IF YOU BELIEVE YOU CAN ACHIEVE – My First Adventure Run – by Laura McElhone

My name is Laura McElhone, this is my story about planning, training and completing my first adventure run. I trained with my Personal Trainer Janet Cox at Fit For Life Coaches.

It all started as a bit of a midlife crisis with my 40th birthday looming large.

I had already entered the Queenstown 10k and was building up my distances very gradually to avoid aggravating a long-standing achilles tendon problem. But I wanted to do something more significant to mark my 40th year.

A marathon maybe, but I don’t like road running. A bit of googling and I found it.

The Routeburn Classic, an adventure run over New Zealand’s famous Routeburn Track. 

The track is 32 Kilometers long and climbs to 1127 meters above sea level. The event encompasses changing terrain from lush native bush to an exposed alpine environment.  There are some aggressive up hill climbs and a challenging technical down hill. The track for the most part is technical in nature with rocks and tree roots all a part of the challenge. The descent back to native forest follows river and waterfalls to the finish line. Wow!

So an idea formed, a ridiculous, unrealistic idea that maybe I could do it in 2016. Over 18 months to work up to it and besides, I would get over the idea in a week or two.

And then I made a terrible mistake.

I shared my flight of fantasy with Janet. She didn’t laugh. She didn’t tell me to look for a more realistic target. In fact, she told me that if I was prepared to put consistent effort in I could do it in 2015,  just 8 months away. We agreed that we would talk about it properly when my 10k was done.

And that was it, that niggly idea wouldn’t go away. Janet clearly had faith in my abilities and she hadn’t seen my wrong so far.

So I did my 10k race, in torrential rain. (Which turned out to be an omen). Then we sat down for coffee to talk about the realities of the race and the training.

With a young family and a full time job, I could only train 4 times per week. Janet was happy that with the right focused training that would be okay as my aim was just to finish. I didn’t want all of the gory details of my training in one go…. far too scary… But she did explain that in my peak training weeks I would be doing around 6 hours on my weekend runs, and 2 hours for at least one of my weekday interval sessions. A serious conversation with my husband followed, and we were committed.

So the training began.

Monday morning runs outside increasing in distance to 10k.  Wednesday morning treadmill intervals of varying types and duration.  Thursday PT session with Janet for strength, stability and conditioning – Core stability and ankle strength is particularly important for this type of terrain.  Then weekends were long and hilly, starting at about 12k but working up to 28k plus. Most of these were mountain runs with as much hill (up and down) and technical terrain as I could find. These were also a great opportunity to test equipment and nutrition, as well as mental toughness on some of the epics… snow, shoes lost in mud, getting lost and mataguari bushes to name a few challenges.

Janet was there for me through the ups and downs. Reminding me to rest when I was on a high, and spurring me on when the training was all getting a bit much and I doubted my ability.

The end of March came, time to taper, I felt strong and prepared.  It occurred to me that I had been quite lucky and most of my training had been done in fine weather. Then I saw the forecast. The closer raced day got the worse the forecast got.

Race day came. Helicopters were grounded. Gale force winds and driving rain abounded. But this was the Routeburn Classic, and after all mother nature is what puts the adventure in adventure racing. The supposedly spectacular scenery was hidden in the fog.

The race was amazing and surprisingly enjoyable despite having to grab onto the way marker to avoid being blown off in one section. I nearly cried with joy when I passed through the first checkpoint within the cutoff time, something that had worried me right through my training. The up hills were easier than I expected, but the down hills were far more technical and unrelenting than I had expected despite all the warnings, but my training served me well and I felt strong, mentally and physically, for the whole race.

Afterwards I felt an immense sense of achievement, and yes, I did wear my medal for several days afterwards!

Does this sound like the adventure run for you? For more info on the Routeburn Classic 2016 event click here