Welcome to Episode 15 of my 2022 Training Diaries.
I’m back home in Vancouver where today
I'll be talking about how my race went last week in the republic of Georgia.
So spoiler alert if you'd rather wait until my film series from the race is ready
then you might want to skip this one.
But that is going to take me at least a couple of months to finish.
So you could be waiting a while.
I got back in town Monday evening after about 30 hours of traveling on very little sleep
and I'm pretty jet-lagged.
So I'll be keeping this one fairly brief.
But I will show you some footage,
as well as a bit of a preview
of what an incredibly challenging but rewarding week of racing it was.
I arrived in Georgia back on Friday June 10th.
This gave me about a week to adjust to the 11 hour time change
and to explore the country in advance of the race.
You can check out my episode from 2 weeks ago to see some footage from that,
in case you missed it.
I returned to the capital Tbilisi on the following Friday june 17th
for the race check-in, the briefing, and the gear check on the Saturday morning.
We then boarded a bus and left for camp 1 on Saturday afternoon
where we spent the night before starting the race on Sunday morning.
The race was broken up into 6 stages over 7 days,
starting with a roughly 40 km stage on day 1,
and it got off to a bit of a rocky start.
So I actually ended up running closer to 46 km.
Essentially, the weather turned out to be pretty bad all week,
with thunder showers every day and really thick fog,
particularly on the first couple of days
and really any time that we got up high in elevation,
along with dime-sized hail on one afternoon.
We also had issues throughout the week with overly protective shepherd dogs
and with some of the flagging unfortunately being pulled as well.
Starting on day one, before we could even hit the first checkpoint at the 10 km mark,
I managed to get lost.
I’d been right behind Florian from Switzerland who was in the lead
and we'd actually already managed to take two wrong turns in the fog
before finally losing the flagging for good.
So we continued on for another km or so before doubling back
where we met up with a few other runners who were grouped together in 3rd place
and who were also lost.
So together we searched in the fog for any sign of flagging
for the next half an hour or so
until our group had eventually ballooned to 11 lost runners.
At this point we called the race director
who asked that I use my watch to help the group to navigate back
to where we've seen the last flag and to wait there
for the sweepers, which we did.
So after another half hour or so of waiting in the cold,
we were finally able to get the GPS coordinates
in order to figure out which direction to head in
and then finally were able to regain the flags
and to continue on to checkpoint 1.
So long story short, they gave everybody a time of 1 hour for that first leg
and then started tracking the time again from that first checkpoint.
It’s suspected that someone, or something
pulled or maybe even ate some of the flagging on the course,
likely one of the many cows that we'd seen in the area,
and because of the thick fog, we weren't able to find the next flags
which are placed every 50 to 100 meters like we normally would have.
So a bit of a rough start, but the rest of the first stage went well
and I finished in second place,
just a few minutes ahead of an American runner named Matthew who was in third.
The next day we faced some similar issues
with really limited visibility due to the fog
and it appeared that the kids in the villages were unfortunately pulling some of the flagging there
which, hey, I can't blame them.
They were probably curious and wanted to keep it as a toy.
But the real challenge was with the mud.
The occasional thunder showers that we've been experiencing
had turned everything into a thick, sticky mess.
You might remember that the shoes that I chose for this race
were not exactly designed for that kind of terrain.
Having said, that others with shoes that did have deeper lugs
were complaining that the mud was really just clumping underneath their shoes anyway.
So at the end of the day, I’m not sure that there would have been much that I could have done
and I was thankful for the built-in gaiters that I had on the Salomon S/lab Pulsars.
So I finished again in 2nd place
and was able to put another 5 minutes on mMatthew in 3rd.
Although, I was now already over an hour behind Florian in 1st.
So I realized at this point that his fitness was on another level.
So 1st place was probably going to be out of my reach for the week.
Florian had won the Namib Desert race back in 2019
and I know he's running the 100k World Championships later this summer,
if that tells you anything.
Stage 3 was a really challenging day in terms of the mud
and I actually ended up taking a pretty bad tumble
and landing on a rock right before the finish line
which left me with a pretty big goose egg on my arm here.
I struggled a bit with the altitude as well
as we climbed close to 2,500 meters through a mountain pass.
In the end, for this stage, I only finished a minute and a half in front of Matthew.
So my lead on him for the week was precarious at best.
But by stage 4 things started to finally come together for me.
It was a beautiful stage as we ran through a series of small villages
and we even had some mud-free running on drier roads.
Matthew and I actually spent most of the day running together
until right before the final checkpoint.
But I put another 6 minutes on him on the final descent
where he I think began to develop some knee problems.
Now stage 5 on day 5 was the long stage.
Well, it's the morning of the long stage
and the long march is really for all the marbles.
This is where the race is won or lost.
This has always been my strength and I had definitely been looking forward to it all week.
Unfortunately, the stage had to be shortened from 80 km down to 64.
We were originally supposed to climb back up to 2,500 meters,
past the remains of the Abuli Fortress,
but we'd experienced quite a bit of lightning in the 2 days prior
and there were also concerns about the risks of runners getting lost again in the thick fog.
Our packs at this point were about as light as they'd get all week
and the route ended up being on mostly dry and very runnable terrain
and Florian felt comfortable enough with his lead that he actually decided to run with me
and basically to pace me to my time goal.
And everything felt like it came together perfectly for me
and the time flew by as I practiced my french with Florian.
We had amazing views all day
and I really felt like my training over the past few months had prepared me perfectly
for the stage and that I'd paced it really well all week
in order to capitalize on it.
I finished the stage in 6 hours and 40 minutes,
technically tied for 1st with Florian,
although of course really in 2nd place.
I put more than 2 hours on Matthew in 3rd
and had solidified my 2nd place finish overall for the week.
There were runners out on course until 2 am.
So day 6, the day after the long stage, was actually a rest day
and for me this meant getting back to work
on capturing all of the interviews that I was still hoping to gather for my documentary
along with some additional B-roll and drone footage.
Day 7 was then the final stage
which was really more of a victory lap for Florian and myself in 1st and 2nd.
Although, there was still a bit of competition
between a few of the runners for 3rd, 4th, and 5th place
which was really fun to watch.
This stage was also completely downhill
as we dropped more than 500 meters
over the roughly nine km to the finish line in the river valley below.
We had a big buffet lunch followed by an awards ceremony
before doing a tour of the nearby cave system.
We then hopped on a bus to make the 6-hour journey
all the way back to Tbilisi where I had another day and a half to spend
relaxing, exploring, and celebrating
before traveling home.
So I would say that my week was a complete success.
My nutrition worked out great
and you'll remember that I decided to rely on powdered run food for this race,
specifically Skratch Super Fuel, about 200 calories per hour
and I think that was a really good decision.
It forced me to drink about a bottle an hour
which otherwise I would have probably struggled to do
given the cooler weather
and I never really felt hungry, even during the long stage
where I supplemented this with two Skratch Energy Bars.
In terms of the rest of my nutrition, I think this was on point as well.
My pack was definitely one of the lightest in the race,
weighing less than 7.5 kg, including a total of 16,300 calories
and I was never really hungry,
aside from maybe on the rest day.
But at that point, the race was pretty much over
and so recovery and performance wasn't really an issue anymore.
Of course, be sure to watch the video that I published right before the race
that covers all of my gear and nutrition, if you haven't already.
In terms of gear, I think the only thing that I would have changed
would be to have maybe worn some shoes with deeper lugs
to help deal with all the mud
because I was slipping and sliding around a fair bit
which definitely slowed me down.
I did actually get one blister during the race
after running through one of the many river crossings.
This one in particular was quite silty
so I got a bunch of rocks and sand in my shoes
and in my haste I decided to only dump out one of my shoes and not both
since the Pulsars are actually quite difficult to take on and off
and of course the shoe that I didn't empty out
ended up giving me a blister on one of my toes
which I ended up having to nurse quite a bit during the week.
But otherwise, I think that all of my gear worked out really great as well.
So this week is just a recovery week for me.
The race ended on Saturday and I walked around town a bit on Sunday
and then was pretty much sitting all day on Monday, yesterday
when I flew home.
But today on Tuesday, I will hit the trails for maybe an hour or so of hiking
along with maybe a bit of really easy running,
depending on how my body's feeling.
My legs feel great but definitely I still feel quite a bit of fatigue.
So I know that I need to take it especially easy this week.
And so I'll let you know in next week's video how the rest of my recovery goes here.
This is going to be a really fun film series to put together.
I’ve got a ton of footage that I filmed during the race and afterwards at camp
along with a bunch of additional course footage from the videographer Michael,
along with some beautiful drone footage from his son Justin
and from the event photographer Carlos.
Georgia really is an incredible country
and it's crazy to think that we ran across close to half of it during this race.
And you're going to see it all,
along with some footage from my travels further north before the event itself.
I’ll also be doing a live Q&A with the in-house performance dietitian at Skratch Labs
to debrief a little bit further on how my nutrition worked out
and to go into more depth on how nutrition works for these kinds of races.
So stay tuned for the announcement of the date for that in the coming days.
So give this video a like
and be sure to subscribe if you haven't already for more videos like this
and I will talk to you all next week.