At the end of 2015, soon after I had started running, I decided that what I would enjoy the most, and would perform best in, would be long 100+ races. I’m pretty sure the rationale behind this doesn’t make logical sense: I’ve always been slow, hopeless at sprinting, not much better at middle distances, therefore I must be good at long distances. I’m pretty sure that doesn’t necessarily apply, physiologically, but I stuck with that belief. I didn’t want to dive straight in to 100km or longer races though, I wanted to gradually work up to longer and longer distances, and never be racing with the primary goal to finish, but always to feel ready to compete.
So in 2016 I focused on shorter distances, and ran six races between 40km and 50km. My last race of the year was my best performance, so decided I was ready to increase the distance in 2017. In that year I ran six races between 50km and 120km. I still felt like I had a lot to learn about the 100km distance, so ran another three races of that length this year, before deciding I was ready to step up to 100miles.
And that was my preparation for the Hume & Hovell 100 miler. I’m not going to go into detail about the race itself, except to say it was not the most painful race I’ve done, but was undoubtedly the most satisfying. The race itself was reasonably straight-forward, and I can now say the axiom seems to be true – a 100mile race is really an eating competition with a bit of running in between. I started running slowly, slowed down as little as possible, ate as much as I could as often as I could, tried not to fall over, and 19 and a half hours later I crossed the finish line in first place. When my world started to go dark, literally and metaphorically, my usual mantras weren’t working, but a new one came to me – “This is my only opportunity to win my first miler”.
Thanks coach Gary and Run Crew for helping me be ready for this and believing in my post CCC recovery!
Lastly and most importantly I want to thank all my support crew. I don’t think it had occurred to me before this race exactly how self-indulgent something like this is. I spent an entire day doing nothing but eating and running. And at the end I got to feel the immense high of not running any more. But to enable me to do that, five large and one small person travelled for hours and then spent an entire day driving, feeding me, changing my shoes, socks, clothes, encouraging me, and providing the motivation to reach the finish line. I’m not good at expressing gratitude so I’ll take the opportunity here – thanks Annie, Rose, Alex, and Stella.
Extra thanks to brother Doug for pacing me for 20km in the dark (his second longest run ever) just hours after crushing his own 22km race (his longest run ever). And special mention to girlfriend Dominique for her support just hours after beating all the boys in the 50km race (her longest run ever).
Huge thanks to the organisers and volunteers that put on such a great event at the Hume & Hovell Ultra.
Pictured: Andrew McConnell racing at this year’s Hume & Hovell Ultra 100 Miler.
