BGR - The Preamble

First a warning: If you want to read my account of my BG itself, feel free to skip this blog and wait for the next couple. Before I write those though, I wanted to have a look back over my training and approach over the last year more so I can learn what I did that worked for me, and take the “good” bits of that approach and use them for myself in the future, but also the athletes that I coach at the club.

Whilst the Bob Graham was something that I’d thought long and hard about since I first followed (and supported on) Dave A’s round, I’d never quite been able to see how I could get myself into the required shape to succeed. This was largely due to a series of injuries, and being rubbish on rocky terrain. As a result, it had sat as an idea in the back of my head for a few years but had never gotten past the point of daydreaming.

Over those intervening few years, my enthusiasm for my own running was on the wane, and to be honest it was only the enjoyment I got from coaching that was keeping my own running going. Having got to the point of frustration, I decided that I needed some clear goals to try and re-engage with my running. With this in mind, I sat down with a piece of paper and tried to write down ideas of what goals might rekindle my love of running. Having expected a reasonable number to appear, I was a little surprised to discover just two, the most exciting of which to me was to complete a Bob Graham Round.

Having established a BG was something that might rekindle that fire, I next needed to understand how I could get my injury prone body to the required fitness levels. After a convenient chat on my CiRF course one of my tutors made the point that what was required was a period of strengthening to address the imbalances before beginning any serious training. Having no idea on these things, I turned to the excellent Duncan at Beverley Wellbeing to both assess my current mobility levels and, after he’d finished laughing at my inability to squat, set me a program aimed at improving my functional mobility.

Even with my mobility noticeably improving, I was still unsure that I could train for something long and hard without breaking down, so after much thought, I decided that I would plan for a late August BG attempt with a big trip in the early part of summer. In that way, mentally, I could tell people that I was training for something other than a BG until I knew that my body was capable of taking the training.

Having trained for a lovely club trip along the WHW in early May, I started to make serious plans for the BG training. Fortunately the training plan was very simple.

Put in as many big days as I could, with as many as possible on Lakeland terrain.

In between these, keep doing the strength work and do what I could to increase my hill fitness (i.e. hill reps, treadmill at up to 30%, stepper, etc)

The big days were all memorable in their own ways, but the most memorable for various reasons were a trip on the Kinder Killer route that ended up with me picking up a stomach bug, cramming 8000 ft of climbing into the Malvern hills by 11 am, and my last long run pre BG taking in most of legs 3 and 4, that ended with me covering 35 miles / 15,000 ft and feeling as fresh as a daisy. It was through these long days that I taught myself to eat on the run, learnt to deal with the ups and downs of long runs and slowly improved my ability on rocky ground, quite aside from the fact they were all enjoyable of course!

Looking back in the week before the attempt, I realised the plan had been executed pretty well, I pretty much hit the oft mentioned 40 mile / 10,000 ft weekly target as an average over the 15 weeks, but as that included 9 days off ill, the “good weeks were better still. More psychological fuel was created by noticing that at some point on the round itself I’d go past the 250,000 feet of climbing in 2014 mark.

With my body fit and the belief getting stronger, before Friday evening, it was simply a matter of finalising all of the logistics, buy the last remaining food items required, panic that it wouldn’t all fit in the car and hire a van, pack some more stuff, fret a little more, fail to sleep enough, sit in a traffic jam on the A66, fret a bit more, put the tent up, and worry that everyone would turn up.

After that lot, I slept surprisingly well and woke up bright and breezy on Saturday morning. After popping into Keswick for a waterproof pad and a BG map, not I hasten to add for navigating by but for my supporters to sign as a memento for me! To ensure I was fully fuelled, I then headed to the Saddleback for an athlete’s breakfast with Kate Jen and Craig who’d done parkrun. The rest of the day cane and went in a blur of rearranging kit, trying to sleep, failing to sleep, chatting to supporters, trying to nap, and failing to nap.

Soon enough though, 8 o’clock rolled around and it was time to kit up and head to the Moot Hall for some final panicking before the off. Seeing that many people turning up to see me off was a real goosebumps moment as they were all giving up their weekends to help me achieve my dreams. After chatting to as many as possible, it was soon 8:45 and I was itching to go.The last 15 minutes felt like an eternity – something that can be seen on my facial expression in the group photo before the off.