Druid Challenge - Muddy Funsters

[andygates]

Well, I made 20 miles before all the wheels fell off my wagon.

It opened in thick mist (and stoats hunting bunnies) and the first half was decent: everyone was walking the hills and saving their energy, so my strategy wasn't out of place. When the mist lifted it was only to allow proper rain.

Halfway through, around the White Horse, my right knee (o Judas knee) went sproing. After some pissing and moaning, and some experimenting, I was able to carry on to the next checkpoint with a mix of walking and some weird short-step running called the "Ironman shuffle".

After that, things froze up more and I was in walk-or-die mode. The next few miles were weird, a single file of knackered walkers in a stark hilltop-and-mist landscape: it looked like the pogrom scenes from Fiddler On The Roof. I was expecting Cossacks to come riding out of the mist.

...and that was followed by a few miles of wallow through churned mud, and after that - with the finish on the horizon, dammit, my other knee went and I was reduced to shuffling like an old lady who needs a poo. At under 1kph (and occasionally in tears) there was no way I'd reach the end before the end of the day, so I had to call my minions and get helicoptered out.

Gutted that I DNF'd.

Happy that I did my longest run ever, and did an epic bloodyminded carryon. Kit was perfect, etc etc.

This one is not 'unfinished business'

So what went wrong? Let's start with trying to scale from 10k to marathon in ten weeks. That was optimistic. It was based, if I'm honest, on my experience with cycling where you can do that. Of course, on a bike, you don't carry your own weight, and a bike that will do ten miles will do a hundred. On a run, you do. It's more important to do close to race distance. In addition I wasn't at race-weight, so I was carrying more - but that's secondary.

I'd trained offroad up at Woodbury, but not in the weird clingy chalk mud that the Ridgeway has. That stuff was like a rink and at times my shoes clogged and I was reduced to hilarious mincing. The knees didn't like that. Rain, cold - that was fine. But wallowy mud really hit.

What's with the knees? Flexibility! The old short hamstrings mare up when extending the leg, and the grumble spreads until any torsion (like correcting foot position in mud) is quite ouchy.  With repetition, ouchy gets to "unable to bear weight" and it all goes wrong.  Descents were brutal.  That right knee's betrayed me before - time for some proper flexibility work, alas.  

Photos are here! 

Comments

[teahisme.livejournal.com]

Have you had your knees looked at by an MD? I'm sorry to hear that you didn't get to complete. Better luck next time for better weather and less clingy knee wrenching muds. I hope you feel up to snuff soon.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

They'll heal on their own. It's not the first time they've gone - though it is the first time they've both gone, normally I pack when one goes because the race is over. This was always a challenge to complete, so it was different.

[teahisme.livejournal.com]

Still they might be able to refer to you physio to strengthen them for future races.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Sports-specific physio is one of the things that the NHS sucks at (it's outside their brief, really). Thanks for the reminder though; I'll ask at the uni gym and at work.

Cold packs are chilling in the freezer (that quarter-mile shopping trip took half an hour!) and I have better therapy: sci-fi and mince pies. :)

[teahisme.livejournal.com]

chocolate releases endorphins... endorphins = less pain. Therefore the best therapy is chocolate!

That is logic that is. :D

[thudthwacker.livejournal.com]

Sorry you didn't get all the way to the end, but I tip my theoretical hat to your gumption. I mean, I couldn't have gotten as far as you did on two good knees and flat pavement. And I'd have called for medevac moments after that first sproing.

...I was reduced to shuffling like an old lady who needs a poo.

I really wish I hadn't read that while eating a blueberry muffin. I managed not to fire any of the delectable fruits of the Vaccinium corymbosum through my nasal passages, but 'twere a very near thing.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Nasomuffin projectiles? My work here is done.

I normally bail when something goes sproing. Every time, I beat myself up over whether or not I wussed out, so this time I got sponsorship. When the sproings happened, I was keeping myself going by thinking how to explain to the sponsors that I DNF'd. Without that, I'd have packed at CP2 where my Igors were waiting.

[despaer.livejournal.com]

Good effort. Give's a call when you fancy doing some bike riding (of the stop-and-eat-cake-on-the-way variety this time).

[bicycleslut.wordpress.com (from livejournal.com)]

Andy, it's quite clear to me that you're absolutely fucknuts crazy to even attempt that sort of expedition. To get as far as you did shows an astounding amount of grit and determination.

Come the Zombocalypse, anyone putting together a crack team of hardmen to band together and fight the undead onslaught would be well advised to beat a path to Exeter and seek you out.

Pain is temporary. Glory is forever.

The knees will heal.

(although I suspect that the old lady/poo imagery will persist longer than you had originally intended...)

[andygates.livejournal.com]

I can haz commode?

Tell you what, though: the knees were basically a mechanical: equivalent would be "I though the front mech was good but haven't used the granny ring in months - oh, crap" as the chain throws. I need to change my bodyfettle routine.