The Master plan

For 2011 I am planning a big year, that touch wood having no injuries, is going to be bigger and better than 2010. A challenge in itself, but one I am relishing. 2010 was about times, experiences and just having fun with my running. For 2011 I am going for experiences and fun but dropping the times to a certain extent. This is because my aim for next year is more of a stepping stone to 2012 which is to qualify for the West Highland Way race. I don’t just want to qualify, I want to get more experience in running shorter ultras which will give me the confidence, that all going well, I can go to the start line in Milngavie in 2012 as ready and prepared as I possibly can - mentally and physically.  The reason I said I am dropping times to a certain extent is because obviously I need to finish below the cut offs in the races to qualify. This doesn't mean I will be pacing myself to finish just within the cut offs, that to me would be madness. But whatever time I do finish in and if it’s under the cut offs will in turn be all I could want and more.

I have spent a lot of time going through all the potential races and have spent a lot of my runs thinking through what I want to do and now it seems to be all coming together. Next year I will have 4 main races with other races thrown in, in the other months. I have worked out some of my other races but I am waiting to see what the club championship races are first.  So my first main race will be the Highland Fling. I have already had a couple of training runs on this, in the last few months and will probably end up spending many more weekends on the run up to the Fling in April.

In June, Stephen from my club and myself are going to do the Lowe Alpine Mountain Marathon. After the Fling I’ll be spending time refreshing my navigating skills in the mountains. There are 5 classes in LAMM, and we are down for the “easiest one”, D class as neither of us have done something like this before. 

Next will be Clyde Stride. I enjoyed this race so much this year and will always be special as it was my first ultra. Once you have done a race once, it’s always tempting to go for a better time next time. I think by then I should be nearer to 7 hours but we’ll wait and see.

I spent long and hard trying to find a race for later in the year. I wanted to do 100k/60ish miles to give me a confidence booster ahead of WHW training. But I couldn’t find a race apart from the CCC in Mount Blanc in late August. As much as I would love to do this race, I feel it’s a big step up in terms of the ascent gain and is a long way to travel when I am still a rookie in ultra land. One day though! But then the Hardmoors 60 was created which is the last 60 miles of the Hardmoors 110. Ideal! In the run up to this I am planning to do a weekend recky of the course.

I realise that I might not even get into WHW race 2012 as its filling up quicker and getting more popular. I have thought about this and really the only other options I can think of in the UK are Hardmoors 110 or Lakeland 100. Obviously I am just going by what I have read and the results I have seen. But to me these seem like post graduate 100 milers, as the winning times/peoples times generally are a lot longer than WHW. At the same time I could probably be talked into trying one! I am not trying to say the WHW race is easy. Any race of which covers these kind of distances are going to be difficult. It’s just the other two look even harder! So if I didn’t get in, I would probably apply for the CCC or find something else and try the WHW the year after.

So there’s the Masterplan and coincidently here is my favourite Oasis track: