What my clematis teaches me about running

For a below average gardener, I’m quite obsessed with my clematis. I bought it the year I moved in and every winter it dies back so thoroughly that I assume it is finished. Surely nothing good can come back from the spindly dry sticks I’m left with?

And every spring, around about Easter, it surprises me with a resurrection. It’s in raging bloom at the moment, assaulting the dullness of the shed with bright purple flowers.

What I love about it is that it doesn’t bloom based on just one season. It’s established itself in the soil. It’s grown a big root network. So every year is more than just a bit of sunshine and water, its the cumulative affect of years of growth. And this gives me hope.

Specifically, this gives me hope for the Bob Graham Round. I’ve had one of those seasons where things don’t necessarily go to plan. A chest infection that took ages to bounce back from, a sprained ankle that knocked my volume for a couple of weeks, another illness, work stress.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve put in the miles. A similar amount of miles as last year and a lot of climbing. But it’s felt disjointed and fractured. It’s not been the sustained build I thought it would be and my plan was to go bigger.

That’s when I consider the clematis. Because I wasn’t starting from the same place I did last year. There’s a cumulative effect going on in training. Like the clematis utilises the strength of its root system from previous years, I’ve been building a better aerobic base for years now and seeing the benefit.

Sure, training could have went better, but I train year round. Training for UTCB wasn’t perfect either. I got covid. I had to bail on a long run for safety when a storm closed in. There was so much wrong with it, and yet on race day everything went right. Apart from falling on my arse, but I think that bit was unrelated.

With nutrition, I’m a different runner entirely from where I was at Ultra Trail Sierra de Cazorla eighteen months ago. I barely ate for the whole second half and struggled to move as a result. I’d made some improvements by last year’s Bob, but still not enough.

Since then though, with the help of great advice from The Endurance Academy, I’ve dialled it in. I ran a 106km trail measuring my intake to the gram as I went, comparing it to how I felt. I saw improvements at Ring of Steall and then returned to Spain in November and managed 12.5 hours of perfectly on plan nutrition.

Though I’ve not been feeling at my best at times, I’ve done big back to back training weekends. I’ve pushed through days when nothing seemed to work. My pacers and support are next level. I’ve done the prep and the planning. I’ve played with schedules, adjusted timings, taken on board lessons.

So all that remains is to go again. To force my heart and nerve and sinew to serve their turn. I’m more intimidated than I was before last year’s attempt – but maybe that’s just a healthy respect for the size of the challenge.

And if I doubt, I always have Shakespeare to remind me: “our doubts are traitors and cause us to miss the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt”.

Or as Caravaggio would say, rabble rousing around Rome four centuries ago; “Nec spe, nec metu”.

Neither hope, nor fear.

If you want to track me, you can do so on my open tracking page.

See you all on the other side.