Guest post: Matt’s first 24 hours

by Mollie Millington | Aug 11, 2020 | guest post, running

Run 1: Thursday 25 June @ 8pm

Music: None

First of 12 runs – it was 28 degrees at 8pm but other than it being too hot I felt pretty good. I knew that the key to finishing all 48 miles would be looking after my body so I spent 10 mins on the foam roller before warming up with the skipping rope and stretching before setting off.

Mollie, who had offered to run the first 4am run with me, came to say hi with Maple just before I left and I was joined on the first run by my friend Alex who was keen to be involved but just didn’t think that he could set aside the time to complete the whole challenge with a toddler and pregnant wife at home.

We kept it at a fairly relaxed 5.15 per km pace and chose a loop that had a lot of shade to try to stay out of the sun as much as possible. First run went smoothly but a long way to go.

Pasta with sausage, pesto and spinach and half a carb based hydration drink for dinner then relaxing on the sofa with Jess to wait for midnight and run number 2.

Run 2: Friday 26 June @ 12am

Music: Hot Since 82 essential mix

Same warm up routine but trying not to wake the neighbours with the skipping. As the only run slot that is fully in the dark, I had picked a loop that sticks to main roads but there are not many runners out at this time for good reason. The streets of Leytonstone are an interesting place to be at midnight and I felt very out of place with my head torch and compression leggings. Probably the reason that this was a fairly quick loop.

The actual running felt OK for most of the loop but I started to feel my right hamstring towards the end. 5.07 per km is probably too quick but I wasn’t complaining to be off the streets quickly, especially facing the prospect of a maximum of 2.5 hours sleep before the next one.

A decent stretch, a protein bar and as much water as I could force down in the 10 minutes it took to quickly ice my hamstring; then a very quick shower before bed by 1.10am.

Run 3: Friday 26 June @ 4am

Music: None

So this was where I learned how hard this challenge was going to be. It was very difficult to sleep straight away after returning from a run, especially when it was still 20 degrees outside, super humid and all I could think about was the fact that every second I was awake was time not spent sleeping. When the alarm went off at 3.30am I felt like I had managed only a few minutes of sleep.

Luckily, as I emerged from my house after the same warm up routine, Mollie was standing outside looking much fresher than I felt. Having company, and someone to pace me, was very welcome.

We ran down Forest Gate high street, up to Manor Park and back along the top of Wanstead flats. We kept a slower pace of 5.47 per km, which was good because it felt comfortable and exactly what I needed after the lack of sleep.

My hamstring felt better but I still iced it when I got back. I made some toast with the new Marmite Peanut Butter Crunchy (delicious) but was conscious not to eat too much as I wouldn’t be able to digest it properly before the next run. Back to bed to try to sleep again for a couple of hours.

Run 4: Friday 26 June @ 8am

Music: Hot Since 82 essential mix (continued)

Again, a combination of the running, the heat and the need to be asleep meant that I lay awake for quite a while before drifting off. I have no idea how much sleep I actually got, but it was little enough that my FitBit didn’t pick it up.

Toughest run yet, but then again you’d expect them to get progressively harder. Main issue was that it was so humid. It had rained between run 3 and run 4 and the ground was wet, so I avoided the trails through Wanstead Flats and mainly ran around the outside of the flats. I started to feel my quads tightening up a bit about halfway through this loop. I had hoped this wouldn’t happen until a bit later in the challenge but I knew I hadn’t really done enough long training runs to really avoid it.

After I finished my run I walked the 500m from where I’d finished back to the house and on the way passed my partner, Jess, going out for a morning walk around the flats before work. This perked me up a bit after a tough slog. Porridge with banana, honey and walnuts and time to relax on the sofa.

Run 5: Friday 26 June @ 12pm

Music: Arctic Lake

I managed to relax for an hour or so but didn’t want to stiffen up, so I wandered very slowly down to the bakery (250m away) to get coffee and some ice pops. The heat was still rising….this run was going to be really hot.

I drank some high carb hydration fluid before going out and set off at a steady pace. I was aiming for 5.45 per km but I couldn’t stop myself running at more like 5.20 per km! It feels counterintuitive to run slowly when all you are thinking about is the run being over. Same loop as Run 1 as it offers the most shade.

When I got back I made some rice with chicken and soy sauce and a water bottle with salt dissolved in it. I was very conscious of the amount of fluid I was losing on the runs so tried to replenish as best as possible.

I’d managed to rope my sister into coming on the next run, so she came round about 3pm and we sat in the garden. I sat in the shade and tried to move as little as possible but it wasn’t long before it was time to start warming up again. 4 hours comes around quickly!

Run 6: Friday 26 June @ 4pm

Music: None

I told my sister that we needed to be sensible and asked her to pace us at somewhere between 5.45 and 6.00 per km. My FitBit decided to glitch and showed a pace of 4.40 per km for the first 2 km which was clearly wrong, but luckily my sister’s apple watch was keeping more accurate time and distance. We ran the same route again to get some shade so by now I could tell you the exact finish point anyway.

She did a pretty good job of pacing and we averaged 5.42 per km. It was still incredibly hot though and my left quad started to tighten up a lot as we ran. We survived though and when we got back we decided to break out the ice pops I’d bought earlier as we sat in the shade in my garden.

Curious about how Matt stayed fueled during this challenge?  Here is his eating strategy:

Guest post: Lockdown running challenge

by Mollie Millington | Aug 4, 2020 | guest post, running

One of the members of my local gym, Matt, used to spin with me but during lockdown, he started lifting more weights at home and invested in a Peloton bike (but that is another blog post).  He also started running.  Even before lockdown, Matt had started watching YouTube videos about ultras and learned the names of all the big runners (see below).  I kept joking with him that he was going to run an ultra soon, and he always denied it was going to happen.

And then it did.

Over the next three weeks, read about Matt’s first race experience- a 4x4x48 challenge.  He voluntarily ran four miles every four hours for 48 hours, totally 48 miles (he didn’t even want a medal for it).  In this series, Matt explains how he trained, and what happened on Day 1 and Day 2.

Prep work- 6 weeks out

For a couple of years, me and my friend Ben have been growing more inspired by endurance athletes. I am in awe of what some people can achieve; whether it’s Courtney Dauwalter winning the Moab 240 (238 mile race through the Moab desert), beating all of the men, or Jim Walmsley breaking the Western States 100 course record two years in a row or Zach Bitter running 100m in 11 hrs 19m (that’s an average pace of 6.48 per mile /4.14 per km).

Another who falls into that category is David Goggins; an ex-Navy seal, Delta Force, US ranger and ultra runner who has a reputation for being a savage. I have listened to several podcasts in which he talks about his approach to callusing his mind and pushing through pain – he is genuinely so inspiring. When the world entered lockdown due to Covid-19, he set everyone a challenge: run 4 miles, every 4 hours for 48 hours!

Ben immediately asked me if I wanted to give it a go, but on first thought I dismissed it straight away as being crazy. However, over the next two weeks I thought about it a bit more and started to convince myself that it could be doable. I was running four 5km runs per week and had been focusing more on trying to run fast but figured with 4.5 weeks training I could up the mileage a bit and give it a good go. So we took the plunge and set a date, 25 – 27 June.

Training

4.5 weeks didn’t feel that long to prepare and it was difficult to know the best way to approach it. There isn’t a lot of advice out there on how to train for such a specific challenge, so I decided to go with a combination of increased mileage (to prepare my legs for the total distance) and multiple shorter runs (to replicate the need to run every 4 hours). Broadly this was structured as 2 weeks of 10-12k runs, a week of 2 a day 6.5k runs, a triple and then just less than a week of rest.

Going from approximately 20k per week to almost 45k per week was probably too much, too quickly and as I trained for the challenge I started to feel a recurring soreness in my right hip. I wasn’t sure exactly what it was but it could have been some tendinitis. Regardless of what it was, I just hoped that when I rested for several days then it would sort itself out (which luckily it did).

I enjoyed the training and having something to train for made a really nice change to just exercising for the sake of it. Doing 2 a day 6.5k runs was not particularly difficult and even the day I ran three times wasn’t too difficult. What I learned was that it was going to be important to warm up properly and stretch to avoid injury.

Thanks again to Matt for sharing some of his story.  Check back next week for how Day 1 went.