154th of 1,800 on the Hell Run and a tale from Ballbuster training

D-Day minus 151 days… I am not sure I can go on with starting each post with the countdown of days any longer… Already today I have 5 days less then when I started to write this blog… Stress and pressure to be able to do that 120km race - through the desert and in temperature as low as –5 Celsius and as hot as +35… At least I have started to build a positive image in my mind of how the sunrise will be like in the red desert (the race goes of at 5pm and you run through the night and into the next day). If I only can last until the sunrise I should be on good track to complete…

But before that will happen there is a training session or two that needs to be completed… Today I did two sessions in the gym here in my hotel in Bonn. First 40min on the bike this morning, and then a 35min bike ride followed by a gym session in the evening, so now I actually feel quite ok. The ache in the legs has started to settle down a bit (thank god!).

The two sessions on the bike in the gym today was needed as preparation for the Ballbuster Duathlon on Saturday… Having said this, I must tell you about my last training session for the Ballbuster. I went down to Box Hill in Surrey with my friend Paul (who is also doing the race). We said we would do one lap running and then a lap cycling. Each lap is about 8 miles, with a gruesome climb at the end that on a bike is a solid 12-15min non-stop climb!

We did the run in 1h 9min, which I think was OK, but I can definitely shave a couple of minutes off that; and then onto our bikes. When the last climb started I was ahead of Paul. Soon he overtook me and as he did so turned over and said something that I couldn’t really pick up. He pushed hard and I tried to stay with him, but soon he pulled away. I pushed on and eventually was back at the car park, but Paul was nowhere to be seen. I figured that he had gone for a second lap, so I continued quickly and tried to catch him up, but not once on my second lap cycling did I see him. I pushed up the climb and at the car park he was once again nowhere to be seen.

Paul had mentioned that the 3-hour cut off time on the Ballbuster could be difficult to make (you have to have finished the run and the 3 laps cycling to be allowed to continue for the final run). So with this in mind I thought that maybe Paul wanted to go ahead and do all the 4 laps to see his time, so I pushed ahead too. The last climb was a killer but finally I was at the car park and I had done the 3 laps in 30min / 32min and 34min, which I was really pleased about.

I spotted Paul by the car, his bike already racked and he had changed clothes and was eating a pastry and a coffee… I was impressed; this guy really had pushed the bike ride! I asked Paul for his splits and he said 32min for the first lap and 35min for the second…

Hang on, I said, 32min for the first one, but you were ahead of me! “No” he said, you were ahead of me… Turned out that the guy who passed me was not Paul and I had been chasing the wrong guy! Well, at least I know that I should be able to do the 4 laps in less than 3 hours :-)

/Joakim

Btw, the results from the Hell Run came up today… Mo finished 14th, Helen 9th and for myself I got a 154th place out of about 1,800 that had turned up! I am really pleased with that, in the top10%. Lets see if I can do that for Ballbuster, but I have my doubts… The people doing Ballbuster are more serious athletes I think, so I will probably struggle to even get in the top25%.