Early
in December my project manager Lester and myself travelled to my home town of Te Anau to
compete in a mountain run on the Kepler Track. Being one of New
Zealand’s Great Walks it is a very well formed track and has stunning
views out across Lake Te Anau and deep into Fiordland. Lester did the
gruelling “Luxmore Grunt” a 27km trip up Mount Luxmore and back. Having
survived the grunt before ,I was slightly more crazy and signed up for
the full Monty - the 60km round circuit!
Being
an engineer I did a bit of thinking on efficient running and optimal
race strategies. I read somewhere that below about 2m/s (7.2km/h) it is
more energy efficient to walk. So when I’m going slowly ideally I’ll
speed back up (duh) or stop pretending to run and walk for a bit. I
planned to use this on any steep hills! If we ignore the moving legs and
think of the runner as a rigid body we should try to minimise the
acceleration to save energy - so when speeding up and slowing down it
makes more sense to do it gradually. The rate of heat generated by a
runner must be proportional to their muscle volume. The rate of heat
loss must be proportional to their surface area. Hence runners with a
lean build will stay cooler at a given ambient temperature... hmm not
much I can do about this - hopefully it will be cold? It
might be intuitive to keep a constant work output over the whole
course. However imagine a course with three sections of 10km each, a
runner who can run 10km/h constantly can finish the course in 3 hours.
If there is one uphill section and one downhill section most runners
will slow down on the uphill and speed up on the downhill. Lets assume
that the difference in speed is 3km/h. The uphill section therefore is
run at 7km/h and takes 85.7 minutes (25 minutes longer), the downhill
section is run at 13km/h and takes 46.2m (13 minutes quicker). So there
is a larger effect of not slowing down too much when going uphill than
by speeding up for the downhill.
What
do you mean I should have gone training more instead of thinking about
race strategies? I was discussing this with a phd student working with
the NZ cycling team while out running!
Anyhow
6am race day came far to quickly and I was off! I should mention that I
had some family competition - both my mother and younger brother were
entered in the challenge. My goals were very clear and simple: finish,
ahead of Mum. If possible I wanted to cross the line in under 8 hours
still able to cartwheel. After being running for a few hours and
starting to feel a bit tired it was terrifying to see a sign saying
“Only a marathon to go”! Getting off the mountain down to Iris Burn was a
relief, until the cramp struck. Apparently my muscles just like staying
in their rhythm, I found my steps getting smaller and smaller as the
day went on and on. By the end although I could have walked faster than I
was running the fear of not being able to start again kept me jogging
along.
The
drinks stations were amazing, all run by friendly dressed up
volunteers. Leppin, oranges and jelly beans were my staples for the day
with the occasional bit of chocolate or muesli bar from my bag.
Somehow
I made it to the final 10km stretch up the river and that’s when the
going really got unpleasant. I was seizing up every few steps and
stumbling from tree to tree at points. I couldn’t help but question the
motives for finishing, somehow I came to the conclusion that to continue
to the finish would allow me to stop moving quicker. I did manage to
suck it up and start running for the last few km and yes I did cartwheel
over the finish line well ahead of my mother.
So
will I do it again? You bet, 6 hours here we come! If you are up for a
physical challenge and can devote some time to training I recommend you
give it a go!
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