The Orcadian Features - Preparations begin for a marathon season

Preparations begin for a marathon season
By William Sichel
(Story dated May 5, 2005)

William Sichel has been an ultra distance runner for 11 years, representing Great Britain 11 times since his international debut in 1996.

The 51-year-old athlete has lived on Sanday for 23 years, where he runs the Orkney Angora mail order thermal clothing and yarn business.

Married to Elizabeth, and with two grown up children, he manages to pound out the miles day in, day out, in pursuit of success on the international stage.

During the coming months, William will be writing a series of articles for The Orcadian — one of his major sponsors — on how his season progresses.

After a successful 2004, during which he came fourth in the Dutch 24 hour championships, took the world 24 hour silver medal in his age group in the Czech Republic and was the outright winner of the Across the Years 24 hour event in Phoenix, Arizona, the winter was spent primarily on treadmill training plus very long runs around Sanday.

However, he recently headed to Spain for some warm weather training, in preparation for this weekend’s Basel International 24 hour road race.

At this time of year it’s all about completing preparations for the coming season — neatly summarised by the five P’s: Previous Planning Prevents Poor Performance.

This covers a whole raft of areas including the physical training schedule, the general race plan for the year and, most importantly, specific race preparation.

These are the special considerations that apply for each individual event, covering the climatic conditions likely to be encountered, the exact nature and demands of the course and the precise travel arrangements for the event concerned.

Often, important events are staged in small towns well away from main international airports.

I have to consider the complexities of travelling from Sanday followed by at least three separate flights before I arrive at my final destination.

Then I have to think about my arrival time. With all the work that has gone into preparing for my ultra marathon races it is no use spoiling it all by arriving late and shattered at the race destination.

So do I plan to arrive earlier and find accommodation in the main city and then continue my journey the next morning? Decisions, decisions.

If I do, will I need to leave home a day earlier or break my journey in Kirkwall, Edinburgh, Glasgow or Aberdeen?

Will this add to the expense with more air tax and more expensive fares? Can I afford to take more days away from my business?

So many questions needing answers.

I know from experience that I need at least two good nights in the destination country before I race in order to recover from the travelling and acclimatise to the race venue and circumstances.

I have a huge mental and physical challenge awaiting me in these 24-hour races so I need to be in the right shape when I get to the start line.

It’s no use going to all the trouble of travelling to these events if I can’t do myself justice when I get there.

I mentioned the training required to perform at these events. I now have a well developed training framework that I use and it seems to suit me well — getting me fit enough to perform well without inducing excessive tiredness or injury.

One of the benefits I got during the five years I was in receipt of Sports Lottery Funding was to have a fully funded overseas training trip, usually referred to as warm weather training.

I did some research into the most suitable venue for doing this and eventually chose the small town of Puerto Pollensa, in northern Majorca.

Over the years, this has proved to be ideal with fairly reliable weather, easy access to quiet country roads for training, a variety of terrain for hill work etc, and a conveniently located gym for cross training when required.

I’ve now been there in six of the last seven years and hope to return again in the future.

Being very familiar with this area means that I settle in very quickly and am well underway within a day of arrival so no time is wasted.

This warm weather training spell can be used in various ways, but the main options are to use it either as a period of concentrated training and recovery with the main training being done in the cool of the day.

The other way to use these trips is for heat acclimatisation and heat experience, when you know that key races are likely to be run, at least in part, in hot conditions.

With 24-hour races, there will always be the cool of the night to run through in almost any country as well as the heat of the day in some locations.

This year all three of my main events are likely to include significant heat, so I am using my two weeks warm weather training as just that, deliberately doing my main session at the hottest time of the day which is between 2pm and 3pm.

When doing this, I must take special care with my hydration status (monitored by assessing urine colour) to ensure I don’t become dehydrated, which would predispose me to illness and injury.

In reality, because the afternoon Majorcan temperatures in early April vary between 14C and 24C, only some of my sessions fall into the heat experience area and this year there was a cold snap to contend with as well.

Warm weather training has almost become a dirty word in running circles due to the tendency for athletes to get injured or become ill during or after such breaks.

I think the main problem is that given the sudden release from the time constraints of working life and the change in environment, runners tend to radically alter their normal training habits by suddenly increasing the number of training sessions per day or inserting extra hard training into the week.

The body and mind don’t have a chance to gradually adapt to this extra stress with resultant breakdown.

My approach is to keep the hard sessions much the same as normal but to increase the number of easy runs and non-impact sessions such as easy cycling.

This then works to boost fitness without ruining all the good work already done.

Because the training load is heavier there must be more rest built into the daily programme as well.

The reason I’m training is so that I can race well.

My most important race each year is the World 24-hour championships, which this year is to be staged for the first time in Austria.

UK Athletics (the governing body for all branches of athletics in this country) have very belatedly released details of the qualifying criteria which athletes have to achieve if they wish to be considered for selection for this event. Sadly, only three week’s notice was given before their April 13 selection date and my appeal for my Basel result to be accepted for this year was rejected, despite having informed the selection committee of my plans in January of this year.

The chips are really down now as I simply must run over 140 miles/225km (for a team place) or 143 miles/230k (for an individual place — with or without a team) in order to be considered for future international teams in 2006 and beyond.

The Basel 24 hour race is one of the best on the circuit and is also the one where I set my current personal best of 153.3 miles five years ago.

Unfortunately I didn’t really know how I did it — especially with regard to the feeding and drinking aspects of the performance.

Since then I have had to painstakingly re-learn the event in a step-by-step process evaluating how my mind and body responds to different race feeding plans.

The climax of this process was my victory in America in January with my best distance for five years.

I believe I am now in a position to start repeating the world class distances I produced five years ago, but only time will tell.

It’s been a fascinating, but at times intensely frustrating journey, but great progress has been made and the chance of improved performances in the future have now greatly improved.

In addition to The Orcadian, William is sponsored by the Ayre Hotel, Crantit Dairy (Orkney Ice Cream), dion_networks and Loganair.