A bit of time has passed now since the Snowdonia Trail Marathon. (Did I mention that I ran a marathon?) I wanted to post again to reflect on my thoughts about a few things. Overall, I did it. I did it in more or less the exact time that I estimated. So I can’t have too many qualms about the race really. But.. there are a few things that I’ve learnt from.

Training

So, again, I finished, and I finished in pretty much the time I predicted. But that doesn’t mean that my training was perfect. Or even adequate. I took a relatively laid-back approach to this training cycle. My focus was on two main things: mileage and elevation.

The latter I certainly achieved (compared to my previous efforts, at least). I opted for a two-pronged approach: I simply made an effort to target more hills in my runs, and run far less in central Taunton, and I joined Minehead Running Club for their Monday evening runs. The combined effect meant that by early July, shortly before my marathon, I had run just over 50,000 feet this year. In contrast, the most I’d ever run before *in a whole year* was 42,000 feet.

Courtesy of Veloviewer.

Mileage was generally less successful. I only ran one long run of 20 miles or more; and only three that were 15 miles or more. My weekly mileages were also pretty low. In the 12 weeks leading up to the race, my biggest week was 40.7 miles. In contrast, my biggest week for the Bristol Half Marathon was 45.9 miles. Accumulated across the whole 12 weeks, the difference is even more stark: 422 miles for the Bristol Half, compared to 301 miles for Snowdonia.

There were definitely reasons – I was ill twice during that training period for Snowdonia, and missed something like 15-20 days (not all of these were training days, of course). That probably works out to about 60-100 miles, a big part of the difference. Without those gaps, my training would have built on itself a bit better, and I would almost certainly have done longer long runs. Or at least, more of them. Races (as always) got in the way too. Doing a 10k, plus some added mileage isn’t too bad during training for a half, but it’s a pretty big dent for marathon training. If I’m serious about a marathon in the future, I probably need to curb my shorter distance racing habit a bit.

We also had a lot going on. Both me and Lolly have been busy and stressed at work, and we also have twice as many children to deal with now compared to during that Bristol Half training.

Could I have trained better? Yes, though it’s hard to account for illness. Do I really mind? No, this was all about completion, not time. But it’s still good to analyse it to see where improvements could come in the future.

Fuelling

This, in my opinion, is where I really let myself down. I don’t even know why it all went wrong. Well, no, I do. I got in my own head about it, and messed myself up.

I have quite a sensitive stomach / digestive system. Actually, that isn’t entirely true. For some reason, my head has too much influence over my stomach. I make myself feel ill – if I get it in my head that something smells funny and has gone off, then my stomach feels funny. Not because the food has actually gone off, but because my head makes my stomach worry about it. Or something like that. Because of this, I’d never used gels before this training cycle. I’d read so much about their possible effects on the digestive system that I thought it best to avoid them with my own.

I realised that running a marathon without anything would be stupid. Particularly this marathon. I am also something of a fussy eater, so most of the ‘natural’ alternatives don’t appeal to me. After a fair bit of research, I settled on trying the Torq gels. They were described as more of a ‘yoghurty’ texture and flavour, which sounded like something I could deal with. And I could. I used them in my training runs, and had absolutely no problems. I also tried having a peanut butter sandwich (too dry and claggy) and then settled on peanut butter and jam sandwiches instead.

My favourites: Apple Crumble, Raspberry Ripple.

So, for the race, I set off with (I think) seven gels, plus two slices of peanut and jam sandwich. My plan was to eat something roughly every 4.5 to 5 miles.

I had a gel at around 6 miles, and a sandwich at 11 miles. A further gel at 15 miles, and I was done for the race. I tried to have the other sandwich around mile 21, but by then I was struggling up Snowdon and was pretty dehydrated. I should have probably tried a gel instead, but as I say, I’d basically got in my own head by then. The distances don’t look too bad, but if I convert them into times, it tells a slightly different story. 1 hr 10, 1 hr 50, 2 hr 30, 4 hr 18. Yeah, not quite the same as 6, 11, 15, 21, huh?

A simple lesson to be learnt here – distances might be fine for flat road marathons where you would expect relatively even splits. But for gnarly trail marathons with mountains… not such a good idea. In future, I might try to base my fuelling on time, rather than distance. I also need to worry less about what everyone else is doing, and just focus on myself. Which is really bloody obvious, and yet still I suffered by it.

Hydration

For the most part, my hydration was pretty good. I carried a 500 ml bottle with me (this was part of the mandatory kit). For the majority of the race, this was plenty enough, in conjunction with the drinks stations themselves. However, for that four miles from Pen-y-Pass to the drinks station on the way down Snowdon it was not. Primarily because that four miles took me about 1 hr 45. Basically, as above, I just need to consider time gaps, rather than distance gaps. For most races, a 500 ml bottle plus refills would have sufficed, but for this one, I could have done with double that, if only for the big climb.

The mountain

Despite the sharp increase in the amount of elevation I clocked up during training, nothing could prepare me for Snowdon itself. A 1,300 ft climb up Corn Du in the snow in early February was the biggest single climb I did, while my “Exmoor Three Peaks” run totalled 3,300 ft, including Dunkery Beacon. Both impressive feats, but compared to a 2,800 ft climb over about four miles, they were small preparation. Especially after 18 miles of running. Simply put, the only thing that could have prepared me for climbing up Snowdon would have been climbing up Snowdon.

Would I like to go up Snowdon again sometime? Yes. Would I want to do it in a race? Maybe, but probably not. I run because I love running. Walking for four miles isn’t my idea of running. It was a great challenge etc etc, but at the end of the day, it wasn’t running. Would I do another race with over 5,500 ft of elevation? Sure. But it would need to be more spread out over the whole race, rather than concentrated on one big and one very, very big climb.

Marathon distance

I guess the biggest question is whether I would consider doing another marathon. Truth be told, I don’t know. The long runs were pretty tough on the family, and I really didn’t enjoy them that much. The race itself was hard, really hard. But then, I’ve heard it talked about as being the “toughest marathon in the United Kingdom”, so go figure. For the moment, I certainly want to focus on shorter distance stuff again. But… I do still have my deferred London Marathon place…

Hmmm…