not Finish).

Only I’m not going to quit.

I signed up for this race to test myself.

Have I become too soft? Have I lost my edge? Can I still push on through difficulty when it gets tough during a race?

My training for The Lap – a hilly 47 mile trail race around Lake Windermere in the Lake District, which I’ll be running in 9 weeks time – having gone well so far and included lots of hard interval, tempo and hill repetition running to challenge my body and mind. But I’ve had podcasts, audiobooks and music to distract me during these sessions.

I chose to spend 6 hours overnight running with a headtorch around a 400m track with nothing but my own thoughts, including the inner bitch (as Goggins refees to the inner voices and doubts which plague so many of us in running, work and all aspects of life). Tonight was going to be a battle of attrition. Me against me. And it was long overdue.

What did I think about as I ran around, and around, and around for hours on end?

Not a lot. I spent most of the time counting. Trying to keep track of the number of laps I’d run and when I would next drop by the aid station to grab an energy top up (mainly chocolate Freddos, jelly sweets and the occasional drink of cola) to consume on the scheduled walking laps which also gave my legs a break from the constant pounding of the pancake flat track.

Having started the race without a specific run/walk strategy, I quickly decided upon one. My first attempt at a run/walk strategy, during the 2019 Thames Path 100, had worked well and left me with sufficient energy to keep running in the later stages so I knew it’d be beneficial here. I had calculated that if I’d need to run 125 laps to reach 50k. This seemed like a good goal to aim for, and I worked out that 8 x 16 laps would get me to 124 laps. I’d already miscalculated, 8 x 16 equals 128!

From experience, I knew that breaking races down into bite size, manageable chunks takes away the overwhelm I’d felt when considering how many miles/hours/hills/laps were left. Tackling the race in 16 lap sections would help.

I was running by effort, at an easy pace I have dialled in through my training, determined to ensure that I didn’t push too hard so that my training for The Lap could resume quickly post-race.

Upon reflection, I overcooked it a bit and underfuelled in the first 32 laps. My run/walk strategy went from run 15/walk 1 for the first quarter of the race to walk 1/run 7, and in the later stages walk 1/run 3.

No matter. When I was on a run phase, I ran. My inner bitch tried to convince me to stop and walk many, many times but I kept telling it to STFU and willed my legs to keep running, despite the slowing of my pace.

I had to prove to myself that I could endure. So I endured.

118 laps and 29.5 miles later, I crossed the timing mats for the final time. I may not have managed 50k, but I had achieved my goal. I had kept moving for the whole 6 hours and won the mental battle of attrition.

And, as a bonus, I topped the Midnight 6 Hour Track Race leaderboard with the highest number of laps run. I had won a race for the first time in my life!

I signed up for this race because I knew it would suck. And it did, but I got through it.

Did I enjoy it? Not exactly. Running around a track in the cold and dark was rewarding, soul crushing, enlightening, and exactly the confidence boost I needed.

Onwards.