Tricks and Tips Backyard Ultra

So the River-Run backyard ultra has got their website sorted looking “pretty flash harry” and run director Josh Lloyd is pretty excited about it this week. I thought we would talk about some tricks and tips to get into the backyard and what you might need to set up get started and go big (or little). I think it’s important to point out that if you can walk a parkrun (5km) in 40 minutes with a little bit of effort you can complete the Yard of the backyard (only 6.7 km) and you have a whole hour to do it. So if you are worried about whether you can front up in your local, just get amongst it and give it a go, you might surprise yourself about how far you can actually go! And it’s actually quite fun to do a few laps and surprise yourself because you’re in a community of people, walking and running at the same time. There’s a lot of really cool experiences out there to be had if you’re willing to push yourself beyond your perceived limit.

So what do I need to do to be successful?

The most important thing to ‘backyard’ is to be organised, as that has a direct impact on how long you can go or what you can try to achieve on the day. On the first day of a backyard is there is a huge community of people at the start/finish line (or Coral), so there’s lots of help around and people that can help you as you begin to struggle and to see you on your way. But it’s always important to have all that stuff that you might need.

Nutrition and Water

Of all the things that you might need throughout the day, water and nutrition (that is food, lots of it) are by far the most important. I have lots of food: snacks, lollies, chippies, sausage rolls and party pies. That’s what I like to have but everyone is different. I’m a Tailwind (TW) guy so each lap I get my fuel from 250ml of that and a couple of Clif Bloks. At the end of each lap, I have another 250ml of TW and I have something savoury, that’s where the sausage rolls come in. It’s good to clear the pallet of the sweetness.

If all that sounds weird let’s back it up a bit and talk about food and our bodies. The problem with food and running long distances is actually the stomachs’ ability to keep working properly if we don’t keep something in there (often a problem for the first few hours) because we don’t think we need it. When we are running at a level that’s a bit above what normal our body redirects all the blood away from the stomach to the muscles that need it while you’re running. This seems obvious, however if we now decide to eat and we start putting food into this stomach its going react quite badly because it’s not in a position to digest anything. Essentially, it’s not working and it’s really hard to get that stomach working again once it has stopped.

So, the important thing with nutrition and food is to be taking stuff on board right from the start. I like to eat and take the nutrition that I’m using throughout the day about an hour before, so I’m always topped up. If I’ve eaten well the night before and I’m in a pretty good nutritional state, my glycogen levels are nice and high, I shouldn’t need to overdo it from the start, but I want to be putting food in throughout the day. I like to take a very controlled amount of nutrition in the form of fuel every hour (that’s very prescribed) and at the end of each lap at my crew give me a piece of real food, be that a sausage roll, roast potato, piece of quiche so I get real food into the stomach. I love the savoury food as it balances out what’s been going in (a sugary fuel) and I think that works really well for me.

It’s important however to work out and know what works well for you, but also to have a real variety of food availability. Because once you have run further than you have run before, what you want to have will be very different from what you think you wanted before you started.

I would recommend having a variety of food available to you. You don’t need a heap of food, but variety is the spice of life. One of the beauties with River-Run backyard is supermarkets not far away so there should be enough time for your crew to whip away while you’re out on a loop and either resupply from the supermarket, bakery, the pizza shop or the fish and chip shop. I remember deep in my first hundred kilometre race I had a hankering for ginger ale and I was lucky enough that one of the stall owners closed up, zipped into town and grabbed a bottle (I now always have Ginger ale in my chillibin). Also think about those types of drinks/food that might just make you feel good. They might have no known nutritional value. They might have no real benefit at all except making you feel better. The fact that at your moment of need you had something that you wanted might be the ‘thing’ that made another loop happen.

The importance of Clothing and equipment

Make sure you’ve got enough clothes to get you through. You need some dry clothes and some warm clothes. Can you protect yourself from the wind, from the rain? Have those things to make yourself as comfortable as you possibly can throughout the day. It’s not like running marathon where you start and finish with what you’re in. Once you finish the loop you are next to your gear, so you have the opportunity to change - take that opportunity to be comfortable. Have 2-3 pairs of shoes so that if your first pair doesn’t feel right (or they don’t suit the course), you can change. That’s one of the big things if you are going to go deep, to make sure that you’ve got enough equipment. Have a chair that you can lean back. You can get your feet up and look after yourself. It’s better to have and not want than to want and not have. If you’ve got a few dollars to throw around hit up His and Hers Events so they can do all the set up for you. They are awesome and I used them at my last event. A lot of people have gazebo’s set up with the chair and with the table, you should too.

Do I need a Crew

So what does a crew look like? Crew could just be mum handing you some stuff every time you come to the end of a loop (you are not allowed support out on the course) or could be like I had a Kings Backyard in Whangarei where I had three people sharing the duty in shifts, all following a very scripted list of what they needed to for me to get through the race. So your crew could be whatever you want it to be, but if you want to go do deep I would advise a dedicated crew that’s really focused on you and you alone. There is a quote that I picked up from someone the other day which suits here:

You must outsource common sense. You cannot trust your own brain. Your body is so much more powerful than your brain believes. Your brain will find any weakness. It hyper inflates issues and narrative. It controls the ego.

So your crew does a little bit more than hand you water and change your shoes. They are part of your common sense that keeps you on track.

Before you have your mother as your crew to go long, consider that your mum wants to look after you - too well. She wants to make sure that you’re in a really good state, but what we’re trying to do in the backyard is extend ourselves and go someplace not very easy. What our mind is doing is trying to tell our body to stop and our mothers are an extension of our protective system that wants us to preserve our life. So, you need a crew that is strong that understands your goals and will keep pushing when you do not think you can push any longer. Your crew actually does a really hard job, there’s quite a bit of detail to attend to and actually not a lot of time between you going out and you coming back from the loop. I suspect they will be as nervous as you are about you getting around on time so know that they’ll be probably planning on you being back five or so minutes early and then if you run a “hot” lap that you will be back a little bit earlier. This does cause some stress so think about how hard it is going be on your team and make sure your crew has got enough stuff to make the race comfortable.

If you are only planning on 10 laps and its daylight out, that’s all well and good, but what happens if you get to 10 laps, and you want to go into the night? That’s when you’re really going to need your crew sorted, so be realistic about what your plan is and what your possibilities might be. Make sure your crew are prepared for that. Also, that they have got enough stuff to look after themselves because if they are not comfortable and having fun, they won’t be back to help next time.

Pacing a lap, the million-dollar question.

I will talk a little bit about my experience as a 48-year-old slow runner. I’ve got few laps next to my name, but pacing is my downfall. I pace my laps generally by walking about 2 to 2 1/2 km of each loop. I’ve got it wrong many times. I’ve run the wrong part of the course. I’ve run too quick. I think you want to walk a good chunk of the course and this because when I run, I like to run at my comfortable pace not an incredibly slow pace. It’s about being as efficient as you can and when you can’t run, walk strong, walk with purpose and get around the loop.

I set my watch to Average pace (Lap average pace, Lap distance and Lap time), which lets me know exactly where I am on the course. How fast I’ve been going so that I can average the goal pace. I like to lap about 54 minutes, this gives me four or so minutes at the end of each lap just sort my stuff out and go again. Because I’m a little bit older, my body takes a little bit longer to get going so I don’t like stopping for too long and that means I’m getting around the loop and about 8:15m/km. Initially (if I’m walking) that’s going drift up a little bit, then as I run through the middle of the course that’s going to come down a little bit and then I can manage my last little push on the lap knowing about how fast I have to go to get through.

A wahine legend gave me a piece of advice that your fast lap should be more than five or six minutes faster than your slow so, your hot lap doesn’t need to be blistering but just needs to give you a little bit more time at the end of the lap to change a pair of shoes, go to the toilet or do something extra that you might want to do. Some of the pro’s smash out a blistering hot lap at 35 minutes. There is no need to do that. I think the cost of doing the fast lap to your body in the long term is higher than it needs to be, it’s about managing your effort through the day. Obviously, the younger faster people will be able to run a little bit quicker more often and have a relatively short rest and get a lot of benefit from that. Understand your body, what you are capable of and the reward/benefit from going fast or slow. There is plenty of time on the lap, a surprisingly a large amount of time to get around the course.

As the day goes on and we move to night we need to understand the night is going be a little bit slower, especially if you haven’t practised at night with a headlight (practice running at night when your body actually wants to be sleeping) running random loops around the forest. If you have not practiced that you need to understand that you’re going to slow down a little bit and you need to adjust your pacing plan throughout the lap to adjust for that darkness. You’ll have really good understanding of the loop by the time we get through more than 10 hours of daylight before the night loops so you going know roughly where you are on the loop and how fast you need to go.

When you’re out on the course you need to run your own race, if you’re running with mates and you are only wanting to do five laps, you’re probably going be okay. If you’ve got some goal in your head that you want to reach a certain distance, number of laps, and you’ve got a friend that is not into that distance that can be problematic. You can either run too fast and expend spend too much energy and then not be able to reach your distance or you might run too slow, and then time out, or not get back in time to do the things that you need to do to get you around the next one.

There are plenty of people on course, you don’t need to run with your mates. There will be other people throughout the day that you can run with. If you’re both planning on walking the first bit of the course then you can walk together then if you’re planning on running a bit of the course then off you go, there is probably be someone else that you can have a yarn to that will be running the same pace as you, the same strategy and so spend some time with them if it suits. But as soon as it’s not going to suit you, you need to move on and run your own race.

Something that I’ve always done wrong when I’ve done a backyard is let my ego take over. I start running well, I start running strong and then I start running too fast. Or I get on a loop and see someone else that’s been passing me on the loop, my inner ego and challenging voices tell me I can run with that person and then I expend too much energy end up not achieving what I want. I burn matches in the wrong part of the course at the wrong time of the day and it ends up costing (about five yards at my last backyard). So run your race, put your ego aside, it is a “slow and steady wins the race”.

If you look at all of the backyards and look at the champions you will know the Anthony’s and the Sam Harvey’s of the world have a very consistent pacing strategy. They only run fast if it’s going suit them (a sleep or shower or something like that), otherwise they trying to loop at the 56 minutes window and you’ll see them on course taking it easy, nice and relaxed and just getting the job done. Relax, your race probably starts maybe 3/4 of the way to your target, it’s really easy and then hard, and the thing is backyard gets hard real fast. That’s the classic saying ‘It’s easy until its not”.

Managing the body

You need think about temperature management. Hawkes Bay can be quite warm, but can still get relatively cold through the evening. At least the change from days to night can be quite high. We know that we lose a lot of our heat through our head, so we need think about headwear. We don’t want to get too hot. If it’s a bit breezy sometimes a good wind-break jacket is enough. If you are going to be walking quite a bit of lap quite a warm jacket (puffer) or something to wear while you’re walking is a good idea, so you don’t cool down too much. During the day you don’t want to get too hot so if you need to carry some ice or ice (ice blocks!) at the end of the lap. Just make sure we are in the right clothing, so you don’t over or under heat.

We also probably need to talk about feet and how to look after your feet. Some good shoes will guard against a lot. Come and see me at the shop get some good shoes, I always like a shameless plug, (and a plug for our named sponsor Shoe Science) but your feet need to be in the appropriate shoes for the course. If it’s a really nice build up and it’s been clear for a few days and it’s nice and dry, you can probably get away with a good road shoe, maybe not a slick but something like a Clifton with a bit of treat on the bottom to give you a little bit of that would be fine.

A little bit of wet stuff on the course however it’s going be slippery and muddy for quite a bit of the tard so you need a good pair of shoes that can get you the grip. You also need to be aware that we’re going be doing a little bit of running on the limestone. Shoes need to have a little bit of comfort, once again it depends how deep you’re going. If you’re doing only a few hours one pair of shoes is probably enough. If you’re planning be going for 25 laps (24 laps=160 km) then you might potentially want a couple or three pairs of shoes to change into. If nothing else just to change how your feet feel and change style, a change the rub points could make the difference. Make sure that you comfortable and have the traction that you need.

Think about the socks. Make sure you have a change of socks, sometimes even just a change of socks can change the mindset and help you go a little bit deeper. As we go longer, we must manage out feet more. If you feel a stone in your shoe, you’ve got time to stop. STOP and get that little stone out. We quite often when we learn to run and we’re running 5km or so at a time and we get something wrong with our feet, we run it off as we can handle a little discomfort and don’t to any real damage. We haven’t run a particularly long way and we can tend to our feet and then tomorrow’s going be okay. If you’ve got that little problem and you’re going to run 100 km, I’ll tell you - if there’s any problems with your feet are going be multiplied by 10 and then they’re going to really cause problems and quite often that thing that stops you! Look after your feet, take the time, change your socks often, take shoes off at the end of the lap and keep them dry and look after your feet and toes.

Mindset

A little bit about mindset, this is probably more important for those that are going go quite long (long to everybody means something a little bit different depending on how much experience you’ve got how much running you’ve done). Goal setting I think is fundamental to having success, but it’s not about just setting a goal it’s setting a goal that is realistic to you and achievable. The way I like to do it and I’m no expert as stuffed up a few of these, is to have your immediate minimum goal. That’s the goal that you’re definitely going out to achieve. It’s the goal that you’re not gonna stop until you get there and it’s going be quite achievable. Then you have a goal which is the target that you would really like to hit (10 hours, 50km, Marathon,100km, X- number of loops). It’s important that that is not too far out of reality. If it is far out of reality the moment it gets hard, it’s too easy for your subconscious brain to go “I can’t do that, that’s too hard, it’s time to stop” and once your brain says it’s time to stop there’s nothing that conscious mind can do, you just won’t be able to continue. It sounds really autistic but that’s how the brain works.

Then I recommend having a stretch goal, that “everything is going right today and I’m having an absolute stellar day on the hill, then this is what I’m going for” target. It can be bold and audacious. It is about how you couch that goal in your subconscious mind and how you prepare your mind to do these hard things. So - nice easier achievable goal that’ll be really cool knockoff and a goal that’s a little bit of a stretch that you’re going have to work pretty hard for and challenge yourself to some significant level (but don’t make it too far out of reach) and then have the everything is gone right, reach for the stars kinda thing.

Preparation and training

Once you’ve planned you goals you need to prepare for them. If you haven’t done any night running on trails with headlights in the cold when you want to sleep, then getting through that night is going be that much harder. So if you’ve got goals that involve going into the end of the night make sure you get out there and practice. Get up in the middle of the night, go out to the mountain bike park at midnight and do a few laps in the dark by youself, cold - tired - hungry if you want to go long. If you haven’t spent the time running on tired legs, then simulate, or at least partly simulate that.

At the end of the long hard day at work when all you want to do is get home sit on the couch have a beer and have dinner, completely unmotivated - Get out on a course and run the most boring laps that you can (it might be a three or 4 km loop around home and just count that as a lap). I don’t think it’s significant to actually do the course or do the distance but, get round the lap have some food, get round the lap again and have some food and do it at times when your body doesn’t naturally want to. I think it’s a really good way of preparing yourself. if you have good weekly milage in your legs - great, but I think it’s more important that your general fitness is high. I subscribe to the theory that if you are going to run a marathon you need to have done it and training (at least cover the distance in a double day). But I think for Backyards, because of the speed of the run and the distance, I don’t think it’s feasible that you do that, so make sure your general fitness is high if you want to go a long way

Backyard Etiquette

Really important note is don’t be a dick. Don’t push people out of the way, don’t hold people up. You might not think that you going to go a long way, or you might surprise yourself and be out there for a long time. Someone has to be the Assist so you never know who that person might be out there, and that person may be the one to help you get to your goal or just to help you on that hard lap when you really need some assistance, so make sure we make lots of friends out there. The only people that are really going to start racing and really start getting in mind games with each other are probably the last two, but history says that those last two (by the time they get deep in the race) have spent 40 laps running together and they’ve already decided how they’re going to finish, and they (probably) have already decided that it doesn’t matter who wins as long as they both get as far as possible together. Look at the people around you. Make sure you make friends enjoy the conversations and be prepared to help someone else who is struggling through a lap or make the friends that are willing to help you through a lap. It’s one big Backyard family out there.

I think there’s so many more tips and tricks that you can pick up for out there. If you look at all of the people have gone super deep in New Zealand and you look at their records of backyard ultra, they start with a relatively low number and each time they’ve gone back to a backyard they have added you a significant number of laps onto their record. So, it is something that you the more you do the better you get, it’s very experimental so don’t be disappointed about missing out on what you want and if you are planning on coming back again then you know you’re going do better next time. You’re going learn a whole lot about all that little things that you need to do to get you through and a lot about yourself.

In Summary

I think it’s really cool to think of the weekend not just as I’m running X number of laps and I’m going to go home by 8 o’clock. I think there’s a whole lot of cool stuff to learn at a backyard beyond effort. There are some epic individuals with some really cool stories, doing some amazing things. So, if you can organise it (even if you’re not local) stay for as long as you can through the backyard. We’re expecting it to go somewhere about 40 to 45 hours but who knows these things can all of a sudden go to 50to 67 hours. If you really want to enjoy the weekend, bring enough stuff to be able to sleep overnight in your tent or gazebo with your or come back at certain stages through the night or in the morning to be part of other’s journey. There will be awesome people to meet and there’s plenty of stuff happening at the tent city so it’s quite an entertaining time.

- Coach Kendall

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