 Over the past six weeks my training for UTMB has been pretty consistent but with two races this week one of them being a hundred miler training has pretty much gone out of the window. Welcome to week seven of UTMB training. We will spend the majority of today's video talking about Victoria's and my North Downsway 100 race experience but before we do that we do have to have a little look at the tiny amount of running we did before the race during week seven's training. No running on Monday morning the week started on Monday evening with 10k low heart rate no elevation nice and flat on Zwift on the treadmill and on Tuesday morning we were back on the treadmill for the film I run 500 meters of climbing setting the treadmill at 12%. If you want a really good smart treadmill get the noble pro with a discount in the link below. So far Monday and Tuesday were relatively easy running low heart rate nothing too special however Wednesday was my first race of the week and it was hilly and I was going pretty hard you can see by my heart rate here how hard I worked and there was also some elevation so a pretty tough race on Wednesday it was the West Sussex Fun Run League high down hike. Now I didn't film it this year but I did film it last year if you want to go and see that video from last year then its links just up there. Thursday was my only double run day of the week although combined the runs were only about 10k the race short film I run 500 in the morning and then we did bag that badge in the evening on Zwift so both runs on the treadmill combined 10k nice and easy very low heart rate and that was it for my training for the week a total of around 20 kilometers before the big 100 miler most of that on Zwift about 25 kilometers indoors on the treadmill and six or so kilometers outside with the race on Wednesday. Friday was a rest and travel day we made our way from West Sussex to Farnham in Surrey which is the start of the North Downsway 100 it's the start of the North Downsway national trail. The North Downsway trail is actually about 153 kilometers long stretching from Farnham all the way down to Dover but the actual race itself is 102 miles usually a little bit more than that but the 2023 edition was slightly cut short so down to 102 miles organized by Centurion running you know we've done many of the Centurion races before and it's fair to say that this year Victoria and I have not been blessed with the easiest of Centurion races during the Grand Slam the Thames Pap 100 was the muddiest Thames Pap 100 you have ever experienced and the South Downsway 100 was the hottest South Downsway 100 in the entire history of the South Downsway 100 and it was no change for the North Downsway 100 there was a storm blowing and the storm arrived at exactly the time that we started but finishing the North Downsway 100 would mean we could continue with our quest to finish the Centurion Grand Slam four 100 miles in a year this would be our third finish if we could get it done so we were determined despite the weather to crack on the rain really started to do its worst around Ryegate Hill which is around 30 miles into the race it absolutely lashed down and it didn't stop for a good half an hour we were absolutely soaked to the skin despite the weather conditions Victoria and I made it to halfway feeling pretty good in fact a lot better than we'd felt on the Thames Path 100 and the South Downsway 100 and I think we've got to put that down to increased fitness plus the conditions on the foot really weren't too bad in the first half of the race we made it to halfway in around about 13 hours but it was after the halfway point as you might expect in a long distance ultra race that we started to feel the pinch somewhat Victoria started to complain of chafing and she did at one point say she completely understood why I DNF my very first Thames Path 100 race due to chafing it was that bad and then she started to feel sick and indeed threw up a few times and it was around about this time that we noticed the ground starting to churn up what with the rain and all the runners before us it was a quagmire and it was pretty slippy and quite dangerous at times in the dark on some slippy quite gnarly terrain with big races for Victoria and me on the horizon we really did not want to slip and break our ankles over those slippy bits so we definitely slowed down in those sections up until now I had been managing to eat and drink fairly well but then to add to Victoria's nausea and chafing I started to feel sick and I rapidly lost my sense of humour with the race thankfully though the potential for things to go wrong was abated by the rise of the sun and a new day gave us new hope with 20 miles to go it was all change during the run we'd been lucky enough to utilise the expert crewing skills of our friends jaco and Karen and for the last 20 miles of the race we picked up jaco as our pacer Victoria had changed out of her wet things at around the halfway mark and I took the opportunity with 20 miles to go at the delingate station to change out of my wet clothes as well so we were really dry and comfortable for the last 20 miles of the race then with less than 10 miles to go the sun on our back and the nausea all but banished we actually started to speed up we felt quite good and Victoria not only had that steely determination in her eyes that she wanted to finish but she also had that competitive streak she was catching people and passing them suffice to say it was a quite brilliant finish by Victoria but if you want to see the full thing if you want to see the whole story make sure you subscribe to the channel because the north downsway 100 video will be out in a couple of weeks all you need to know for now is that we crossed the line we finished we got our buckle for the north downsway 100 and that means the grand slam is still alive if you can call it a training week we finished on 195 kilometers and around 4 000 meters of elevation gain that isn't at all bad if we're calling it training we did one hard effort that was the race on wednesday and one long run you know only a hundred miles or so if you have yet to watch sick again the story of our 2023 south downsway video the incredibly hot south downsway 100 click that link right there and you can go watch that video in the meantime we are done with week seven there are no more races until utmb and occ and we will see you on the start line for week eight of utmb training next time take care bye bye