After a disappointing running year 2023, I decided to explore as many races and distances as possible in 2024.
Even though I won the 24-hour Mad Chicken Run in September 2023, overall, I was disappointed. I caught Covid-19 for the first time in March and canceled my start at the 100 km German Championships. And because it took me so long to regain endurance, I also decided to defer my entry for the Race Across Scotland.
The sudden and challenging end of my relationship and an exhausting work schedule left me exhausted and unmotivated to sign up for more races toward the end of the year.
But as the old ultrarunning saying goes, “It doesn’t always get worse.” And so, I traveled to Bremen on March 16th, happy and excited to race again.
I was also excited to get to know more of my fellow teammates. Even though I have been a running club member since 2021, I hardly knew anyone.
I found it hard to find the time to join the weekly tempo training and was generally too shy to get more involved. I was still self-doubting and felt I didn’t belong to this group of athletes.
The weekend in Bremen showed me that I did.
I had a great trip to and back from the race with two teammates, enjoyed a nice dinner with many others, cheered on during the race, and had lovely conversations afterward.
The race was exactly what I hoped it would be: a great training run for the Race Across Scotland and a beautiful weekend with friends.
Going into the race, my body and mind were tired.
I didn’t have any goals or ambitions for the 50-kilometer race. I saw it purely as a long run in my weekly training. I didn’t taper or even reduce my kilometers during race week. To the contrary.
On Monday, I did my weekly Monday morning kettlebell workout, ran 25 km on Tuesday, 21 on Wednesday, 25 again on Thursday, 20 on Friday, and took it super easy with a 9 km on Saturday before the travels.
I also slept terribly the whole week, contributing to work stress. Finally, the night before the race, I hardly got any sleep because the hotel where we stayed was located on a bustling street, and I was not used to sleeping with so much noise all around me. I woke several times and finally got up around 04:00, my usual wake-up time.
To say my body and mind were tired on race morning is a severe understatement.
Gut problems - again.
My gut was giving me some issues during the week as well. Maybe due to the high stress, it shut down. I tried to help move things along by taking 2 magnesium pills on Saturday. Usually, this helps, but I still was constipated on Sunday morning.
I tried not to panic, but I did.
The last thing I wanted was to have a disaster during the race. So far, all of the few races I have done have involved me getting stressed about my gut.
I have been having problems with my gut since I was a teen. Still, the only diagnosis I got so far was “irritable bowel syndrome” and gastritis. I am grateful it’s not some bowel disease like Crohn’s or Colitis.
However, I am still figuring out how to start a race, feeling confident that I won’t suddenly need a bathroom. To my surprise, none of my fears materialized during the 50 K race. I experienced some cramping due to my full stomach, but that was it 😎.
This was the first race where I didn’t starve myself the 2 days prior so that my gut would be empty and where I still had a good race without a sudden need for a bathroom.
This was a significant confidence boost for future races, especially for non-looped courses, where portable toilets or bathrooms aren’t as readily available.
Consistent, albeit slow, racing.
I didn’t eat breakfast on the morning of the race because I still hadn’t practiced eating breakfast before my morning runs and didn’t want to try anything new on race day.
However, I took 1 Honeypower energy gel (use the code nicole20 to get 20% off your first order😉) around 1 hour before the race started. I also had too much Espresso 😅.
Since I only had 2 energy bars, 1 banana, and a falafel burger the day before, I again started the race in a severely under-fueled state. So it came as no surprise that the first lap felt hard.
The course was beautiful – 8.333 km around Lake Werdersee. It was a bit hilly, very windy, and pretty cold initially. At the start of the second loop, I grabbed a Honeypower gel from our aid station and decided to see how the first three loops would go and then go all out on the last 2 rounds. I also took a gel in round 3 but ate it only in round 4. I had no big highs or lows during the race, but I felt my energy was very low.
Sleep deprivation and underfueling were noticeable.
In round 4, I ate the honey gel and grabbed a cup of coke. I felt unwell not shortly after the coke and think my body doesn’t handle it well. I remember how I felt hyperglycemic during the Mauerweglauf just after I had coke and how I always regretted the few times I tried caffeinated gels on my training runs.
Maybe my body does not handle caffeine with simple sugars well.
On round 5, I got a headache. This wasn’t the first time I got a headache during a race. In fact, I had a slight headache in almost all of the races. During the 24-hour German Championships, it went away after the temperature dropped at night. I also had a headache during the Mauerweglauf and the 24-hour Mad Chicken Run – both times, it disappeared again as temperatures dropped. During the 6-hour run in Zhedenick, however, it got so bad that I had to stop before the 6 hours were up.
I am still trying to find out what is different in racing from training because I never get a headache when I train, no matter the weather or how much I drink or don’t drink.
In fact, I rarely ever get headaches in “everyday life.” So it’s pretty odd that I get them so often during races.
The headache slowed me down slightly in round 5, but not enough to severely impact my pace. Overall, I ran a consistent pace, with some speeding up and some slowing down but never changing speed significantly in either direction.
In loop 5, I took another honey gel and let a few curse words escape my mouth. Then, I suddenly felt a sharp pain in one of my right foot’s toes. I have a toe with a bad toenail that I taped before the race, but something was not right. I walked a few steps, then jogged again and found I could still run on it.
Just 6 kilometers before the finish, I didn’t want to resort to walking it in. So, I did the opposite. I repeatedly told myself, “The faster I run, the sooner I’ll be done,” and mustered up all the energy I still had left to run as fast as I could towards the finish.
It felt glorious, and I knew I could have finished this race much faster. My last kilometer was my third fastest one.
I still had something left in the tank.
Post-race thoughts.
I finished the race in 04:34h and achieved a 5th place finish in my age group.
On the one hand, I was disappointed that I was so slow.
On the other hand, I was extremely fatigued and didn’t fuel nearly enough before and during the race. On top of that, I hardly ran after the Mad-Chicken Run in September, and I let myself go, both in training and in terms of nutrition. I gained too much weight over the winter months and still hadn’t lost all of it until the race.
Considering all of this, I am happy with the result. I am confident I can run much faster on these short distances, especially when I go into these races rested, well-fueled, and at my ideal racing weight.