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Newsletter January

And so it has begun…. I had a discussion with my friend Rob on New Year’s Eve and we talked about the training I needed to get into my legs before attempting the 100 km CCC ( Courmayeur, Champex, Chamonix ) mountain run in August. It meant I had to try and do 6 training sessions per week, cover a distance of about 150-200 km/week by the end of the training period and train for extended weekends in the mountains as soon as the refuges (mountain huts) open in May. I must admit that all that training made me a little quiet. I wasn’t really sure how and especially when I was going to fit that all in. My job and especially all the travels I had to do would never allow me to have a regular workout schedule.  Travel days, not to mention my constant battle against jetlag during intercontinental trips (had quite a few of those) and the difficulties of adjusting to the climate change between countries affected my training. I also faced the challenge of keeping my nutrition under control when most of the time I had airplane meals and hotel food on the menu.  It looked impossible and difficult. But then again easy would be boring.

New Year’s Day, early morning…. I looked in the mirror and asked myself why I was going to do all this. Even though the question was fairly simple, the answer seemed to be more complex than I thought it would be. My main reason of course was because I wanted to raise money for a charity project. The charity project is to give as many free surgeries as possible to Malaysian children born with cleft lip or cleft palate and make them smile again.  But there are more personal reasons too. Part of me wants to make my little girl proud of her dad and maybe there is even a selfish curiosity about how far I could push my body before it would say: ‘S top it now, you are killing me !!!’

Anyway there I was…Jan 1st and I had 8 months to get ready for this race. I needed to get a website up for the project, find people who wanted to help me, get a support crew together during the race, think of ways to raise the money, get my lightweight running gear, trail running shoes, walking poles, backpack and test them, improve on them, find out how I would support the gear on longer distances, what kind of nutrition I had to take during the race….. and TRAIN! As much as I could and whenever I could…

Take every opportunity to make my body stronger and turn it eventually into an aerobic machine. Hope I would not suffer from injuries between now and the race and get as much practice as possible in the mountains, day and night.

The race would start around noon on August 29th, the cut off time was 25 hours. I was secretly hoping to finish the race within 20 hours but after some calculations and comparing times between top athletes used to running these races, I soon realized that maybe that would be a little too optimistic. In any case, to finish in 20 hours or 25 or something in between, running at night is a must.

So many things to do… and the only thing I had done so far was buy the name of the website, www.peterrunsforcharity.com … which, so far, was nothing more than an empty place in cyberspace.

On Jan 7th I had my first race: Le Trail Blanc du Serre Chevalier….

As the name indicated it would be a race in the snow, I just did not expect the snow to be knee deep.

My friend and training buddy Rob and I drove to Briancon the day before and when we woke up the following morning about 35 cm of snow had fallen. The organizers decided to shorten the race to 21 km from the initial 28 km. It soon would become clear why they had done that.

To prevent falling and to have a better grip on the snow, I had put crampons on my running shoes. Less than 3 km into the race, a fairly rough landing in the snow warned me that something was wrong with my shoes. While crawling back up, I quickly inspected the soles of my shoes and my left crampon, was broken, dangling in a funny way around my shoe, no longer providing the grip on the front part of my foot, which made it very difficult running.

A few kilometers farther, my right crampon decided to follow the fate of my left one and nearly half way through the race, I did more sliding and slipping rather than running. I made it to the finish, but even with care, I still fell about 7 to 8 times. I completed the 21 kilometer race in a little over 2 hours. Not too bad given the conditions and that I had made it injury free. My knees were a little painful for a few days, but apart from that things were quite ok.

The day after the race my travels began. Airports, airplanes, delayed flights, hotels, security checks and JETLAG. Definitely my toughest opponent… sometimes it would take me 4 to 5 days to adjust and by the time my body clock was more or less on schedule, I would be on another plane and off to a different time zone, a different climate and another hotel meal.

 

Ideally, I should do 6 training days per week, but my January training schedule was a lot less than that. Partly due to work related travels, but also because old injuries started coming up again. My body was clearly not used to the amount of stress I was putting it through. Muscle aches, joint pains, tendonitis, general fatigue, etc etc…. Sometimes I would bite through the pain during 2-3-4 hour workouts…. telling myself that the 100 Km race would hurt as well and that I had better get used to the feeling. But deep inside I knew I was doing more harm than good with it.

The last week of January had been fairly painful even though my workouts were not that intense so when I couldn’t take a step without feeling a dull pain in my right hamstring, I decided to take it easy for a week and get some medical assistance and advice. I did a whole bunch of tests at the cardiologist (who, by the way declared me fit for the race), went to an osteopath who specialized in dealing with sports people and gave me a lot of good tips about my nutrition.

In January, I also started mobilizing people to help me. I realized that the entire project  was not something I could do by myself. Buying a name for a website, constructing the website, the fundraising, contacting people/companies willing to donate money, finding a suitable hospital for the project, getting a bank account where the money could be transferred to- they seemed small tasks but each one was taking so much time.

I also asked co-workers if they would be willing to help me get a support crew together who would be there during the race to give me moral support, give me some medical care at the points where I would take a short break and probably scrape my remains together after reaching the finish line.

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FEBRUARY PLANS

  I will try to make February an intense training month.

  Weeks 1-2.

  I am going with my little girl to Bretton Woods (New Hampshire) in the US to go skiing and to do more hill work training.

Weeks 3-4.

  The two weeks after I return from the US will be devoted to a steady training schedule and on February 24th I would have another race- la Magnétoise . A 64 Km trail run in Belgium with 1900 m positive altitude, not quite as tough as my CCC, but it would be a good race to get some distance in the legs and to test my equipment (backpack and trail running shoes) that I will be using during the big race in August. It will also give me a taste of the competition atmosphere.  

I realize that I still have a very long way to go and yet sometimes August seems fearfully close. Seven months to go. No doubt the preparation as well as the race will be a painful process and that some days will be dark. But if in the end I can get the money together to give a few smiles back to children born with cleft lip or cleft palate and change their lives, I think their smiles will be worth all the blood, sweat and tears that I have put into this.

 

© 2008