Eoin Keith comes 5th at World 24-hr Challenge

donothoponpop

We've been following this in the imra thread, I wanted to make sure this achievement got the exposure it deserves. Irishman Eoin Keith, (who posts here under username Enduro), ran a fantastic race in Bergamo, Italy, this weekend, to finish 6th overall and running 237.2k in 24 hours, ran on a 1.113km loop on asphalt, in the industrial part of Bergamo. There were 28 countries represented with 220 runners.

Well done Enduro! One of the best ever performances by an Irish athlete at an ultra event.

Results: http://www2.tds-live.com/wtrpg/race.jsp?id=2439&reloadDatiGara=0 click the "classica online" button on the left.

PCPhoto

fair play !!! Congrats !!!

hunnymonster

Well done Enduro. Great result.

RoyMcC

Great stuff Eoin, well done. Any link to full results donothoponpop?

Krusty_Clown

Congrats Enduro on an incredible performance. Monu-mental..

--amadeus--

Wow.

Mind boggling performance there, huge congrats.

Odysseus

Congrats Enduro, great stuff.

Zuppy

Unreal!!!

Congrats to you. Hope your recovering by running up a nice gentle mountain. :-)

Well Done

Zuppy

Even better, he came fifth.
237.206km in 24hrs. amazing

Slogger Jogger

Results available now
http://www.iau.org.tw/mediacenter_detail.php?Id=100
Theres only a few k between Eoin and a medal place. A truly fantastic run.

earlyevening

AWE some

911sc

Impressive. Congratulations.

Enduro

Thanks for that everyone! Much appreciated.

I'm just back now and recovering. If anyone has any questions about the race then fire away!

Running Bing

Enduro wrote: »

Thanks for that everyone! Much appreciated.

I'm just back now and recovering. If anyone has any questions about the race then fire away!

How did you do it Enduro? Do you take breaks and just sit down every now and then or do you just take walk breaks or do you aim to go at a steady pace?


What do you eat?


Truly an amazing run....and on a single 1k loop:eek: That must take immense focus.

donothoponpop

Enduro wrote: »

Thanks for that everyone! Much appreciated.

I'm just back now and recovering. If anyone has any questions about the race then fire away!

We watched you move steadily up the ranks as the hourly updates went online: how do you feel after say 4 or 5 hours into the race when you're way down the positions, all around you are flying, and you've got to stick to the pacing plan?

Woddle

I think it was a fantastic effort and you must have some confidence in yourself, to let everyone else off and not panic, knowing your going to catch them all, well done

figs

Brilliant result. The distance is just incomprehensible to me! Over 5.5 marathons in 24 hours! An amazing achievement. Well done.

Enduro

How did you do it Enduro? Do you take breaks and just sit down every now and then or do you just take walk breaks or do you aim to go at a steady pace?

In previous 24h runs I've done I've used a run-walk strategy of running for an hour and then walking for about 400 metres, but not rigidly... things would adjust depending on how I was feeling. Funnily enough I was about half an hour into the race when I realised that I hadn't really decided on a strategy for this race. Based on my recent experiences of running the end of 24hr races without stopping (because restarting was getting too difficult) and also of running the Wicklow Way with a non-stop strategy, I decided to run without deliberate walking breaks. So apart from walking to eat (4/5 of a lap chewing pasta), one energy crash, and 3 trips to the facilities , I pretty much ran non-stop.

Steady pace was the absolute key to the race for me. My ideal race would be run at exactly the same pace from start to finish.

What do you eat?

After a while the question becomes more a matter of what can you eat, as the body seems to get unbelieveably fussy.

The race provided a support area where they had non-stop supplies of apple slices, orange slice, banna sections, currents, other bits of fruit, bread with nutella, brioche, gum sweets, chocolate, nuts, pretzels. I mainly just took the fruit there. They also proved mineral water (fizzy and non), coke, fanta-type stuff, fizzy grapfruit (very good early in the race), peach juice (very good late in the race). They also put out a pasta/rice dish about 9 hours into the race, which I reckoned was extremely important for fuelling up to finish. As well as that each country has its own support area where you can bring along anything you want. I brought a lot, but only used some mullti-vitamin fruit juices, some chocolate, crisps (good for salt), fruit gums and gnocchi (Gotta have spuds!). An energy gel donated by one of my team-mates also turned out to be rather critical in getting me to the finish.

and on a single 1k loop That must take immense focus.
Today 16:24

The 1k loop is fine. I like short loops. You pass everything more quickly and its easier to pace. But simply running for 24 hours optimally does take huge focus.

We watched you move steadily up the ranks as the hourly updates went online: how do you feel after say 4 or 5 hours into the race when you're way down the positions, all around you are flying, and you've got to stick to the pacing plan?

I always run my own race, particularly for the first 12 hours. Very few people can win a 24hour race in the first half, but its very easy to loose it! We were also getting the same hourly updates, and it was taking Tony and the crew a few minutes to get it all processed and to update us. They'd then give us our total distance, and distance for the last hour. I started with a target of running comfortably for the distance, and preferably at around 10kph pace, as I knew I had the potential to run that pace. As it turned out I was a bit faster than that (whilst still being comfortable) for 9-10 hours at least. I wasn't paying any real attention to the other runners, apart from my Irish teammates. But I did reckon that a fair few runners had probably gone out too fast.

After maybe 8 or 9 hours Tony started (excitedly) giving me position updates, as well as distances, and telling me what runners were in front of me. I actually asked him not to tell me this, as it was potentially a distraction to good pacing. I was more focussed on hitting my (now) initial target of breaking the Irish 100 mile record. However, later in the race (7 hours to go and on, maybe), things switched around, and I stopped caring about my elapsed distances, as I knew I was running as well as I could and there was nothing more I could do about it, but started really enjoying the position updates. This is where the racing aspect keeps you motivated and keeps you going. Indeed I was battling for position right up to the end, and didn't find out my distance until quite a while after the race was finished.

So, in summary, I had my own plan, and I stuck to it as best as I could, but I used different things to motivate me along the way. I reckon if you graphed the hourly splits of all the runners you'd probably find that myself and Eddie Gallen (The other Irish runner to complete the full 24 hours) were amongst the most consistant pacers in the race.

I think it was a fantastic effort and you must have some confidence in yourself, to let everyone else off and not panic, knowing your going to catch them all, well done

I didn't set out with a plan to catch them all...that was a beautiful side effect What I did have was the self-confidence and self-knowledge to run my own optimal race that would give me my optimal distance (and therefore result), irrespective of what everyone else did.

Running Bing

Great stuff. Congrats again Enduro.


Might do this myself next year. Not to run of course but the 24 hour all you can eat buffet sounds class.:D

Enduro

LOL!

One other food thing I forgot... The temperature was quite hot until late into the evening, I'd guess around 24 degrees or so for quite a number of hours. But the race organisers were superb, and twice in those hours they were handing out water-ices to the runners (and marshals) around the course. And my god, that was the right thing at the right time. The went down a treat.

My one major indulgence in the race was when we had two or three people in the Irish support area at around midnight (about 14 hours in) I asked them to get me a McDonnalds Strawberry milkshake (The McDonnalds was about 200 metres from the support area ). That was superb. I would probably have tried to run the whole race on those if I could have

Krusty_Clown

Hi Enduro, congrats agan on the huge result. Couple of questions:
1) How do you pace yourself? Do you use a stop-watch and keep an eye on your lap splits, or rely on the support team, or just trust to your body to decide the pace?

2) Did the guys who ran longer also run with consistent pacing, or would you have caught them over the 25th hour?

3) What's the next big challenge? Will you try this time/distance again or find the next endurance challenge?

Peterx

Well done Enduro, absolutely amazing result.
I still find it hard to believe you raced in Howth on Wednesday, kinda prolonged warm-up really.....:p

Enduro

1) How do you pace yourself? Do you use a stop-watch and keep an eye on your lap splits, or rely on the support team, or just trust to your body to decide the pace?

Very much a case of trusting my body. I know the limits of how far I can push things to survive the full race distance and never go beyond that. Running too hard too early is the big danger to avoid. I did have a rough target pace (10kph), just to guage for myself what I was doing, and worked out what laptime that would equate to, roughly, which was around 6:40 IIRC. I was bettering that for quite a while in the early part of the race, but not by so much that it raised any warnings. I still felt very relaxed and comfortable. I relied on the team for the overall distance feedback, and for the hourly splits, but I didn't use that to alter pace, more just to confirm that reality corresponded to what I thought I was doing. They were also giving me good feedback on how I was looking, i.e. that I appeared to be running in a fairly relaxed style. That was good to hear.

In the later part of the race pacing becomes more a matter of just keeping going as best you can. At that stage I only occasionaly checked the laptimes. I think I was running closer to 7 minute laps at the end.

Particularly towards the end of the race when things were getting very exciting postionally, Tony (Mangan, the main support man) was trying to encourage me to up the pace and reel people in, but I was just running as best as a knew I could, so didn't alter my pace (Well, maybe for about 10-20 metres here and there when overtaking people, just to make sure they stayed overtaken).

2) Did the guys who ran longer also run with consistent pacing, or would you have caught them over the 25th hour?

Very good question. The winner was so far out in front he could comfortably walk his way in, and did. He wasn't going to be caught by anyone.

The German runner in second place seemed to be running extremely strongly right to the finish. Faster than me! He looked to have paced an excellent race. I think he might have moved up a few places in the closing hours.

The Japanese runner in third was slowing for sure. At one point I was running along with Stephen Mason, the british runner, chatting away, when we saw him wobble sideways into a barrier just in front of us, and then get running again (and he looked zonked). He was still moving at the end though, so he obviously dug deep and kept things going. He was leading for quite a while earlier in the race, but must have lost a massive amount of pace considering the gap between 1st and 3nd in the end. So there was it was definitely possible I could have closed the gap if there was more time. But that's the last thing I would have wished for after running for 24hours!

The Russian runner in third looked like he was running OK to me, but I'd say that he was catchable on the day, given more time. In retrospect it would appear I was closing in on him. I was much closer to him in the end than I thought I would be. In fairness, he might have been settling for his position and coasting to the finish. I was very tempted to do the same, but I had a real battle on my hands to hold onto what I had, as the two other Japanese runners came back strongly in the last two hours (I think one of them got back in front of me for a while), before fading away again. Also, the russian runner behind me was still too close for comfort.

3) What's the next big challenge? Will you try this time/distance again or find the next endurance challenge?

There is plenty of challenge left for me in 24hour running for sure. It would be nice to break 240km, as that is the distance that the IAU (International Association of Ultrarunners) set as their "A" standard for travel grant purposes. And of course personally I'd like to know how far I can go (which for me is one of the big motivators). I'd say that there is still room for improvement. There are plenty of other events/races I'd like to give a go, but I've no definite immediate plans to do, such as doing the IMRA Wicklow round, doing the Ultra Tour de Mont Blanc, racing the Comrades Marathon, running one of the American classic ultras. In the meantime I'm also hoping to continue adventure racing too, so I'd hope to have a big target race there too before the year is out. There are quite a few nice candidates there.

I still find it hard to believe you raced in Howth on Wednesday, kinda prolonged warm-up really.....

At least I had enough sense to be a non-racing volunteer for hellfire

OBWON

amazing feat enduro

rdunne

thats a shocking about of K ran , i did a calc and it worked out at about 6 k a min for a whole 24 hours, Mad. I have not run that this year!

well done again

bazman

A monumental achievement - congrats Enduro
- 5th in world championship
- Irish 24 hour record
- Irish 100-mile record

Amazing stuff.

Although would have been nice to get in an extra 2794 metres to make it a round 10kph speed for 24 hours - could you not have tried a little harder

Bambaata

Anyone like to try better this in the "Best of '09"?! lol

Amazing running. I cant even start to imagine the pain you went through!

shels4ever

wow thats about all i can say to that, what a pace for 24 hours.

--amadeus--

Do you think that performances like that are grounded in talent or training?

And how much of that performance was mental and how much was physical?

hunnymonster

Enduro (it appears we have resurrected the "you're in the well" theme),
-Did you change footwear during the race?
-Did you feel tired (mentally wanted a snooze rather than sore muscle tiredness) and did anything help?

Enduro

Although would have been nice to get in an extra 2794 metres to make it a round 10kph speed for 24 hours - could you not have tried a little harder

LOL! One day... some day

Do you think that performances like that are grounded in talent or training?

I think that its probably similar to the top sprinters. It has to be both together. I would guess that in the same way that sprinters need to be a big bundle of explosive fast twitch muscle, ultra runners need to be lean slow twitch muscle. But definitely training plays a huge role. There a a few things I do that a quite different to most other runners which I think make a big difference for me...doing the bulk of my running training in the hills, doing a massive amount of cycling, and of late doing quite a bit of kayaking. The hill running adds to general leg strenght, as well as mental strenght (from a running POV), the cycling builds up quads etc which might otherwise fail over extreme distances, and I think it also keeps me free of most common running injuries. The kayaking is great for building core strenght.

And how much of that performance was mental and how much was physical?

The physical has to be there obviously, but the big big effort is mental. There are two main mental aspect to it... the tactical apsect of racing strategy and pacing, and once the physical pain begins to kick in then a huge mental effort is required to keep running. By the end of the race its pretty much a 100 percent mental effort. As an aside, one of the other Irish runners posts on Boards in the poker forum as Doke. He's one of the top poker players in Ireland. We were chatting about the overlap before the race, and he was saying that the hard to get combination of patience and aggression was a key to being a good poker player, and we agreed that it was actually the key to being competitive at the top level in almost any sport.

Enduro

Did you change footwear during the race?

No. The only gear change was putting on a thermal top after the sun went down and it started cooling down a bit. In previous 24 hour runs I would have usually changed shoes about half way round. For various reasons I decided to have a go without doing it this time. My main conclusion after running this experiment is that, for me, changing shoes in a 24hour race only gives a very short term psychological boost, and that it's probably not worth the time it takes to do it, unless it co-incides with a stop for something else. They were very new shoes though, so were in good condition to start with.

Did you feel tired (mentally wanted a snooze rather than sore muscle tiredness) and did anything help?

No I didn't. All my tiredness was physical. I had no sleep deprivation issues. Again, this is probably one of my advantages coming from an adventure racing background as well as running. A 24hour non-stop race is relatively trivial from a sleep deprivation POV when compared with 5 day+ non-stop expedition adventure races.

baloonatic

I wouldn't run 237.2k in a month

Well done man, i'd love to see your training schedule for that...

ZiggyStardust

Just getting to read this thread now. What an achievment. Well done Enduro and your detailed account of the event is as good a read as any.
Congrats.

jaymack75

Enduro – congrats on an amazing achievement - that is seriously impressive.....
A couple more questions, if ye don’t mind

What would your long training runs be like in terms of distance and pace compared to race day?
Do you train by heart rate / pace / perceived effort?
How do you build up your mileage to get the body used to running for so long?

Zuppy

And if your still answering questions, do you take a rest day? ever? :-)
Seriously do you take a rest day post long workout or just use a non impact sport?

nerraw1111

Simply awesome. That's an incredible feat.

Zuppy

Re-print from AAI site

Irish ultra runner Eoin Keith finished a magnificent 5th at the World 24 Hour Championships in Bergamo, Italy on Sunday.
Dublin-based Keith ran at a steady pace throughout the 24 hours to cover a distance of 237.206km (147.393 miles). In the process, he also broke the existing Irish 100-mile and 24-hour road records, held by Richard Donovan and Tony Mangan, respectively.
Keith’s incredible endurance achievement represents the highest placing at a global championships by an Irish ultra runner. It was the equivalent of running almost six consecutive marathons in a single day.
The individual men’s title was won by Henrik Olsen (Sweden) with Ralf Weis (Germany) second and Japan’s Yuji Saka in third place. Japan won the team title.






So not just happy to get fifth, break TWO Irish records, but also also gets the highest place ever for an Irish ultra athlete at the worlds. Very inspiring.

_blank_

Congratulations!

asimonov

ZuppyLurk wrote: »

So not just happy to get fifth, break TWO Irish records, but also also gets the highest place ever for an Irish ultra athlete at the worlds. Very inspiring.

+1, amazing, i was tired just pressing refresh on the tds website.

Beruthiel

Well done Enduro.
That was mindbogglingly impressive!

Enduro

jaymack75 wrote: »

What would your long training runs be like in terms of distance and pace compared to race day?
Do you train by heart rate / pace / perceived effort?
How do you build up your mileage to get the body used to running for so long?

Long training runs for the last month or two would have been about 3.5 hours in the hills (Masseys woods, Cruagh, Tibradden, Grand tour de 3-rock!). I would have tried to do one of those a week. Standard runs for me are gernerally around 2.5 hours, with 2 hours being short. Pace would be comfortable on the long runs. I'd try and push myself a bit more on the shorter runs (all obvious enough there I suppose!). Even the long runs would probably be faster paced than 24 hour runs. Orthodox theory reckons that there is not much point in pushing beyond those sort of timings, as it will be counter-productive. I'm not so sure about that though.

I don't use a HRM, and I don't go by distance. Actually, I don't even know what distances I run when I train, I just know toughly how long they'll take me. I'd general set out with a plan of running a short, standard, or long time and pick a route to match. I deliberately avoid paralysis by analysis. I very much judge the effort on feel and perception.

Building up milage : Very good question when it comes to a 24 hour run, as you can't really just scale up a marathon programme. My personal opinion is that years of base building help. When I first started running ultras I only had a few short years of running behind me (I count my first running race as the Dublin Marathon in 1998). But I had over 10 years of building up hillwalking fitness, which I reckon was very useful for building a base to keep going for long hours, and for toughening up legs and feet.
The first big lesson I learned with 24 hour racing in particular is that simply being able to keep going at a reasonable pace over the entire 24 hours will result in great distances and postions in any 24 hour race. So my aim with building a training programme isn't to just run milage for the sake of it, more to get my body toughened up so that points of failure are eliminated. As an example of what I mean with this, my first classic ultra was a 100km race in Edinburgh 6 or 7 years ago. For the second half of the race my quads were in agony, and I lost pace as a result. Now genenerally you wouldn't really consider these to be running muscles, but its the nature of ultras that they'll find the weak points, and my quads were first in line that day. Increasing the amount of cycle training I did eliminated this weakpoint, and indeed I've never had that problem since. I'm only now reaching the point where I can plan to run effectively non-stop for a full 24 hours, and start to try to increase the pace that I can run it at.
I also think its very important not to simply have a huge milage running programme, both from a mental boredom point of view and from an injury prevention point of view.
Going out for long cycles I reckon is very good for training to keep going over long time periods, without being as potentially harmful as trying to do an equivalent huge distance training run.

Enduro

ZuppyLurk wrote: »

And if your still answering questions, do you take a rest day? ever? :-)
Seriously do you take a rest day post long workout or just use a non impact sport?

I count kayaking days as a non-impact rest day alright. I generally don't plan pure rest days, but they tend to come along naturally of their own accord as circumstances dictate. If its one of those high winds wet days I'll take the hint and use it as a rest day! On a typical week I'd usually aim to get in at least one kayaking day (2hrs+ on flat water), and 2 if possible, possibly combing those with a relaxed 2-3 hours of cycling (to the water and back). A cycling day would be a very hilly 2.5 - 3.5 hour cycle, and I'd usually aim to get one or two of those per week. At weekends I'd hope to get one longer cycle in. The remainder are running days.

Zuppy

Thats a lot of training when your races are considered as well.

Gavin

Really impressive stuff, it's great to see people pushing to find the limits of the human body and mind, astounding.

Do you have a job?

Mick Rice

What can I say man. An astounding run. I have to do one. Many, many congratulations.

pgibbo

Just back on boards for the first time since Friday. What an inspiring thread. Major congrats and kudos to you Enduro. Well done. :cool:

Clum

Congrats, Enduro.

I can't comprehend what you've done. I've trained for and completed a good few marathons and thought I understood long distance running but I still can't get my head around the work rate and effort required for such an achievement.

Unbelievable. Well done.

Enduro

Thats a lot of training when your races are considered as well.

I do taper for races! (well, the big ones), but things like the IMRA Leinster League races get counted as fast short runs for me.

Enduro

Clum wrote: »

Congrats, Enduro.
I can't comprehend what you've done. I've trained for and completed a good few marathons and thought I understood long distance running but I still can't get my head around the work rate and effort required for such an achievement.

You probably understand very well... Ultra running is nowhere near as hard as most people generally perceive. In terms of effort and work rate I possibly put more into my first marathon than my first ultra.

We're actually very lucky in Ireland to have two very good entry points for people wanting to try out ultra running. Those are the Wicklow Ultra, currently organised by IMRA (Which was my first ultra), and the Connemara Ultra. Both of these are races which take you beyond a marathon, but by small enough margins that it should be possible for most people who can run a marathon to run either of them without needing to do much more than run them at a suitably slower pace.

marvinsa

An amazing achievement, well done. I can't even begin to imagine the mental strength needed.