I have always enjoyed short distance stuff. However the longer the battle the better for me.
There’s something quite different about lining up for a race when you’re not actually there to race it.
The number says 30km. The course has around 2,000ft of elevation. Everyone around you is pinning on numbers, warming up, talking tactics and getting ready to hurt.
But my plan was simple: three hours of easy effort.
That was the time I had in my head before the start. The goal wasn’t to chase a time, empty the tank or see how fast I could cover the course. It was a training day — a chance to get a solid block of time on the legs, take on a little bit of climbing and descending, practise fuelling and effort control, and come away feeling like I could have carried on.
That sounds simple enough.
Until the race starts.
The first few kilometres were about settling into the effort and reminding myself why I was there. It would have been very easy to get swept up in the atmosphere and start treating it like an all-out race, I have made this mistake many times and for sure will again.
And to be honest, there were moments when I did exactly that.
Every so often the competitive switch flicked on. Someone would come past, a climb would appear in front of me, or I’d find myself feeling good and thinking, let’s see what happens here.
So I turned the heat up.
Not for long enough to derail the day, but enough to get some proper work in. A harder climb here. A quicker section there. Push when the legs felt good, then settle back down and return to the bigger plan.
Those moments were probably some of the most useful parts of the whole run.
Training doesn’t always have to mean running slowly from start to finish. Sometimes it’s about learning how to change gears, how to push without going too deep, and — perhaps most importantly — how to back off before a hard effort becomes a problem.
The course itself gave plenty of opportunity for that.
With roughly 2,000ft of elevation packed into 30km, there was no shortage of climbing. The descents gave you a chance to open the legs back up, while the climbs demanded a bit more patience. It was exactly the kind of terrain where managing effort matters more than obsessing over pace.
And the support around the course made a huge difference.
It was a really well-supported race, and there’s something about having people out there cheering, aid stations ready and that general race-day atmosphere that makes a long training run feel a little easier. Even when you’re deliberately holding something back, you still get pulled along by the energy of the event.
The interesting thing was how comfortable the run felt as it progressed.
I wasn’t chasing the clock.
I wasn’t trying to prove anything.
I was just moving, climbing, descending, eating, drinking and occasionally reminding myself that this was supposed to be training.
And then the finish line appeared.
I crossed it comfortably well before the three-hour mark I’d had in my head.
That was probably the biggest takeaway of the day.
I had gone into a 30km race with around 2,000ft of elevation expecting it to be a substantial training effort, but I hadn’t needed to go anywhere near the well to get what I wanted from it. There were some genuinely hard moments, but they were moments I chose rather than moments I was forced into.
I still had a hell of a lot left.
And that was exactly the point.
There’s a strange satisfaction in finishing a hard course and knowing you could have pushed much further. In a normal race, you cross the line wanting to know how much faster you could have gone.
On a training day, sometimes the better question is:
How much more could I have done?
For me, the answer was plenty.
The 30km gave me the time on feet I wanted. The elevation gave me the climbing stimulus. The harder sections gave me a chance to test the legs. The race environment gave me that extra bit of pressure and excitement.
And finishing comfortably before the three-hour target meant I walked away feeling like I’d banked a really valuable session without compromising what comes next.
It wasn’t about winning the day.
It wasn’t even really about the finishing time.
It was about doing a big chunk of work, staying controlled, having a few moments of fun when the competitive side inevitably showed up, and finishing with confidence rather than exhaustion.
A few moments of turning the screw. Three hours in the back of my mind.
And a finish that felt comfortably within the plan.
Exactly the kind of race I wanted.
Mike
UltraEnduranceLab