UKH

Hey everyone,

Couple of years ago I stumbled across the Scottish 4000s bi-athlon (http://www.lamm.co.uk/scottish4000/ set up by Martin Stone in 2003) and have had it in the back of my mind since.

This year, I find myself with a lot of extra time to focus on training, and figured why not set it as a goal for the year. I'm planning on doing the same format as the lamm sets out - run the route with the ~100km cycle in between.

I'm by no means an 'elite category OMM athlete', but feel like it's a reasonable and challenging goal for me.

Hoping to get some tips or feedback on my training for it - I've started on a 20 week iron man training plan (https://beginnertriathlete.com/discussion/training/training-plans-view.asp?... - just finishing week 5) and feel like I'm making good progress and should be on track for attempting around August time.

Essentially the only differences I've made to the 20 week plan is no swimming (I will do some core/other workout instead) and I've also switched out the stride workouts for hill reps (or I do a mix of the two). I started to document my progress through the training plan (https://functionandmovement.com/ - no ads or anything), taking notes of niggles and injuries, how my body is feeling etc, and hopefully it will be something interesting for me to read in the future.

I'd be keen to hear if anyone has any alternative training I should be doing, other things I should be tracking on weekly basis, or anything really.

Thanks!

Looks a cracking route and great idea for a challenge and something I would love to do sometime, but maybe on ski and cycle in between, I guess this spring would have been great for that if it was not for the virus.

In terms of training I don't really think you need to worry too much about cycling maybe once a week, or more if you enjoy getting out for long easy miles.

Main training should be hill running looking at vertical gain for the week rather than time or distance, it says you live in Edinburgh so should be quite easy to get a lot of altitude gain in even under current lockdown, Arthur seat and pentland being good training options.

If things ease up look into joining a local hill running club such as carnethy or hunters bog trotters.

For the cycling, my main concern is getting used to getting off the bike after 100km being able to finish the rest of the hills, so I think as training progresses I'm going to do more brick sessions.

Good point about the vertical gain though. Going to give it one or two more weeks to get the endurance aspect in a good state and then focus on vertical - hopefully by then things will ease and Pentlands access will be OK.

Never thought about joining a club, maybe time to look into it

Not something you can do at present (due to lock-down), but recc'ing the ground even if you think you are familiar with it, before-hand will make things easier and quicker.

My partner participated on both occasions Martin organised the 4000'ers as an event, being a Cairngorm's local she was faster over sections of the Cairngorms ground than several other competitors whom up until that point were making similar progress as she was.  In 2003 on arguably the toughest Cairngorm stage she was faster than all the other competitors both male and female. Even though local she went out and spent a couple of trips over bits of the ground in advance, and it obviously helped from the splits data.

If you join the Carnethy you will almost certainly find folks that also participated, whom will provide their own advice; hill runners are a generally friendly bunch.

I supported a mate on it in 2018 running the Gorms section with him. He's definitely more of a cyclist than a runner. It's a really good day out and quite achievable.

I'd definitely echo what others have said and focus on getting hilly running miles in and once things open up a bit getting some long hill days in.

That's a good idea to reccy - I was thinking to do this when things ease up, make a 2 day trip out of it with some hiking and camping. Thought process is by doing it in 2 days and as a hike should give me a good baseline of my fitness and how I would cope running.

That's encouraging!

Will edit the plan, I had already started doing that - essentially replacing stride sessions with hill reps or more vertical gain sessions - but will focus on it more throughout.

There aren't many places to go wrong or even many choices on the Lochaber bit but the Cairngorms section is a bit more complicated.

I don’t think you need to wait for fitness necessarily. Unless you are Killian Jornet or other pro, you are most likely going to hike uphills. 

Wanted to ask, what shoes did you/your mate do it in? Would you have done them in anything different?

I have:

• inov-8 parkclaws which have a 4mm lug which I've been using for training for short road/hard-ish/occasional softer trail/mud and they do the job 
• mudclaws mainly reserved for OMM type events where I know I won't be on any trails

I'm considering getting the Salomon Sense 4 Pros which have a 5mm lug and use those for when I end up doing the 4000s, plus use them to train in when I don't need to run on any roads for a particularly long time before ending up on trails.

My rationale is the parkclaws don't feel like they could take on the terrain (given they are a 'hybrid', even though I find them to perform ok), and the mudclaws are overkill (given I'm likely going to be following trails).

Is 1mm worth the purchase? Should I be going for something different? Should also mention I like running in low drop so the 4mm drop is ideal for me (parkclaws are the same).

It was mainly just to get mileage on my feet, haven't done anything longer than ~30km and was off running for about 2-3 months. But yes the focus has mainly been vertical gain!

Parkclaw ( both the 240 and 275 ) is an 8mm drop not 4mm

I think he did it in Speedcross as that's what he usually uses. I'm sure those sense pros would be fine grip wise, I use something similar.

I stand corrected! Thanks for pointing that out, not sure why I had them in my head as 4.