The last four weeks have been an exciting and at times challenging experience, taking on three races of progressive difficulty as part of a longer series of races building into the world cup, with a number of wins and a podium across races in France and Central Europe.
The highlight of the trip to date is the universal language of running and visiting the running communities around the continent. Getting through day to day and getting your point across when you speak English in countries where there are no first English speakers its tough. There are few social interactions that aren’t slightly awkward or difficult, particularly as you rack your limited vocabulary of a few hundred words to try to understand someone who has spoken it their whole life and knows tens of thousands. The tours and the touristy parts are great, but the running events and meeting new people and some familiar faces every week has to be the highlight.
It is extremely difficult to get to the top in running, but even more difficult to stay there. I firmly believe consistency is the key to successful long-term running, load management and injury prevention. Too often the temptation once you begin to have success is to train harder and harder, more and more until you ultimately burn out. Showing restraint on a day-to-day basis to stick to your plan or even dial it back when you’re fatigued with a broader goal in mind is perhaps the hardest form of mental toughness especially in today’s day and age with tools like Strava giving more visibility than ever before. At this level EVERYONE TRAINS HARD, most people are at the top of their game, they’re National champions, Sponsored Athletes or Mountain goats in their own right. I find it is important to focus on your own performance, not worrying too much about the training of your competitors or any unhealthy methods to improve performance.
Back yourself and run hard, the strategy and pacing of a mountain race is so hard you have to push from the start and keep pushing to the end. Going with the early pace is important because if you get left behind early you have to do a lot of your own work, but equally if you miss-time it early you can be crushed, falling back up to 30 seconds for every 100m on the backend.
Uphill-only racing is awesome, and we need more of it in New Zealand. It is an aerobic challenge unlike any other and it’s just a pure grind on your legs that doesn’t let up. It is a bit of a uniquely European concept because the nations that have higher alpine environments have also invested heavily in infrastructure at heights such as cable-cars, restaurants and chalets. Recovery is also a lot easier just running the up portion of a trail rather than running up and then back down. Running down is hard on your joints plus your feet, calves and hamstrings and can take weeks to recover from.
The travel days have been rough taking long distances via train, plane or taxi. The trains are a revelation though coming from New Zealand where we have shortsightedly forgotten their importance and usefulness at shifting large numbers of people quickly and efficiently. My big learning from the travel days has been to always eat when you get the opportunity on a travel day, because tight connections, long journeys or lack of food at some locations can mean you often don’t get a next opportunity till much later in the day, by the time you are already feeling very hungry and cranky.
The trip to date has required a lot of sacrifice, hard work, and a little loneliness, but the enjoyment and love of the sport has kept me going and pushing hard. I can’t wait for what the rest of the trip has in store, and the increasing levels of competitiveness as I reach the World Cup circuit, which will no doubt bring some highs and lows to.