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Also look at News for December
06 November
06 As you will
all have read by now by LEJOG World Record
Attempt was very successful and took over 17 hours off the world
record, finishing the 837 miles in 12 days 16 hours and 23 minutes.
I still feel as though the whole event has not sunk in, I expected
to be feeling on a high for many weeks after but this has yet to
happen, initially the tiredness and sore feet took over and was
just in recovery mode. Its a couple of weeks since finishing now
and the tiredness has gone, my feet are probably just a bit sensitive
as opposed to tender now, I did go out for a half hour run on Friday,
exactly two weeks after finishing and the legs are fine. Still going
to try to take it easy (TRY!!). I am itching to get running again
but will keep the mileage down. August 06 Well the big day is nearly here, the press coverage is non-stop, newspapers, radio and even ITV have done a programme (see latest media coverage). I did my last two marathons runs in the first two weeks of August, just steady runs in the Walden, first lady, second overall and the Hanging Stone Leap that starts on my doorstep at Guisborough, first lady and sixth overall. The last three weeks no long runs, just a few short races and absolutely no race the last weekend, that’s hard by my standards!! My van is now brightly coloured and sponsor money even being handed to be in the street by total strangers, what a response!! A lot of councillors seem to have their work cut out for this, it is hoped that councillor Dennis Axford will start the event at Lands End, various councillors may run part of the event with me, including Willie Rennie, as asthmatic runner just north of Edinburgh. John Green has the job of official finisher (at may be an unsocial hour) at John O’Groats. Mike Amos from the Northern Echo may even be able to make the long trek north to witness the world record. As for me, I am not sure whether it is nerves or excitement, this event has been so long in the planning, postponed from July and is finally here. As much as I am really looking forward to this I know it is going to be a long painful event. I cannot predict what will happen, it is into the unknown. People ask me what pace will you be running? I have a schedule but how do I know that I will stick to it – I have never done it before. Many people are comparing it to the Flora 1000 Miles, there is no comparison, this is far, far harder – three times the daily distance with around the same amount of sleep – 5 hours. I have updated the schedule again and combined the route with it so it is easier to track my progress. The times are also going to change after the first day, in July I was blessed with long daylight hours, now the darkness is creeping in earlier and earlier. As a result of this my daily schedule will start an hour earlier at 6am, this means I should finish the third block of running in daylight at 8pm and just have the last block to run in darkness. It now remains for me to say enjoy following my progress, please make this effort worth my while by sponsoring me at www.justgiving.com/sharongayter for Asthma UK. Many of you out there have probably witnessed me falling by the wayside while having an asthma attack in races, there has never been a single year that it has not affected my running or racing, I need to keep motivated and know there is someone out there that will benefit from all this pain I will go through, thanks for all the words of support and hopefully they will be fulfilled by a new WORLD RECORD. More information
on the LEJOG page. July 06 The trial has been completed and the WORLD RECORD ATTEMPT from Lands End to John O’Groats is starting at 07:00 on Sunday 3rd September 2006. It’s been a very hard decision after sustaining an Achilles injury earlier in the year but after a very hard four weeks of training the decision is made. At 7am on a very wet Sunday 9th July I set off from Moffat on a trial run for LEJOG. The plan was to practice the running strategy of four hours of running followed by a one hour break and cover approximately 20 miles in the four hours. After four blocks of running I was to get 5 hours sleep from 02:00 until 07:00. This routine of running worked very, very well. It was nice just to think about the four hours I was running and not the real frightening distance of 837 miles, but it did feel like a very long day. What I found didn’t work well was my eating strategy, I thought after four hours of running I would take on a significant meal, this didn’t happen and was only able to eat half a bowl of pasta or rice and was unable to eat a meal before going to bed. I soon learnt that I would have to eat during the running segment and put this into practice and this worked well. The first day of the trial took in a long climb out of Moffat on the A701. After the first 20 miles I was initially surprised at how tired I felt, I expected to feel reasonably fresh, but a look at the last few weeks of training was the reason behind this, it had only been two weeks since the Verdon Canyon Challenge, which had taken far longer than expected and the week after had run the Osmotherley Phoenix marathon and had felt very tired towards the end of the race, so in general was not recovered enough to tackle another long event. But this was not about times or distances it was about practicing the routine. The next day I was very stiff to start with and after walking for half an hour tried running, it wasn’t so bad and soon got into the routine again. It also became obvious that my plans of 80 miles a day for the first 4 days were not realistic and so have adjusted the schedule accordingly, but the plan is still for a 12 day finish to allow over a day for any problems I may encounter. After the trial
we took the ferry from John O’Groats to Orkney and had a few
days cycling the islands and visiting ultra friend William Sichel
who lives on Sanday. One final piece
of news for the month, I got selected to compete for Great Britain
in the World 100km in Korea in October, part of the conditions for
selection are that I cannot run an ultra race within 8 weeks of
the event, LEJOG has now forced me to withdraw from the event (rightly
so on this occasion as I don’t think my recovery would be
that good after just three weeks!). I had left my name in for selection
just in case I was unable to run LEJOG and had another race to aim
at. June 06 This was a great month, finally got back to some real running and by the end of the month the Achilles feels completely better, not even stiff in the morning now. I started short distance running towards the end of May and started racing again in June, an off-road half marathon, 10 miles at Thirsk and a 5km and 10km race. After Laurent Locke invited me to run the Verdon Canyon stage race in France I found it hard to say no even though my longest run prior to flying out was just 2 hours 15 minutes. This event was 120km over 4 days with 7000m of climbing and very hot conditions. The first day was a night prologue of 10km, followed by 25km that took over 4 hours, for the next 45km race the temperature was 37 degrees and took a staggering 9 hours to complete, by the last day of 35km the field was reduced significantly and took over 6 hours. I was out a lot longer than anticipated but the terrain itself was very difficult to run over, very rocky in places, considering my lack of training prior to this race I was satisfied to finish 6th overall and second lady. The first lady was training for the Tour du Mont Blanc race, I was also happy to finish in front of one of the French 24 hour international athletes. This was very good training for my LEJOG record attempt and am now preparing for the 4 day trial which will start on 9th July and run from Moffat to John O Groats, some 300 miles in 4 days. A full report can be downloaded here: Verdon Trail Adventure report, and the official website is www.aeria.fr for those interested in taking part next year, on the Friday there are also one day races of 20km, 40km, 60km and 80km, but do bear in mind how long these races took me, they are very deceptive in distance and take far longer than expected. Achilles is
a very common injury among runners and one that I have always dreaded
as I know it can take a long time to heal. I feel I have been very
lucky in that this has only taken 10 weeks off my running (although
that was a very long hard 10 weeks), but has disrupted my planned
year. The key exercises to rehabilitation were eccentric stretching
on a step done religiously morning and night, gradually building
up to three sets of 25 and then adding a back pack with weights,
which was continually added to once comfortable with each weight.
In addition to this I purchased a small ultrasound device from www.MendMeShop.com
that I used for 5 minutes twice a day (Bill also used this on his
thumb which has been injured for some time and got better). I was
also taking a product from Neovite.com that was supposed to help
recovery. May 06 The ultrasound scan on 2nd May revealed 0.7cm diameter of Achilles Tendinosis, some two months after the injury occurred. The worst is now behind me and am just about resuming running again. I should be back to racing again by June. Although fitness should be good by July I have now run out of time to do a 4 day trial on LEJOG which is a vital part of my preparation, physically, mentally and practically and therefore am setting the date of the record attempt to 3rd September 2006. This is not just a run but a record attempt and need everything to be in place to be 100% confident of success. Another couple of months will give me the time needed to practice the schedule set out and overcome any problems that may be encountered. The other bit of good news for me is the new selection criteria for the World 24 Hours next year in Canada, to my amazement it has already been announced some 14 months in advance of the event which gives athletes time to achieve the criteria (unlike the 4 weeks given last year). The individual A standard for women has been reduced by just 1km to 214km, which, although fantastic new for me (my performance equivalent to 6th place in the World 24 Hours in Taiwan was 214.5km), but not good news for other women aiming at selection. The team B standard remains at 195km. The time scale for achieving these distances will date from 1st January 2006 and so my performance will still count as there is little chance I will run another 24 hour race this year due to other commitments (namely LEJOG). Once last bit of news is that any of you that read my report from Taiwan would have read of my disappointment at being presented with a trophy at the World 24 Hour in Taiwan for winning the open race only for it to be withdrawn as there were not enough trophies to take home. Well a superb engraved glass stand with a revolving glass globe arrived this week and now takes pride of place in my trophy cabinet (as opposed to being put on a shelf in the garage!!). April 06 Initially my recovery from the 24 hours in Taiwan went well, I was just left with a little stiffness at the back of my lower right leg. Two weeks after the 24 hours I had a slow run around the Redcar ½ Marathon on a bitterly cold day where the temperature did not rise above freezing. I was satisfied with 1 hour 39 minutes and although the calf was tight for the first 3-4 miles it eased off and had no problems with it for the rest of the race. Snow hampered the following weeks training and my treadmill also refused to work. However the problem did get worse and the tendon was very tender to touch although not too painful to run on. After a week of rest it was only marginally improved and so sought the advice of Sports Therapist Darren Cooper at the University of Teesside. I was worried as just three weeks after the Redcar ½ I was supposed to be running for England in the Anglo-Celtic Plate 100km with a rather late call up. Darren initially thought I would be able to run no problem, as indeed I thought so myself but was just playing safe. But the injury did not go according to plan and was being very stubborn to improve. The risk was to run the 100km, which it was thought I should get around ok but the tendon would be worse as a result of running this. It was a hard decision but in the end played it wisely and withdrew from the race to preserve the tendon for the future runs for the year. It is now nearing the end of April, I am still not running and awaiting an ultra sound scan on 2nd May to determine the extent of the injury. I feel this is such a small area of injury I cannot believe how time has passed since I last ran. I have been keeping fit in the gym with cycling, rowing and weights but am getting extremely depressed at not running now the better weather has arrived and have now withdrawn from the Hull 24 hours in May, a race where I had planned to get a pb for 24 hours with having such a good run in Taiwan under hard conditions on a tough course, a local track race with no corners, full support and no travelling should have been perfect for a good run. The time off
running has given me the opportunity to spend time going over the
entire route from Lands End to John O’Groats, detailing parking
areas on the maps and finding cycle routes to avoid some city centres
and busy roads. The route has now been measured at 837 miles.
After
a quick trip to Taiwan to compete in the open race of the World
24 hours I am happy to report that I won the open race with 214.5km
and this would have placed me 6th in the World 24 hours. It was
a very emotional race without having the support of my husband Bill
and had to make a call home half way through the race as I got so
upset and lost a lot of time, but it was worth the call as I got
back out and finished strongly.
Well it is now the day before I travel to Taiwan for the World 24 Hours, everything is in place and as much as I am looking forward to the trip I am dreading it. I am not looking forward to the long journey and now the map of the race has been published this is also bad news. There are many twists and turns and route is getting shorter, just 700m now, the weather so far predicted is rain for the entire trip with 19ºC as the high. Training had been going incredibly well until the beginning of February (just 3 weeks before Taiwan) when I twisted my ankle at the start of the Rombalds Stride 25 miles and was forced to withdraw. I only did a couple of short easy runs that week while the swelling and bruising subsided. Running the Draycote Water 35 very easily the following week gave me the confidence that it would recover in time for Taiwan. The trip is
only a short one, travelling out on Wednesday, arriving Thursday,
race is Saturday to Sunday and hope to be home by Monday night.
You may be able to follow my progress on the official website (www.iau.org.tw/),
but be aware that as I am in the open race and not competing for
Great Britain that my results may be listed separately. January
06
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March
06
