The Spine Race Challenger South 2019 Post Race Blog

So on finishing the challenger I was on a mahoosive high. I’d got my sub-30 and even managed a podium finish. Who wouldn’t be high….& the high lasted for quite a while too. All good!

Mum had made some spicy meatballs with tagliatelle and garlic bread for when I arrived home Sunday teatime, which I finished off with I think…a whole half of a family sized carrot cake ha! You would expect one to sleep for anywhere as low as 10 hours and I’m guessing around a maximum of 20+ hours. But no! Not me…I’m a terrrrible sleeper. I managed around 8 hours sleep from Sunday night through to Monday morning (bearing in mind the last time I went to sleep was on Friday night!) I think I slept in some compression tights a T-shirt, a fleece my dressing gown and a bobble hat ha! I was cold. I had a towel and 2 new T-shirt’s next to my bed ready to clean myself off in the middle of the night for when I got the dreaded horrors (night sweats post challenger which went on for 1-2weeks post race last year they was horrible!!)

The morning after. I woke up…just abit clammy as the heating was on (no horrors to my amazement) and I made it down the 2 flights of stairs in the house nice and slowly (as I live in the attic) and finished off another huge plate of left over meatballs and tagliatelle for breakfast…cold! With some sort of green smoothie out the fridge. The food and drink froze my core so I had to have a cup of tea to warm myself back up from the inside out. I spent the rest of the day in bed keeping warm… Eating clean healthy food & posting, commenting , liking and replying to lots of comments on Instagram, Facebook & Strava.

I think I managed another 6/7 hours sleep again that night with no horrors. Tuesday I went on a 2 mile slow walk around the reservoir near my house and loosened off the legs. In the grand scheme of things they where feeling pretty damn good considering I’d just abused them. I was pretty sleepy but the sun was shining, I had about 3 jackets on and I was still on a high.

Id booked 2 weeks off work (unpaid) . So I went to the gym for a sauna, did some light stretching in there and was thinking where to go on holiday for a week. I decided on Tenerife! Sun, sea, sand & warm weather with a nice little mountain in the middle…it was a no brainer! So that evening I booked myself a nice, little, cheap, week away….and so it was.

The week away was great! Just what I needed. Still wasn’t sleeping very well though 6/7 hours max per day and it was subconsciously taking its toll. Everything was going fine. No alcohol and I was eating really well .There was a gym in the hotel which allowed me to get rid of my urge to run as I wasn’t allowed, so i focused on strength training, lifting weights and lots of cross training (everyday). Day 2 we went jet skiing and I nearly got hypothermia- I arrived back in the marina like a shivering dog with blue lips – I felt really bad ruining everyone’s excursion saying I needed to go back after the 1st hour so I cracked on with it when I really shouldn’t have.I felt in a bad way when I got off the jet ski. But I was ok in a few hours though.

Then on about the 3rd day….boom! It hit me. What I’d been waiting for ….I thought I’d escaped it but clearly not. I just felt … not right. I felt it the minute I woke up as I sat on the balcony looking out to sea (I did that every morning ha).

I just didn’t feel that high anymore. It was horrible. I can’t quite put my finger on it but I felt low. Anxious. Tired & you could say mildly depressed. So I’m sat there trying to get to grips with it and telling myself why I’m probably feeling the way I do and that it’ll subside in time and that’s pretty much how the day went (me having quiet words with myself). We hired a car and did abit of a Recce and drove to Teide National Park and sussed out a way to summit the mountain. This took my mind off how I was feeling abit.

I was pretty cold and I remember not being fit for much that day- I was just getting by feeling crappy, getting through it. We stopped for a drink at a viewpoint on the way home and I left my iPhone on the car roof and remembered about it 30 mins later when we was nearly back at the hotel! My brain was mush that day I really wasn’t feeling myself at all but we drove back for it. Expecting it to be gone or smashed to pieces but to my amazement it was still there pretty much intact! Just a smashed rear camera which pretty much spoilt the rest of the holiday pics but I still had a selfie cam haha! I was buzzing that we found it! That night I had an early night. I was putting my feelings down to sleep deprivation & tomorrow we was off to summit Teide!

The play day out on Teide was awesome…just what I needed to banish yesterday’s blues- as soon as I was on the track with my pack on moving and taking in the views, all the feelings from yesterday was forgot about. It was apparently -5/-6 on the summit but it really didn’t feel it.

The rest of the holiday I spent relaxing at the pool, eating, strength training and Xtraining in the gym and on the last day I got sunstroke ha…only I can go Tenerife and be hypothermic and sunstroke in 7 days. The day before last I was allowed to run for 40mins so I ran along the coast and had a little sit down and a think afterwards watching the sea. I felt brand new!

During the whole holiday my eating was pretty good. Especially in the day. I’d have salad and a piece of the local fish for lunch usually. Then I’d treat myself to lots of desserts in the evenings (2/3plates) . I have a really bad sweet tooth so I wanted to get it all out of my system before I returned back home to normality and hard training again. I was doing really well upon returning home and then for some strange reason, 2 days on the trot I ate about 5000 calories worth’s of chocolate/cakes/sweets/icecream and nut butters just before I went to bed and after I’d already eaten my dinner….not good!! I thought I’d kicked the habit but it was like the post race munchies had a delayed onset? I can’t get over how much better my body has physically and mentally handled itself post race. Don’t get me wrong I still got hit with a little bit of a low now and then and had some negative days (but nowhere near as bad as last year) especially when I felt tired…but shouldn’t that be expected? Especially for somebody who isn’t a great sleeper! I think this is when and why I was binge eating too?

So in a nutshell, Iv survived intact, I’m feeling good, I’m back at work and the race and Holiday seem like a distant memory. Life’s returned back to normal, trainings resumed and now it’s time to crack on and start getting ready for this years racing starting with LM42 in about 7/8 weeks time

https://www.nav4.co.uk/lakes-mountain-42/