Building Back

The journey to Ultra Trail Snowdonia 100km

Nine months ago, I was playing whiffle ball at a friend’s wedding in the Adirondacks when I tore my calf. I had just finished a run to the fields, I joined a team and a few minutes into play, a pop fly was hit my way. I caught the ball and as I stepped forward with my right foot to throw, I felt my medial gastrocnemius pop in my left leg. I was overcome with pain and discomfort — borderline nausea.

In September, I was really fit. I was coming off a win at High Lonesome, an FKT on the Mahoosuc Traverse, and getting fired up about a fall race at Ultra Trail Cape Town or JFK50. Training was fulfilling and the mountainous miles were flowing with ease. It was a major bummer to learn that I needed a 10-12 week full stop from running to reset this calf and to be able to return to training. In retrospect, 10 weeks of inactivity was likely the longest I have gone without any type of run/endurance training or even a felicitous jaunt in more than a decade.

I’m here two days away from starting the Ultra Trail Snowdonia 100km. It’s currently pissing rain outside. My training has been great the last couple of months. And while I toed the line at the Chianti 73km, I was woefully unprepared for the amount of ascending and descending in that race and I ran my legs off trying to keep pace with the leaders. I dropped at 50km and afterwards realized that was the first 30 mile run or run over 4 hours that I had completed since August. I took that defeat in stride and counted it as successful training. I ended up segueing that run into a week of training in Mallorca, which holy shit, is one of the most beautiful places I’ve visited.

Mallorca is it. Totally see why Kilian named his shoe brand after it.

Mallorca inspired a week with 20,000 feet of vert along technical limestone ridge lines and the beautiful GR222 trail, which I’d love to go back and run in completion. When we got home from our travels, I settled in to a nice routine of solid mid-week runs with vert and then ~10,000ft of vert between two weekend runs. I managed to hit ~20k four weeks in a row and leaned into climbing/descending stimulus. On one Saturday that I ran over 10,000ft of vert, I was pleased that my quads and hamstrings both felt fine afterwards and responded well to a faster 20 mile run with 2,500ft of climbing/descending the next day.

As I prepared to fly to the UK, I looked back at my Training Peaks and the trend lines from the last four years. A couple things stuck out. The data is only as good as the inputs and it’s worth noting that at times I’ve had some funky HR data. Additionally, fitness in Training Peaks is contingent upon being prescribed workouts with an expected effort and then calculated by comparing the actual effort. Six months ago, I wasn’t even running. And in the last six months, we have been very slow to reintroduce workouts and vert as my calf returns to form.

But I do see a steep incline in fitness as I built back from scratch. I also see that the data shows I’m not quite to the fitness level as last summer. This build has been remarkably consistent and paired with the anecdotal data of four strong weeks with vert and little hamstring/ quad fatigue, I’m really excited about my potential for this race. Maybe the graph will show a dramatic jump in fitness after Saturday.

I still have lots of questions and I like working through my insecurities and doubts before a race so I’m familiar with what will surface for me: Is my calf ready? Will this foot pain around my cuboid be problematic? Am I making the right gear decisions so that I’m prepared for 40ºF with rain and 20mph gusts of wind? Am I fit enough to go with the leaders and compete, cause that didn’t pan out for me at Chianti? Have I studied the course and refined my race plan as much as possible?

For me, the beauty of ultra running is the baked into the uncertainty of it. I don’t know what is going to happen. I can manifest and visualize all I want, but come race day, I’m trying to turn a "What if?” into “What is.” What if I go out tomorrow strong and steady and dress warm enough and eat and hydrate even when it’s 30º early on and what if my downhill legs hold up and my ankle feels good all day and by the time I get to the runnable terrain around mile 40 I’m in a good place and I can motor that flowy section and still be in good positioning and spirits coming into Beddgelert and hammer those final three technical climbs and push to the front or separate from the pack in the wind and rain and take Ultra Trail Snowdonia all of the way to the line? That’s a sick what if. Now to make it a what is.

Special shoutout, my best bud Nat Drucker traveled all of the way over here to crew me and race the 25km on Sunday.