With all the uncertainty around races, and feeling a little lost, it was great when Ultra X announced their first virtual race. A distance of 14.1km was the target, and with the tag line ‘An odd distance for an odd race in odd times’ set the tone for the race.
Now, I took this seriously, I plotted a nice route, kept it as flat as I could and with the race was scheduled for Saturday. I was ready! However, this was about to come to a grinding halt. On the Friday, I got a text from my flatmate; “Got symptoms and being sent home to isolate”
Damn it… We are now in isolation.
Her first thought; do we have enough food?
My first thought: how am I going to do my race?
A phrase that has stuck with me for a long time, and I remind myself often, is to “Be stubborn about your goals, but flexible about your methods.”
If there is anything I have learnt from running, it’s that sometimes things don’t go to plan, and you need to adjust. Don’t change the goal, change the plan. ( I also wasn’t about the make a virtual race my first DNS!)
Having been recently inspired by many doing incredible lockdown challenges. See @anna.the.runner‘s backyard marathon, or @morningcoffeerun‘s marathon around his sofa, how hard could 14.1km in a flat be?!
So I grabbed a tape measure and started to work out a route and what it would take.
Let’s do the math!
- 14.1km in meters = 14100
- Longest line = 11 meters
- One length = 1282 times
- Looping around the dining table add’s a bit extra, now that’s 23 meters
- That’s 614 laps! (approx!)
So I settled on this scenic route, start/finish line was my bedroom cupboard, out into the hallway, left turn and straight into my living-dining room, around the dining table, back into the hallway, right turn back into the bedroom, a 3600 turn, repeat another 613 times…
Now my counting is not great, in fact, I can lose myself very quickly, how was I going to count 614?
I broke it down further, I can count to 10, surely I can’t lose track of turning at my cupboard 10 times?
So a draw 62 boxes, each box will be crossed off after every 10 laps.
With the plan in place, I was ready for Ultra X Virtual 14.1km version 2!
Let’s go!
Now for some reason, still unbeknownst to me, I thought that running barefoot inside would be easier, and likely friendlier for my downstairs neighbour too, so that’s what I decided to do. Again, how hard could it be?
So as the clock struck 11 am, off we go!
Oh what joy this was! Naive little me was having a great time, this was fantastic, I’m inside, got music playing, water on hand every time I passed the dining table, cheer squad, and gliding along barefoot – serenity! This was going to be a breeze!
After I had ticked off my first box, 10 laps in, I had a mini celebration, and tried to work out how far that was… ok, so 23m x 10, 230m, “oh…” I’m not even a 1/2 of the way round a track?! Ok, keep going.
I had ticked off about 15 boxes when I started to regret my decision to attempt this barefoot. The balls of my feet were already starting to get sore, and running on my forefoot was not something I was used to, and I was only 3.5km in! I needed to change to shoes, and, as this is a race, I was conscious of time, I didn’t want delays!
Now I had thought this might happen, so had socks and shoes resting on the bed, however that was the extent of that prep!
This need to be slick, it needed to be quick, something a formula 1 pit crew would be proud of, so I began to prepare; each time I entered the bedroom, got the socks and shoes ready, little by little, to be set up like a triathlon transition.
We committed to the move; I swung into my room, tapped the cupboard, sat on the bed, rolled on the the socks and quickly tied on the shoes… boom,we were off again!
I suddenly felt 100x better and had a bounce in my step… I could now fall back into my normal running style and settle in for the long hall.
Now it’s worth me now saying, that in my head, the time this would take me, might not be too far off what I would run outside, yes it would take longer, but shouldn’t be that much longer right?
Wrong! When I hit the half way mark, the reality really hit, as 7km had taken around 65 mins! I was sweating bullets, and still had another 7.1km to go! I was also regretting my decision to put so many twists and turns in the route, as my body was starting to feel the strain. To at least counter this a little bit, I would alternate the direction round the dining table, at least I could rotate the pressure from my left hip to my right hip.
I occupied my time by throwing stories onto Instagram and to the WeAreRunners Pacer group as well – after all, if you’re going to do something crazy, share it with your friends right?!
Each 10th time I came back to my bedroom cupboard, I got to tick off another box. It was great to see the boxes start to fill up, and the boxes left became fewer and fewer.
The final few boxes became quite tough, I had been running in my flat now for 2 hours, and I was ready for a beer!
Although my calculations were 614 laps, I decided to round up to 620, just to be sure. Although my Garmin watch was not anywhere near 14km, I just had to trust in the calculations I had done.
2 hours, 12 minutes after starting, I had ticked off the last box. By my calculations I had covered 14.1km in my flat, and completed the Ultra X Virtual Race!
I’m not planning on running around inside my flat ever again, next time, I’ll buy a treadmill!
Running To Feel 
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