Merrell off-road Wildman – Discovering a new pain threshold….
A few weekends back I re-entered the world of duathlons after a 10 year break by taking part in the Merrell Off Road Wildman. Little did I know what I was getting myself in for….
I do a bit of running to keep the lungs alive and I can do a respectable time for half marathon, but both of these seem very mild in comparison to the Merrell event that was so hard and so full on that I couldn’t walk down staircases for three days afterwards. Thank goodness we have lifts at work…pity we don’t at my flat : (
To give you an idea of just how tough it was check out this race report: http://humanrace.co.uk/news-merrell-wildman-saturday-23rd-january-2010--... It turns out that this was by far the hardest in the whole series. No wonder I reached a new pain threshold.
I had concerns that I wouldn’t be able to do the race midweek. A reoccurring knee injury was playing up, but thanks to seeing my acupuncturist James Thirlwall www.mtbworks.com (acupunture is amazing – I can not recommend it enough), plus another sports massage from Humphrey Bacchus and a lot of self massage with Mason’s Dog Oil it seemed to hold up for the day. The best thing is that now my knee is feeling fantastic. Maybe I should put the body through this sort of torture more often.
The course was set out on army training territory – Alarms bells should of gone off in my head. It started with a 12km off road run over sandy hills that included a section wadding through knee-to-waste high FREEZING water, followed by a 20km mountain bike ride and then another 6km run.
I started the run in high spirits but within 500 metres I was freaking out after seeing the long trail of people in front of me scrambling up an extremely steep hill, down the other side and then again up yet another climb that had people on their hands and feet crawling. This was all within the first kilometre. I tried to pace myself but having a competitive nature this doesn’t always go to plan and I spent the first 6km with my eyes clued on a girl around about 1 minute in front – I paid the price later for going out too hard. Going into the second lap I got confused as to where I was actually sitting overall as a few women passed me, then a few more and they seemed to be running at a incredibly fast pace –surely they can’t be entered for the whole duathlon? ‘excuse me, can I please have a rope to attach to you?’. I found out later that the individual runs were also taking place at the same time, which would explain why they were all motoring past me so fast!
After an 1.10 of wadding through sad and a hand completely numb from the river crossing I made it onto the bike where the cramp set in. I had a good pre-race breakfast and I rarely get cramp, so I think my body was suffering from the epic run. My TORQ squeezies were the saviour and after demolishing two the cramp vanished and it was time to put the hammer down and make up some lost ground on the run, but the sand was at me again and it was chain suck all the way. Every couple of minutes my chain would jam up and I would have to throw it into granny ring to get things going again. This wasted so much time. At least the downhill sections made up for it. I could definitely see a big improvement in my descending after a winter of cyclocross racing and the MTB skills course I did back in October. I’m still not a speed demon but its nice to feel confident cranking it down a hill rather than having the brakes on or having a massive stack.
Off the bike (legs feeling like jelly) and onto the final 6km run. Some serious self talk is now happening as I feel like all energy has been zapped out of me in on the bike.. ’come on Gen you can do this, really you are loving it..’ It was the slowest time I have ever done for 6km clocking in at 46 minutes. My legs were so weak that when I went through the river the second time they almost gave way, but the intense chill of the water reminded me that it wasn’t worth hanging around for more than a few seconds.
Never have I been so happy to see a finish line, and what surprised me even more was hearing ‘congratulations, you’re the third women home’ – I thought I was wayyyyy down the field. Plus I walked away (well more like a limp and hobble ) with a free pair of shoes and some prize money. Not a bad day at the office after all.
Big thanks to Jim McConnel for introducing me to the Merrell Series. Jim came 2nd overall (machine) and thanks to Pete Goodwin for the lift down to the race. Pete also had a strong finish in 6th place.
I would also like to say thank you to the MERRELL organisers for giving me the chance to experience such a hard core event – It makes riding bikes look like a piece of cake.
