Readers’ Blog: What I think about during an ultra distance race

After being awoken from a dream by my alarm at 5:15am, it took a while for it to sink in that it was race day.

I felt remarkably calm as I went through my normal pre-race preparation routine and we arrived at the track in Magaluf with plenty of time spare to tape up my foot. I’d had a flare up of an old injury in the two weeks before the race and it seemed sensible to give the tendons a bit of extra support to hopefully prevent it becoming an issue during the race.

As I stood on the start line my main thoughts were; would the tape on my foot hold; would it cause blisters once my foot got hot; would I have to stop at some point to remove it; would the injury flare up and cause me to slow or pull out? It was all about the foot.

To be fair it had been my main obsession for the two weeks prior to the race as I went though daily massage and joint mobilisation sessions to get it back in the best shape possible. So it was understandable that this was what occupied my thoughts at the start of the race. I was sure that if anything would make me think about stopping it would have to be the foot.

I was confident I had done enough training and that I had the physical endurance to complete the event, but I was less sure of my psychological capabilities when it came to 250 laps of one track.