100K World & European Championships. The Plan.

MV Princess Danae / The Athlete's Village

I'm expecting this race to be quite tough as the transition from The Spartathlon to now was too short to incorporate some necessary speedwork into my training plan. Experience gained from previous races have taught me that sometimes it's best to approach the start line slightly under trained or under prepared rather than carrying an injury or feeling ill. I did however include short Tempo runs of 10K or less which were run a decent pace and I've worked on maintaining my endurance with regular and consistent runs of 20-30K.

The course invokes a 5K run into a 5K loop to be completed19 times. My plan is to run slightly faster than 5min per K or less than 145bpm (heart rate) which will have me completing each lap in 24-25 mins. Running a consistent pace serves a few purposes including the support crew knowing when to expect me and being able to plan the food and fluid intake. Based on this pace I will be completing 10K in under 50 mins. As always, the bulk of my nutrition will be Powerbar products as this allows me to simply track my carbohydrate intake. The food plan we have devised is quite simple goes a little something like this:

Loop 1: Powerbar energize * 200ml
Loop 2: Powerbar energize * 200ml
Loop 3: Powerbar gel + 200ml Nuun electrolyte.
And repeat.

I will also have Fig Rolls and Powerbar bars available as well as an extra 500ml bottle of Nuun made up just in case I need extra fluids. Nuun just contains electrolytes and it's a better drink than water during a race as it replaces the electrolytes lost during exercise and prevents cramping. Powerade will be available from the race organisers and i'll probably take that every so often for a change of taste. Having a variety of flavours available can make the fuelling a lot easier and even a different flavour of the same product will do the trick.