 am nothing more than a liar and a cheat. Hello my name is Stephen welcome to FMR this is the Lakeland 100 training series episode 5 and in this episode we're going to be talking about poles, we're going to talk about bladders, we're going to be talking about bottles and soft flasks and we're also going to be having a look at last week's training. So let's start with last week's training Monday, easy 10k on the treadmill, Tuesday morning 500 meter climb on the treadmill. Tuesday evening went out with my club and we did 10k on the roads then on Wednesday I had a race so I was running outdoors at the Little Hampton Beach Run, you can see a video of that up here. Thursday I did a 500 meter climb on the treadmill in the morning and then in the afternoon I filmed episode 4 of the Lakeland 100 series so 21 kilometers outdoors on the hills. On Friday I did a 10k progressive run on the seafront and then we went to Wales and on Saturday I climbed Snowden with my family and on Sunday I climbed Snowden again on my own. Total mileage for the week, right you know I said I was going to do 100k every week, basically I am nothing more than a liar and a cheat. I am basically low-life scum who's cheated his way to 97 kilometers, not even 100k because Saturday's activity was just a hike and I've included it in my run miles basically because of the elevation so I think the elevation counts but then on Sunday I did run up Snowden as hard as I could I got up and down in two hours and you can see footage of that now me just getting to the summit of Snowden so that was my weekly training a good amount of elevation both on the treadmill and outdoors and a decent amount of mileage and you'll notice I didn't do very much on the treadmill last week not for any particular reason just that I happened to be running outside more I did about 20k on the treadmill all in and then the rest of it was all outdoors and looking at my heart rate you'll see that 10% of my running was in zones four and five and 80% of my running was in zones one and two leaving 10% in and around zone three and I think I'm pretty happy with that that's where we need to be in terms of aerobic and anaerobic training. Before we go any further if you are enjoying the content if you're finding it useful please do whack the like button and click subscribe and the notifications bell I'm still trying to get to 10,000 subscribers so if you could help me out I'd really appreciate it really helps out the channel and also just to let you know we have now activated channel memberships so there are various levels that you can join if you feel like you want to support the channel a bit more then you can join as a member from as little as two dollars two pounds a month up to around about nine pounds ten dollars a month you can support the channel and for that you'll get extra perks like extra videos that only members see and photos and behind-the-scenes footage things like that that normal subscribers wouldn't get to see so if you do feel like you want to subscribe and support the channel I would really appreciate it thank you very much okay let's talk about polls there are two different manufacturers who most people buy lekkie which is the ones I use and black diamond which are also very popular polls the whole point of polls is to save some energy in your legs so that some of your arms are taking the weight of your body rather than your legs taking the whole way of your body don't wait until the end of the race to use your polls when you're really tired use them when you're not tired towards the beginning of the race up the hills because that will save your legs for later in the race there are two types of running pole that you might buy they are the telescopic poles and the folding poles most people will buy folding poles so these are the ones you pull apart they've got a wire or a piece of nylon cord in the middle of them you fold them up and you can store them either in a Salomon quiver or in a race belt or on your backpack now you must practice with poles before your race so don't just turn up at a race get them out you'll start stabbing people behind you because you're not sure how to hold them properly you'll get them caught between your legs you'll trip over them you could get injured practice practice practice there are also some great Nordic walking technique videos if you want to watch them on YouTube but the main thing is experience getting to know how to use them and the main thing to get to get to know how to use them is how to store them how to fold them up how to put them away and how to get them out again quickly and efficiently so you're not faffing about when you're in your race trying to pack your poles away and getting annoyed with them I think that's it for poles just look out for carbon poles that are made by lekkie or black diamond right so let's talk about race vests or hydration vests some people still call them backpacks or camel backs so on a race like the Lakeland 100 or any long-distance race any ultra race you may be required to carry certain stuff and you may want or need to carry certain things now what we use are things called race vests it's a weird name because it's not a vest it is a backpack that you put on the main makes I use Salomon there's also Ultimate Direction and Nathan lots of companies make these race vests but those are those are three of the big ones I would say if you want to go budget they're a great race vests made by Ano EG let me just check that so it's A-O-N-E-G-A-O-N-I-J-I great hydration vests budget or affordable price depending on the distance of the race that you're doing depending on how much stuff you need to carry there are different sizes of these vests so some of them will carry just three litres worth of stuff others will carry 20-40 litres worth of equipment so it's important that you get the right one for the race that you're doing and sometimes people will have lots of different ones and they choose between them depending on the distance of the race and what they've got to carry of course in order to stay well hydrated on any ultra run you need water and to tell you all about bottles and soft flasks and hydration packs here's Stephen thank you Stephen so when you carry water you're going to carry it in either a backpack like a big bladder in your backpack or you're going to carry it in bottles in the front of your race vests so I'm going to give you two good reasons why you shouldn't use a bladder in your backpack firstly you won't know how empty or full it is when you're running it's very difficult to assess in your backpack how full or how empty your bladder is secondly in a race it's an absolute nightmare to fill up you've got to take your backpack off you've got to get the bladder out you've got to take the plastic thing off the top open it up and fill it up with water and then put it all away again it takes too long it's too much of a fact so I've always used soft flasks now they are flasks that as I say that it's a pliable material you fill them with water when you've drunk the water it collapses down so it's a small package it's not very heavy it's not very cumbersome and it's easy to see how much you've got left it's easy to drink out of them the problem with soft flasks is they are not very durable so if you pack them away in all your gear they can easily get just a little nick and that's them done for they'll leak so that's a problem with soft flasks but I still I still generally use soft flasks the other option is your standard hard plastic bottle plenty of people use them the thing I don't like about bottles is the sloshing around of the water when you use a soft flask as you drink the flask collapses and there's not much air in the bottle itself whereas with a hard plastic bottle you drink the water the air inside the bottle is still there and the water is sloshing about all over the place while you're running it's making a noise the other thing is they're heavy and cumbersome in your race vest they're not very comfortable sometimes because they're hard so they press against your ribs and they can cause bruising but plenty of people use them plenty of people quite happy with hard bottles in their hydration vest I use soft flasks so there's your choices don't don't use a bladder if you can avoid it I mean if you like them fine but I would advise not to use a bladder soft flasks or hard bottles the other good thing about having two bottles as opposed to one bladder is that you can have different drinks in each bottle so sometimes you might have coke in one bottle and water in another bottle or you might have tailwind and water or milk and tea and you can have whatever you like but at least you've got the option of having two different drinks in two different bottles so there we are we've covered running poles we've covered race hydration vests and we've covered different kinds of bottles that you might use to hydrate yourself with so if you're new here do please consider subscribing just click the button down below thank you very much much appreciated and if you're new to trail running then you might want to watch this video just here and if you haven't seen the rest of the Lakeland 100 training series then this one down here will do you and we'll see you for episode 6 of the Lakeland 100 training series next week take care everybody bye bye