Paul Comerford

Racing the Reaper Man to Ultra: January 2022

There was no neat and tidy end to my Racing the Reaper Man Year. Although successful in hitting my fitness and running targets, with a leaner body and in reasonable health, I ended December 750 road-miles from home. As I’ve outlined in my December blog post, my brother’s wife died on the morning of Christmas Eve, so, with my Passepartout, I had to drive to Scotland:

‘For a week we supported a grieving man as best we could. I spent days sorting paperwork, important documents, forming a strategy and helping with the legal requirements of a sudden death in Scotland. I ran a short distance at the end of each day (mainly with Passepartout) at the point I could no longer make sense of documents. We would [then] call a halt, raise a glass of sherry to the lovely Sue, then try to fill the early Scottish evening with hope. I was now beyond-burnout. In fact, I had become a machine running on banked fitness… We did not notice 2022 arrive and I was 750 miles from home surrounded by sadness…’

On New Year’s Day 2022, none of us really noticed the change in year. Another day of sifting documents and finding a strategy for my brother and we were very near completion of this dreadfully sad task.  We ran 3 miles into the Morayshire greyness just before the early, northern dark, thus starting the New Year maintaining our running streaks. These runs proved to be the one thing that kept me focused enough to carry on. Finally, on Sunday 2nd January the paperwork came to an end. Everything I could do was done. It was heartbreaking to leave my brother the next day. We had shared a close bond since childhood, and the week I had been with him had reinforced that bond. I had taken the lead and hoped I’d done enough to reduce his grief a little.

We left in the rain. My own health was not good. I have never been so mentally tired, so had decided to break up the journey home into segments. The first stage was 200 miles to Dumfries and Galloway, via Loch Ness and Glencoe. The rain was biblical. We made a brief stop at Spean Bridge for hot soup, then paused just south of Glencoe to run a chilly mile in Glen Etive. I had needed this to clear my head. We arrived at the Hetland Hall Hotel as the light went.

I was in trouble. I was beyond burnout, shaking and occasionally losing a few seconds of conscious thought. We ended up staying at the hotel for 3 nights so I could recover a little, leaving through necessity as a snow bank moved south, overtaking us as we drove over Shep Fell. We stopped in Staffordshire, then near Loughborough to break the journey down. The final 200 mile leg was directly south into a storm, with heavy rain blowing directly at the windscreen the whole way. Never have I felt so relieved to get home. We’d been on the road for two weeks.

To say I was ill was an understatement. Every sleep was full of nightmares and every waking moment saw me full of anxiety. All I did was stick to the formula: eat healthily, run every day and be confident that recovery would happen. My Passepartout had to return home. She had kept me together on the journey, cooked and served my brother and me, and helped me see the sense of breaking up the journey from Scotland. She gave up Christmas without question, supported me selflessly and ran by my side every day. Now she had to catch up with her own commitments.

Alone, rest would not come. I called my brother every day, and watched his wife’s funeral on livestream. My MRI Scan happened a few days later and I suddenly started to worry about my own mortality. My GP knew I needed more time, so any return to working would have to wait. All of this with the pandemic constantly in the background. Being candid is not so easy. However, my aim is to show the reality of the constant runner who appears on Facebook. All of us have different pressures. In photographs we tend to smile, thus hiding the burdens we carry. I’m generally a happy man. Losing my smile is not pleasant, yet I’m confident the last year’s successes will get me through the coming weeks.

Running really does make me happy. Over the last few weeks, the only thing that kept me sane was my daily run. As I have written, I decided to extend my self-experiment into 2022, thus starting a Racing the Reaper Man to Ultra year. This way I could catalogue my recovery and my drive towards my first ever 100k. This blog post is the first.

By the end of January I had started to get a strategy in place to get me to a full recovery. I also needed to start my strategy to get through my June 100k. The good thing was, my baseline fitness remained at a high level. I tested myself on a 10 mile run around Thorney Island, then ran a comfortable, quick 12 miler (9:42 mins/mile) on the 30th, which was also my 400th day without a rest day. I’d started weekly core work with Martin once more and looked at February as my kick off month. I would start to take regular fitness statistics once more and focus on Ultra. Yet, mentally I was not in a good place. My hopes for quick mental recovery had stalled on the anvil of duty. My mind could not switch off, even whilst asleep. I was starting to see I might need some professional help to realign body and mind.

Racing the Reaper Man to Ultra: February 2022

It has become apparent to me, that my book, Racing the Reaper Man, must have a chapter on mental wellbeing. I have shown how getting physically fitter and healthier is not beyond us as we get beyond 50, but I am now having to apply my philosophy to restoring my mental health. In doing so, I have to be candid about my personal issues, which is not easy, but if it helps others, I think it is worthwhile. Let me explain.

Poor mental health has dogged me through February. It is difficult to unravel fully, but burnout is the overarching diagnosis. To me this makes sense. Ultimately, I worked too many long hours, flattened my ‘wellbeing battery’ and the net result is a mind with no immunity from stress. I had reached the point where my complete self, my physical and mental machine, was no longer functioning. You can give too much if altruism, kindness and caring tends to be your tenet. I have reached a similar point to Shakespeare’s Hamlet, trying to figure out:

“Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them…”

Indeed, as he continued, “- aye, there’s the rub..”   

I have gravitated towards philosophic thinking as I age. Upon reflection, I think this is true of any older person. We all seem to be governed by a set of self-imposed rules, a  ‘personal philosophy’, a set of guiding principles that we live by. It influences everything from what one says, the steps one takes, to the possessions that surrounds one at home. In general terms, a personal philosophy will keep a human being in a safe sphere of operation familiar to them. There is some comfort and logic to this. Yet, dogma can end philosophical growth very quickly. Dogma replaces learning and advancement, if we are not careful.

I have written before, my philosophy gives me no escape to a self-imposed comfort zone. At this point I tend to be aligned to the Stoics. Seneca wrote, “I judge you unfortunate because you have never lived through misfortune. You have passed through life without an opponent—no one can ever know what you are capable of, not even you.”

February found me deep in a mental misfortune on a scale I had never experienced. It was the strangest thing: physically I was very fit; but mentally I was in the middle of pyrotechnic confusion. I suffered long bouts of inertia after poor sleep and moments of anxiety, unbidden. A sunny day would pass by beyond my window and I could not step outside, apart from my run – usually a short one on such days. Yet, on grey, mentally draining, rainy days, full of sudden rage, I would throw myself out to run a fast 10 miles. I needed help, but I was waiting for that help to come to me. In my heart I knew I would have to act as there was little contact from my professional life. “Aye, there’s the rub…” once more. I needed positive mental energy for that.

To charge my battery, I looked at my recent running progress towards my June 100k. In February, although not focused on a strict schedule, I still ran every day and even managed to break a couple of my course records on longer runs. Also, I hit 100 miles once more, meaning that for 15 months in a row I had accumulated three-digit training miles – a new record. My running streak still stands and is now at 429 days. I am more than holding my 2021 fitness, so have a good base to focus on coming races, if I can get my mind better. I’ve pencilled in the Goodwood Marathon on 2nd April – I hope for a 4:25 there to show I can maintain a steady pace at longer distances.

Ultimately, I am Racing the Reaper Man to Ultra, but have yet to structure my training properly. It took February to show me I needed to become proactive in seeking help – waiting for help was doing me no good. I needed my mind back to its strongest. Thus, I made the decision to start some CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy). The spark I needed came in the form of Ukraine’s brave resistance to Putin’s invasion. It showed me that, when the chips are down, you have to fight – so I acted before I could be overtaken by symptomatic apathy and inertia. The call, answered by a great chap called Jordan, was the best move I’ve ever made. From that 45 minute call, I felt in control at last. 

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy – an overview

CBT is based on the concept that your thoughts, feelings, physical sensations and actions are interconnected, and that negative thoughts and feelings can trap you in a vicious cycle. (This is indeed where I have been trapped.) It aims to help one deal with overwhelming problems in a more positive way by breaking them down into smaller parts by being shown how to change these negative patterns to improve the way you feel. The proactive and dynamic thing for me is that, unlike some other talking treatments, CBT deals with one’s current problems, rather than focusing on issues from the past. It will give me the ability to identify practical ways to improve my state of mind on a daily basis, and structure a long-term strategy to manage any future pressures.

I’m afraid, as a male, I have seen this route as a sign of weakness in the past. This is common enough, but my Racing the Reaper Man Year proved to me I am not weak. At 65 I am in good order, have nothing to be embarrassed about and I have come to understand fully the unbreakable link between body and mind. I can now view CBT as an injury recovery program. I will write up the affect it has in my next blog post, reflecting Seneca’s words, I hope.

In the meantime I intend to use March as the start of my structured training, with a focus on core strength with Martin Sorenson, and longer runs with some speed work. It is also time to record a full set of stats so I can see exactly where I am. The ones I do have for February are as follows:

• Daily calorie balance 1763 kcal
• VO2 Max average 45
• Average resting pulse 49 bpm
• Total miles 100

Racing the Reaper Man to Ultra: March 2022

February ended with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which coincided with the lowest point of my mental exhaustion. I had been unable to break the cycle of slight improvement, followed by several days of depressed inertia. Rather like Sisyphus, I was in what seemed to be an unending labour, with no hope of release. But, of course, reality takes hold and time does not stop. One reaches the point where even doing nothing is hard work – then there is yet another day to face. I knew my life would continue, so what to do? I wrote some time back that, ‘I gave up once, and nobody noticed.’ In the end, no matter what help there is, one has to take that first of many steps to recovery. After all, what is the alternative? The answer to that is misery. And that misery can be many things, but will be self-perpetuating. Choice always remains.

My illness is fully work-induced. That was a truth I had to accept. Without the expected support, it was up to me to become proactive and take control. After all, I had applied this to my physical being successfully enough, so why not with my mind? In early February, that seemed like a step too much, but by the end of the month I found the help I needed with the start of CBT which is allowing me to step back and rationalise my anxieties. In that one proactive step, a spark of life entered my mental battery. By the first week in March I could see my constant training had kept me very fit, so once my mind started its long road back to recovery, the vehicle it travelled in would be very reliable.

I took stock and noticed a few things that had become helpful or unhelpful habits since last December. This month I started to address each aspect to increase positivity. I will cover them here.

Running

Without doubt, running has been my saviour, right through the various pandemic lockdowns as well as throughout my illness. Last year I maintained basic tenets to reduce my weight and increase my fitness: keeping my balance of calories below 2000; running every day; maintaining my mainly plant-based diet; keeping my monthly running total at 100 miles or more; and having regular core workouts. This had become a habit to the point where I would stick to these targets without much thought. It became my normal way of being. Thus, once I was suffering from burnout, I automatically kept to this baseline. Even at times of absolute hopelessness, this kept me moving. Running, indeed all exercise is the best therapy in the long term. It is a moment of taking control.

In March I started to train properly with a focus on the 100k. The results are summarised at the end of this blog post.

Getting out

One of the main symptoms of my burnout was only leaving the house to run or shop. After the huge, emotionally draining journey to Scotland, over Christmas, I had become semi-reclusive. Yes, I ran every day, but that was solo and mainly on trails where few people would be met. Whilst shopping I always wear a mask – there is now a learnt stand-away-from-others in society, so I remained isolated. Thus, whilst reflecting, I knew I had to start getting out more, not just for necessity. With the CBT sessions helping me to set strategy, I decided to make a couple journeys to get used to being in the greater world. One to Somerset where I set a new course record on a local route I’d used many years ago. Then, later in the month a trip to London, staying the night in Kensington. My Passepartout and I ran in Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, and the trip made me tired, but much less anxious. Little trips away from home were helping my mind adjust to a more proactive future.

Imposter syndrome – the fear of authority

Imposter Syndrome has been written about by greater minds than mine (sic). In my case, being self-educated in most important areas of life, I never had the confirmation of achievement by a father or higher educational establishment. My childhood had been dominated by Christian brutality at its worst, so I had been programmed early on to ‘fear’ authority. I am free of any faith-based twaddle now, but still have that deep-set programming. I have never fully dealt with this, so I’m using CBT to lance that boil. As I recover I am taking charge of my return to my career, rather than waiting for ‘authority’ to lend a hand. They have not in 5 months, so ‘authority’ has become of no meaning for me. I am building this in the most positive way – firm, fair and proactive. In March I applied this fully and have started to regain control of all aspects of my life. After all, fear is only about what may happen – and the variables are astronomically high. Thus, proactivity becomes the key in steering strategy in the way best suited to oneself.

Rage and its positive effects

I survived a cruel childhood. The details are not important here, but it was life-changing. Fear is a terrible thing for any child to live with. In later life this can manifest in many ways, both positive and negative, but it can define one’s future growth. My way of surviving was to develop a ‘rage battery’. I discovered that physical pain can be endured, so gradually I found an armour. My rage battery overcame pain. It remains my ‘impulse power’, (to use a Trekky metaphor). Even at my lowest, this source of energy gave me belief that I would recover, get stronger and overcome the odds. Giving in to violent rage is not good, but to channel it into intellect and cognitive function has served me well.

Fear of statistics – belief in oneself

Just like maintaining good habits, it is easy to stop good habits. My Racing the Reaper Man Year gave me a positive routine. My abiding fear, or anxiety, was finding out that my formula would stop working. Reducing weight was almost straightforward, but would my philosophy and system maintain my final goal weight and statistics? From October I stopped taking weekly readings from my smart scales. Initially I did this on purpose to allow me to rest, but then the fear of what the scales would show took over. Then circumstances forced me to just about tick over until March, this month. I stepped on the scales on March 12th. I had convinced myself I would have ballooned in weight. Yet, there I was – 166.6lbs! Slightly up on my fully conditioned best of last year, but well below my original target. I had maintained a healthy weight by just living my Racing the Reaper Man philosophy! My belief returned, and with it more positivity to train properly.

Staying ahead of the Reaper Man – Choice

I set out choice as the main tenet of what we are. What one sees in a mirror or on the scales is a reflection of one’s choices – it is not an accident nor someone else’s fault. Thus, if one chooses to change a lifestyle to become a healthier, fitter and happier person, it will be done. I hope I am proving it. I have chosen to recover from burnout by understanding what happened and applying techniques to get through. I will now continue to build on my winter’s foundations and move towards my ultra in June with renewed belief. All that is left, is to regain the full health of my mind.

My March transition

CBT was allowing me to see a way of parcelling out each of my anxiety-creating issues, focusing on those that were not really so bad, and dealing with the immediate problems. It was interesting to find out I seem to be suffering from a type of PTSD, brought on by the work-induced pressure I had endured. On March 19th my world turned to Technicolor… after 16 weeks of floundering through the effects of mental illness, I finally reached a point where I knew I was on the way back.

The day was bright and sunny. Mentally, I still had the daily challenge of getting out, so as I faced a 20-miler, with lots of hills, my focus had to be ramped up. I prepared and set out feeling heavy, tired, with a stiff right leg from core work. The hills were huge – I’d miscalculated the climbs on trails over Kingley Vale, got lost on a descent near West Stoke, and plodded lesser hills to the 10-mile mark wondering how I would get back.

Then, at 10½ miles I seemed to break through a barrier. The pain in my leg went, I felt good and, as I turned to see the huge return climb ahead, felt euphoric! A runner’s high? More than that. In that moment my anxieties looked smaller, I felt stronger and the world more beautiful. The climb back over the mighty Bow Hill was tough, but I was even moving quickly on the race-walking bits – those parts of a steep climb where running is near impossible. As I dropped down to the 16-mile point and took on a caffeine gel and an extra bottle of water (stashed earlier) I knew I would recover my mental health. The final miles clipped by at just over 10-minute miles and I got home having covered 20½ miles. Monstrous, marvellous and a defining moment in my year.

This route was easily the equivalent of a flat marathon. That evening I entered the Goodwood Marathon on 3rd April – it had been pencilled in as a training run for months. Now I felt I could use it as a training run without fear. I also firmed up a 32-mile multi-terrain training run for the end of April. The 100k in June seemed more attainable.

Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) would preclude any more longer runs up to the Marathon, but by the end of March I was just about right. Somehow, unbeknownst to me, I had got ahead of last year’s mileage. March was also my biggest mileage month for many, many years – 143 miles. All this without noticing – sticking to my basic philosophy had worked: just do the healthy things automatically when in doubt, then your physical fitness will be there to carry your healing mind when it’s needed.

To sum up March, I would use the word ‘transitional’. I had started taking control of smaller things; this in turn, helped me to have the confidence to take control of greater things.

A thought for the coming month

As you will know religion or blind faith in ideology is anathema to me. The introduction to my partly completed book, Racing the Reaper Man, has this passage in its Introduction:

‘Although I can become philosophical, I am also a stepper-backer. I have found that most debates forever shrink as they focus on the specks of irritation, rather than a logical, progressive overview. Politics, religion and social media are the greatest subjects for speck-focussing, and life can seem like a series of screaming strap-lines as a result. A statement is not factual without proof – proof is not true unless tested – tests are not certain unless repeatable. Opinions are generally strap-lines for lazy thinkers. Humans naturally believe what they want, based on personal bias, so to look at improving one’s life, it becomes necessary to learn to step back. So, for this blog, and its future incarnation as a book, I will step back and write what I know about making life healthier, fitter and better for the more mature person.’

Ironically, I found a passage from the Chinese Taoist/philosophical text that I loved. It is from Chapter 38 of the Tao Te Ching:

‘When Tao is lost, there is goodness. When goodness is lost, there is kindness. When kindness is lost, there is justice. When justice is lost, there is ritual. Now ritual is the husk of faith and loyalty, the beginning of confusion.”

Let not ritual, for the sake of ritual, command our lives. Running is not ritual, it is like breathing, a necessity of life.

• Weight: 11st 10.2lbs
• Daily calorie balance: 1721kcal
• VO2 Max average: 44/45
• Average resting pulse: 49 bpm
• Total miles: 143 (biggest month for years)
• Unbroken running streak: 450 days
• Belly: 30½”

Racing the Reaper Man to Ultra: April 2022

April started with a Marathon. I had run the miles in March, but mentally I was still healing. So, I had two key issues to consider.

1. Could I train through a marathon, without it being the focus, and would my speed-at-distance be even and sustainable?
2. This was also a big test of my mental strength: could I cope with the nerves of competition, and with the crowds?

In the end, the Goodwood Marathon on Sunday 3^rd April answered each of my questions and taught me far more than I had given thought to.

Marathon morning found me full of intense anxiety. Nerves before a race are quite normal, but on this morning I realised my illness had magnified everything. I almost went back to bed and hid. Luckily, my Passepartout was with me for the weekend, so I was calmed down, drove to the Goodwood motor racing circuit and immediately felt better. On a sunny, but very chilly morning, I wore a light T-shirt base layer underneath my Ukraine-flag vest, and warmed up with the others.

I started dead last but soon nipped past the tail-enders to clip out an 8:57 mile. Too fast. So, I eased back and relaxed. At 10 miles I was averaging 9:35s, and still averaging 9:38s at 20. I had set a target of under 4:27:00, but with a goal of 4:22:00 on a good day. After all, I was training through this event. Yet, at 20 miles in around 3:13:00, I did the maths and realised I could get under 4:20! I only had one wobble with a 23^rd mile in 10:23, but rallied and was close to 10:00 for each of the rest. I finished strongly in a new veteran personal best of 4:15:44 (09:44 pace).

Stopping turned out to be the difficult bit – as an experiment I brought along my smart-scales. I stripped down to shorts, weighed myself, then, as I put my clean shoes on, nearly blacked out. Passepartout sat me against a sunny wall and dashed off to find a paramedic. My BP was 90/68, though my blood sugar was normal. After lots of hydration, lying me down and raising my legs I got back to normal and was able to drive home feeling none the worse for wear. I’m still not completely sure of the reason: dehydration; too much caffeine; or imbalance of electrolytes? My blood pressure has remained low, so I’m starting to think my medication for genetic high blood pressure may be in the frame. Perhaps my healthy lifestyle has brought my BP under control and my medication needs reducing?… I will keep an eye on things and talk to my GP.

A good start to April. My CBT continued and my strategy to deal with anxiety was becoming more sound. Yet, I still have terrible flash-back dreams, normally brought on by having to deal with work-related issues. Brazenly quoting Seneca once more:

‘…some things torment us more than they ought; some torment us before they ought; and some torment us when they ought not to torment us at all. We are in the habit of exaggerating, or imagining, or anticipating, sorrow.’

This is what one’s injured mind must learn, or relearn. I am moving slowly down that road. My new aim is to initially confront my work-related stress, but to follow that up by dealing with any accumulated issues that I have pushed aside in that male-dominated macho way.

Spring proper arrived in April. With the sunshine my running seemed to improve a level. I never rested after the marathon, instead completed a 53-mile week which included a trail 11-miler, followed by a week with 3 long runs of 10, 10 and 14 miles.

With the sunny weather I entered a kind of euphoria, running for the love of moving across the countryside, along trails and footpaths. Hills were enjoyed. Finally, after 4 months, my mind was healing. My legs were fine, except for an ongoing stiffness in the right one, and I could now picture me completing the 100k.

On 22^nd to 24^th I tested myself once more in a more crowded situation. I attended Burnham-on-Sea Book Festival as an invited author. It left me tired, but I coped well enough.

The remaining constants of my PTSD are extreme mental tiredness after formal, organised events, and regular flashback/‘flash-now’ vivid dreams. These latter wake me in a panic as they are so real, even to the point of feeling the wind on my face, smelling aromas and talking as they occur. That I may have to live with this is rather disturbing, but at least, once awake, the stultifying effect lasts only for a short time.

I eased back on my training after the first two big mileage weeks, ‘tapering’ towards a planned, hilly 32 miler on Wednesday 27^th. I’d arranged to be supported by my Personal Trainer, Martin Sorenson and my Passepartout.

The course was mainly trails: an initial level 9 miles around the coast, along the road to Chichester, then up the Centurion Way where the climbs started. As I set out, my right leg started to give way slightly, and it held me back a little.

The first big climbs over Haye’s Down, then The Trundle emphasised the issue with my leg, but at 14 miles, in the car park below The Trundle, I felt fine and changed my Hoka ATR6s, to Hoka Speedgoat 4s for the hefty ascents ahead. I’d eaten some chews, but was instinctively relying on Tailwind – it was fuelling me perfectly.

The drop to Singleton was niggling my right leg, but I kept to a steady pace, climbing Levin Down, and passing halfway in good order. The huge climb through Singleton Forest made my leg go numb, but sections of race-walking kept me going. I dropped down to my crew at 19 miles at below 9 minute mile pace, the pain going on tarmacked ground. I filled up with Tailwind, then climbed a mile onto Cocking Down (fabulous name), chased a couple of hares, then dropped to Chilmark, my leg hating the downhills by going all wobbly.

I left my crew at 23 miles, clipping along at 10:40 pace, but cringed at the huge, steep climb over Bow Hill to the Devil’s Humps above Kingley Vale. I was very pissed off as, apart from my right leg, everything was fine, and I hit to the top of the southernmost Devil’s Hump at exactly 26 miles.

Down, down I dropped to Adsdean, met the crew again, but just wanted to carry on as I was fine. I arrived home after 32 miles in good order, in around 6:40:00, perhaps averaging 12:30 a mile. My leg had cost me half a hour, but it wasn’t a severe injury. I was happy with the day, felt very good, just a bit tired. My weight was the same as when I started! Frequent pissing in hedges showed my hydration was right. A small blister on my left, second toe indicates the need of some judicious taping, and I should have used poles on the big climbs – lessons learnt.

Subsequently, I found out the obvious. My Iliotibial Band down my right leg had been niggling since last October. So, I found a series of 5 exercises to perform daily, and the improvement was immediate. I jogged a mile the day after the 32, then ran a coastal 4¾ miler and felt fine, just lacking speed. I ended the month with a big 170 miles in total, and had successfully trained through a marathon and a purposely brutal 32 miler, my longest ever run. I still look at June’s 100k in a state of awe, but I should be physically ready for the challenge. That I will be testing my mental strength to new limits, is exciting, to say the least.

The biggest thing in April was my progress to mental health recovery. I have a strategy to resume work on 1^st June – a phased return – and will approach my high pressure job as a changed man. My fear of authority has gone. My self belief is stronger and my will to get wrongs corrected is in place. I have set a date for my retirement next year, so in that time will be working to give my team a stronger foundation, succession plan and a strategy for a resilient future.

However, until then I have May to get through. I’m now well enough to take a holiday. Not from running, just from my cocoon of safety, my home. Time to test myself 1600 miles away, run on some hot, hilly trails and recharge my healing mind completely. Racing the Reaper Man is a lifelong commitment to which I intend to stick. The alternative is mediocrity, beigeness, stultifying comfort and misery. Onwards into May and my adventures on ancient Ikos…

April selected statistics

• Weight: 11st 9.8 lbs
• Daily calorie balance: 1574 kcal
• VO2 Max average: 44/43 (Garmin seems to adjust down with age…)
• Average resting pulse: 49 bpm
• Total miles: 170 (biggest month for years)
• Unbroken running streak: 490 days
• Belly: 30½”
• Typical blood pressure: 121/66 (my lowest readings since hypertension was diagnosed)

Racing the Reaper Man to Ultra: May 2022

After rounding off April with a 170 mile total mileage, I entered May planning to maintain my fitness on my first real break since I became ill. I was testing my improving mental health by flying away from my safe cocoon, my home, to ancient Ikos, the final resting place of Achilles’ father, Peleus. The modern name of this fabulous island is Alónnisos, jewel of the Northern Sporades, floating in the wine-dark Aegean Sea. With the 100k looming on 11^th June, I had to get the balance right.

The only thing preying on my mind, was the continuing issue with my right leg. I knew I’d carried this problem with me through the winter, and it was getting steadily worse. Looking back at my diary for last October’s 50k, I could see the start of it where I noted:

‘My right hamstring had been tight behind my knee joint, so, even as I settled into 10:10 pace, I was far from happy.’

As my mileage increased, the more the leg was either giving way, or going numb. During last month’s 32 miler, it had really hampered me, so I was hoping a month of careful, lower distance runs would get me through. But, as we know, hope is not an answer – it is the last thing to do, after training and fixing injuries.

Travel day was long. We had to kill 6 hours in Skiathos Town waiting for a rescheduled hydrofoil, the Flying Dolphin, so we parked our bags at the Sol Levante Taverna and pottered about until the final half-hour. There was a 400m walk to the Flying Dolphin pickup point. Passepartout had a bad shoulder, so I carried both non-wheeled expedition bags, banging one into my right knee many times. I thought nothing of it. We arrived at Patitiri, had a mile run, then drifted into Old Ikos.

I ran well in the first two weeks, but my right knee started to swell! A bruise was evident – I’d  damaged it in Skiathos (time to buy travel bags with wheels!) Alónnisos is a great island, though there is very little flat ground. My plan was to make the most of the hills and trails, peaking with a 10-miler in the final week and carrying my strength with me to the 100k. The first week was a slow build up with a 6-miler over very steep ground being the biggest run. I was so strong on the hills, but my knee was stiff and my right ankle was giving out on the downhills. The second week was 26 miles of hot, rugged trails, including a circuit of 7 miles taking in the notorious Killer Hill of the Alónnisos Challenge 31k, which I’d run in 2018. Again, I was strong on the hills, but my leg and knee were no better, even with some remedial exercises and cooling in the kiddie’s pool. I was in trouble.

By the third week I’d decided that I needed to reduce my mileage to my version of ‘resting’. Apart from my 40^th anniversary of logged running, when I managed a big 4 miler up the huge climb to the Chora threshing circles and back, I dropped my other runs to a mile a day. We found relatively level ground at the defunct reservoir, a circuit of which is a mile – perfect, and a fabulous place to watch birds at the same time. Even so, we had also been walking between 20 and 27 hilly miles a week, so my leg was far from being rested. I got home knowing that my Race to the King 100k was becoming more of a burden to carry.

Once home, I started to ice and compress my knee, which finally showed signs of healing. I’d invested in a gel pack I can keep in the freezer, a brilliant piece of kit. On the last Wednesday of the month, I had a heart-to-heart with my PT, Martin Sorenson, who pointed me to a local sports physiotherapist, Ricky Lidbeater of Livebetter Physiotherapy. I was fitted in to his busy schedule on the following Saturday and met a really great professional, and nice chap. The prognosis was not damning, but roughly as follows:

• My knee injury was separate to my other leg issue – the blows I’d suffered made it swell, this being the knee’s natural way of protecting damaged tissue. With ‘rest’ ice and compression it would heal.

The issue with my right leg was the product of two things:

1. My lower back was tight on the right side, impacting my nerve that referred pain through my glute to the hamstring behind my knee – the original injury. This was cutting off the signal to my muscles to say ‘run’, on occasion, thus the odd giving way feeling in my leg.
2. This was being exacerbated by a very tight right calf, leading to a swollen Achilles. These two issues were feeding off each other, so were not getting better, and the whole thing would be magnified on rough trails, particularly downhills.

I knew I could probably coax my leg over 50k, but by then I’d be pretty crippled – in the 100k, with the hills over the second half, I would probably damage myself beyond logic, and probably DNF. Ricky said it would be unwise to run it. On the plus side, I was given exercises to carry out, instructions to follow and also I could continue running, as long as I didn’t go beyond 10 miles, and that only occasionally. I quickly made up my mind to withdraw from the 100k and get fully fixed and fit.

After some pretty deep, but impressive massage on key areas, I was sent on my way feeling much better. The beast was off my back. Ricky and Martin would devise a weekly program for my regular session and, in between times, I would be doing various calf raises, foam rolling and icing to ease my calf, reduce the pressure on my Achilles and get fully fixed.

My running streak reached an unbroken 521 days by the end of the month, and by not being very sensible, just stubborn, I put in enough miles to get to 100 for May, and to make 18 months at or above three figures – another parallel streak. I was already planning some autumn ultras, but for the time being would be wiser with my 65-year-old body. After all, there are no spare parts for this 1956 model, so servicing is the only option.

May was also the month I had to prepare myself for returning to the workplace. The big day is 1^st June. I’m still not sleeping too well, and still get terrible dreams, PTSD style. It is a difficult mental illness to come to terms with, but I will overcome it all. I can honestly say I have never been happier than on a few of the days with my Passepartout on Alónnisos and since. Real big, happy days. A happiness I’ve not felt since I was 5 or 6. This shows me the CBT sessions are working – that I’m having a further series shows how poorly I’d been. I also know this should never have happened to me, so I will be rectifying the root cause. The Alónnisos trip showed I could cope with crowded settings, for a while at least, but I still get tired after intense events.

‘Coping mechanism’ – I’ve reached the point where I no longer want to ‘cope’ with recurring mental issues, including those from childhood. You see, I don’t get depressed, in the pure sense of the word, but suffer from extreme anxiety. It is this anxiety that is hard to carry, long term. Thus, instead of coping, I have started to ‘deal’ with it. That means, to me, excising the root cause and leaving it behind. We tend to voluntarily carry our historic hurts, sleights, grief and sadness with us. Instead of memories, they become barriers to freeing emotions. All religion, ideology, politics, strictly set tenets and biases are like this – they blinker one’s logic. So, for me, those moments of absolute happiness are a sure sign I am finally breaking my own barriers.

So, I’m still Racing the Reaper Man to Ultra, but the next big races are a little further down the line. In the meantime, I’m getting new knowledge about injury recovery – something else that will go into Racing the Reaper Man. If I’m lucky, I can show early decisions about recovery over bulling through races, can make a huge difference to longevity. After all, older age should mean a gathering and application of learnt wisdom, not a repetition of youthful mistakes. I will now start pulling the book together, set up the required chapters and start writing in earnest.

May selected statistics

• Weight: 11st 11.6 lbs (up a little, but still very stable)
• Daily calorie balance: 1974 kcal – my highest since I started this. Care of holiday and lower mileage. 
• VO2 Max average: 43 (Garmin continues to adjust down with age…)
• Average resting pulse: 51 bpm – red wine in Greece has raised it a bit.
• Total miles: 100 (stubbornly getting to the ton is my minimum, if I can.)
• Unbroken running streak: 521 days
• Belly: 30½”

June’s Blog post can be found here and is also the start of a new page: Racing the Reaper Man Forever

In February 2025, 34 months later, my journey to Ultra resumes…

Racing the Reaper Man to Ultra: How do you run a 100k?

Recap, 27th April 2022…

…Up ahead I could see the long climb to the top of the South Downs. The Reaper Man was well behind me now, but my right leg had decided to give him a chance. This was not new – I’d been ignoring the injury’s effects for more than a year.

I’d already covered 15 miles from the coastal trails at Nutbourne, up the Centurion Way, over the Trundle and down to my crew – my Passepartout (now wife, Ange) and my great pal and Personal Trainer, Martin Sorenson. A quick change of shoes, from Hoka ATRs to Speedgoats, a refill of Tailwind, and on the trails to Singleton. My body was fit. Heart and lungs and muscles fine. You see, I’d decided that strengthening the muscles around the injury would nullify it. A brilliant concept – what could possibly go wrong?!

Just three weeks before this 32-mile training run, I’d completed a 4:15 marathon at Goodwood. I was in good shape for a 66-year-old veteran, running faster than all but one stalwart above the V50 category. However, I knew I could have been faster – my right leg had kept giving way… What an odd position to be in. My fittest ever, in real terms, yet carrying a long-term, chronic injury which was not quite going away.

Beyond Singleton the big climbs lay waiting. I’d deliberately placed the hard trails in the second half of the route to simulate my goal – the Race to the King 100k. Levin Down was the first test – my right leg started to give way again. This was the odd thing, I had no real pain, except my Achilles – which I thought was normal for a runner of my age, by the way. My leg would just briefly disappear from my brain’s circuitry. Then, I was okay again.

I was now going uphill through the Singleton Forest, having to resort to race walking in deference to my leg, cresting the hill of Heyshott Down somewhat bewildered, having covered the mile in over 15 minutes. I turned west, and ran down to my crew at the Hilltop car park, covering the ground below 9-minutes a mile. I felt great. I’d covered 19 miles and felt full of running. Yet, it was here I began to realise my strategy of shoring up an injury and ignoring it was reaching a predictable conclusion.

Leaving my Crew, I scaled Cocking Down, then turned to race downhill to just beyond Staple Ash Farm. This is where the full impact of the injury finally hit me. I couldn’t run downhill on rough trails. My right leg was numb and my foot seemed detached. It wouldn’t land securely on the uneven ground. By the time I’d reached my Crew, I was crestfallen. I stretched and limbered up, then headed on, running at a reasonable 10-minute mile pace on the smooth, tarmacked surface, wondering how I could feel so full of running, yet be breaking down at the same time.

My resurgence lasted until the brutal climb up Stoughton Down and over Bow Hill to the Devil’s Humps at Kingley Vale. My Garmin showed exactly 26 miles at this high point. It was mainly downhill to the coast from here. My leg was no longer mine to control, and no matter how well I felt, my journey to race 100km came to a crushing halt as I bimbled home. I’d covered the 32 miles at an average of 12:45 minutes per mile, practically one-legged. Pretty good, considering my age and the tough route I’d chosen, but I knew it was over. It was time to face facts – I needed to rest, repair and recover, no matter how long it took.  I dropped out of the Race to the King shortly after.

At the same moment, I’d lost the final chapter of my coming book, Racing the Reaper Man – A guide for the long run. More of that later.

34 months later…

Sometimes life gets in the way of living. From that 32-miler in April 2022, to the time of writing, February 2025, my world changed completely. The only thing related to running was, I finally listened to Ricky Leadbetter, my brilliant physio, and let my body repair. Everything else was a rollercoaster of extremes.

I’m 69 years old later this year. How the hell that happened is beyond me. I was 18, blinked and 50 years disappeared! I’m sure most of us above 60 (or even 30, 40 or 50) will know that feeling. We often look back at old photographs and wonder how we got to our now. Well, that is time. From then until now, is time travel. And there’s the rub – it is a continuous forward journey along a varied trail of highs, lows, hell and high water. From those pictures in dusty albums, or instantly posted pictures on social media we tend to grin through reality, giving the idea that happiness is constant. We tend not to project sadness, heartbreak and fear. Uncertainty is avoided. The only certain thing, however, is that our long run through life will not end well. Fear not, it doesn’t have to be that way on our journey. Being knocked down is inevitable, at times, it is our response to the travails of life that is important. Let me explain…

My own view comes from 68 years of living life’s journey. I’m a rebel. Not in the rootin’, tootin’ hollerin’ way, but against the way society and culture inflicts faux reality upon us. I hate imposed lifestyle models. I despise the imposition of ideology, mythology and the new tendency for our species to embrace a type of self-imposed dementia, driven by begrudgers with instant access to that intellect-challenging drain, social media. Conversely, I love the way social media can be used to bring colour, hope and humanity to our lives. As a tool, it can be used beautifully, or can be weaponised. It is the minds behind its use that determines what you are, and what you will become. Without learning, adjusting and setting positive waypoints ahead, it is possible to become the living dead by stopping, withering and waiting to kark it. Thus, I rebel against self-imposed stupidly, dogma and age-based defeatism.

My last 34 months have been a lifetime in themselves. I will be as candid as I can be, here, as my aim is to throw a light onto how real life is multidimensional and that behind every snapshot in time, is a person on that roller coaster. To reach February 2025, the following events befell me:

• Burnout wrecked my mental health, leaving me with agoraphobia, PTSD and a damaged immune system.
  
• There was one moment when suicide seemed the only option.
  
• I have had to fight to expose hidden breaches of law against a large government organisation, which has taken 3-years to be accepted and acted upon.
  
• The affect on my immune system was catastrophic, and meant I contracted a virus every couple months up until the end of 2024.
  
• I’ve had severe prostatitis – at first diagnosed as cancer.
  
• I’ve undergone a colonoscopy and waited for 3 months to know if I’d developed cancer.
  
• I’ve had skin cancer removed from my chest.
  
• It took 18 months to recover from a long-term injury.

As I waded through this, the following happened:

• My sister-in-law died and my brother was hospitalised.
  
• My son was in a coma for a week.
  
• He died the following year.

More positively:

• I retired.
  
• I married my Passepartout.
  
• I’ve recovered from injury.
  
• I’ve entered a 50k in April.
  
• I’ve entered a 100k in June.

My reason for laying this out before you, is that I want to show that life can be brutal, aging can increase our travails, but if we choose, we can still live life to the full. I’m no more special than any other human. What I can get through, anyone can. Grief, joy, sorrow and laughter are all pieces of the jigsaw that make us what we are. How could I deal with so many new sorrows? I found advice, no matter how well meant, differed alarmingly from one source to the next. So, being me, I decided to figure things out for myself. I aim to share this with you.

Friday 28th February 2025

… after covering the 5½ miles of mixed terrain from home, I reach West Stoke. I turn and start the big climb to Stoke Clump. The seemly gentle slope is relentless, but I keep running with short strides, ignoring the urge to deploy my carbon fibre poles, strapped to my pack. The climb becomes severe in places, so I race-walk and run as the effort levels demands. Over the top and the wooded bowl of Kingley Vale is before me, but it is skirted by my old nemesis, Bow Hill.

I run down the muddy trail then start up the ever-steepening slope of Bow Hill. I deploy my poles – the first time I’ve used them in anger. I’m now 7 miles out on this brutal run, my legs are strong, but tired and my confidence is low. I race-walk the insane bits, but reach the top to the place where, 34 months earlier, my leg was finally giving out. Yes, I’m panting like a steam train, but my legs are fine. I’m in the middle of my longest run since then – 14 miles of trails and hills. I’m doing this a couple weeks earlier than I’d scheduled, but I was never patient, so why not see what happens on this monster run? I’m not liking the poles, so fold them and return them to my pack.

I turn west and trot along the ridge to the Devil’s Humps, Bronze Age barrows overlooking the deep bowl of Kingley Vale. I’m 9 miles in and feeling bloody knackered, but solid. More trails and hills, then down the long haul through the woods to Adsdean. I’m lacking speed, but am well ahead of the pace I’m looking at for April’s 50k, and we’ll up on my projected 100k pace for my race in June. I cover the ground quicker across the lesser slopes and trails home, averaging 11:45 pace for the whole route.

I’m back! Finally, after so long, my body isn’t broken. Now all I have to do is get enough training into my legs to have a chance to finally start and finish the Race to the King. Making a come back at 68, after so much pain, requires a certain amount of eccentricity, bloody mindedness and, dare I say, unrequited desire.

So…

….how DO you run 100k? The immediate answer is, I have no idea! I’ve read every relevant ultramarathon book, watched scores of videos and scrolled the Interweb until my mind went blank. The fact is, you don’t know until you’ve completed one, as far as I can establish. Upon reflection, there is a certain insanity quotient involved. There has to be, hasn’t there?

Of course, I couldn’t leave it there, as I’m already fully signed and paid up to compete in this year’s Race to the King, so these next few posts will show you what I’m doing, why I’m doing it this way and the philosophy behind my endeavours. This newer series of blogs will finally lead to a book, which will contain nothing but the application of my own experience and lessons learnt, with no flannel. Before I can write it, I must first of all get through that 62.14 miles.

February Philosophy – Giving up is an option, but don’t…

I’m haunted by this verse from a poem by Philip Larkin, called The Old Fools:

What do they think has happened, the old fools,
To make them like this? Do they somehow suppose
It’s more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and drools,
And you keep on pissing yourself, and can’t remember
Who called this morning? Or that, if they only chose,
They could alter things back to when they danced all night,
Or went to their wedding, or sloped arms some September?
Or do they fancy there’s really been no change,
And they’ve always behaved as if they were crippled or tight,
Or sat through days of thin continuous dreaming
Watching light move? If they don’t (and they can’t), it’s strange:
Why aren’t they screaming?

Bloody hell, Larkin! He was a bit curmudgeonly in his later work. Yet, he had the habit of hitting a nail squarely on its head. To me, getting older is one thing, giving in to old age is another. Being 68 is something I had no experience of, until I got there, so, as I noted above, I’ve decided to work it out for myself.

For me, I cannot conform to giving in. I tried it once, and nobody noticed. If one is content to reach a perceived old age – this can be as young as 40, 50, or 60 – and become the culturally accepted elderly, so be it. By this, I mean:

• Acquiring the uniform of sensible clothes, figure disguising tops, and saggy-arsed trousers.
• Getting rounder, redder in the face and wearing one’s hair like everyone else.
• Getting louder about politics, shouting at the telly and being worked up by misunderstanding the word ‘Liberal’.
• Only reading things that supports one’s personal bias – regardless of it veracity.
• Shouting down anyone who threatens the norm.
• Hoping everything will be alright without working towards giving yourself a fighting chance.
• Using other people’s failures to justify one’s own inaction.
• Finding stairs daunting.
• Not trusting a fart.

If I find myself getting close to any of the above (apart from the very last item on the list), I would start screaming! Thanks, Mr. Larkin.

Becoming fit, being healthy and embracing exercise will change one’s life. With running, I’ve discovered that aging doesn’t mean giving up, but training smarter. After recovering from injury, I’ve adjusted my running mileage, added core strength and stretching exercises, and embraced recovery.

Yes, I’d been getting it wrong in some areas after I reached 60. Recovery is definitely key. After a period of heavy exercise – long runs, speed work, core sessions – what used to take one day to recover, might now take two or three. My muscles, joints, and connective tissues don’t bounce back as quickly, which means training has to adapt. It’s that old chestnut: listen to your body instead of blindly following rigid training plans.

So:

• First. Do add strength training. Muscle mass will naturally decline with age, but strengthening the core, arms and legs will mean it can be delayed, reversed even, to a point. Stronger limbs and stable joints will reduce injuries.

• Second, adjust your mileage and intensity wisely. Feel happy about inserting a lower mileage week during a half-marathon, full marathon or ultramarathon build-up. Focus on recovering after quality sessions such as tempo runs, hill workouts, and strategic long runs, to build endurance without overloading your body. (Cross-training can help keep one’s cardiovascular fitness high i.e. – cycling, swimming, or rowing etc.)

• Third. Yep, give your body more time to recover. Sleep becomes even more critical as you age—seven to nine hours of deep rest will make a massive difference in recovery, performance and energy levels.

• Lastly, with core work ensure mobility exercises are included. Inflexibility becomes more common with age, but stretching, foam rolling, and yoga can help keep joints and muscles elastic. A gentle warm up before a run, and good stretching session after a run will help avoid injury.

At 68 I’m not the same as I was when I first began running at 25. In those 43 years I’ve had to adjust, often learning the hard way, but even at my lowest never really given up.

How I’m training for 100k – January & February 2025

I’ve lost speed. Although my running streak remains intact, 1528 days and counting, my runs over the last couple years have been low key and low mileage. At 65 I was covering 50k at 10:15 per mile, and 5k in 25 minutes, but now, at 68 and post injury, I’m having to be patient. 100k is not about speed, but endurance of body and mind. Thus, I’m concentrating on strength and making sure my long runs are mainly on trails. Speed will follow.

So, in January I doubled my monthly mileage to 85, with 2 long runs of 10 miles. February’s mileage grew to 101 miles, culminating in that hefty 14. They were big hills, too. Every week I have a hard, one-hour core strength session with my great pal and Personal Trainer, Martin Sorenson. I follow this with a series of 60 metre sprints. These latter test my flexibility and power. If you’re in your 7^th decade, there is a fine balance to attain if one is to attempt to run ultramarathons. Work-rest-recovery. Everything pivots on rest and recovery, before more hard work. My increased mileage has made me tired. I often don’t sleep well enough to recover. Then, the key runs become harder. Thus, I will work on sleep quality.

My aim in June’s 100k is to hit one of three goals. If everything goes wobbly, 16+ hours will be okay. If I stay in good order and run at the level I am now, sub-16 hours should be achievable. If I have the perfect day – let’s be brave and look at 14 hours, 59 minutes, 59 seconds.

How do you run 100k? A dear pal, Sarah, has already completed a couple of 100k races, including the Race to the King. Her answer to the question was a very accurate, “You don’t, you walk part of it!” Quite! In the end it’s just putting one foot in front of the other until it’s over. Giving up is always an option, but don’t…

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