a journey of a thousand miles begins…
Ok, it’s not 1000 miles. But this is definitely the single step that might get me there one day.
I’m going to tell you the story of my journey to running 100 kilometres. To some people that might not sound like much. To others, it might sound like a hell of a lot. To me it is somewhere in the middle. Somewhere in my mind I know that I could probably, just about, keep moving for 100k. But running it? Maybe. Being able to run it in under 20 hours? That’s going to be tough.
I write this opening blog roughly twelve weeks out from the date that I have pencilled for the MacLehose Trail. the MacLehose is the longest trail in Hong Kong. It stretches 100 kilometres, in ten stages, from Sai Kung in the East to Tuen Man in the West across the entire territory. And it’s 4800m+ of vertical gain. She’s a beast! The FKT for the MacLehose is an absolutely insane 10hr 38min but most humans are happy to go sub 20hr. That is my goal.
Being twelve weeks out puts it somewhere around the end of March but the date is arbitrary. We‘re in covid-world where times and dates are really important. There are few races, events, charity walks or even that many people on the trails so I’m not aiming for a particular race nor am I hoping to avoid a particularly busy weekend. I picked the last weekend in March for two reasons; 1) it’s a good amount of time from the start of the year and so I’ll have ~ enough time to prepare and 2) it’s about the latest in the year I can do it before it gets ridiculously hot here.
My training is only just restarting after the Christmas break but so far, so good. I’ve tidied up the nutrition somewhat and have dropped ~5kg since 4th January. I’m hungry most of the time but it sure has made those hills a little easier :-) I have another few kilos to lose to be at my optimal running weight of around 95kg (stress my optimal weight) but I’m not too worried about that given the amount of mileage I’m going to get in between now and the end of March.
My training schedule looks like this;
I kick off with a slow build of time on my feet, increasing my distance from ~40k/week up to around 60k/week. Then I step up into the 80k/week range and finally 100+k/week. The blue runs are my recce runs. I’ll be running stages 1 & 2 in week six, stages 3, 4 & 5 in week seven and then 6, 7, 8, 9 & 10 in week eight. More on the stages in a couple of weeks. In weeks nine and ten I’m going to be running the Hong Kong Trail (again) and the Lantau Trail (for the first time) before a chill week (week eleven) and then the MacLehose Trail at the end of week twelve. Let me know what you think!
My goal for this weekly blog is to update you on how I’m going while also keeping myself accountable to actually put in the work. Hopefully when all is said and done I’ll have documented a success story by April.
I’ll tell you a bit more about myself, my motivations and longer term plans in upcoming blogs.
Thank you for reading and I hope you decide to stick around for the journey. I guarantee that it will not be boring!
Chris
