Swissalpine K78 Race Report

The Swissalpine K78 bills itself as the "world's biggest ultramarathon and an ultimate challenge". At 78 km and 2660 metres of climbing, the race quickly grabbed my attention when I looked around for an ultra within reach of the French town I would be staying in for my summer holiday. The event also came highly recommended by a nice chap called Richard from Leeds, with whom I ran most of the Oldham Way Ultra back in March. Richard had run the K78 four times after getting interested in ultrarunning and couldn't speak highly enough of the event. This was quite a relief, as I'd already paid the entry fee by the time I met him. Speaking of which, I'll say up front that I thought the Swissalpine wass really good value for money, particularly as the entry fee includes not only a huge number of aid stations but also a return train ticket from anywhere in Switzerland to the race start in Davos. This encouragement to use public transport both to and during the race is a great move by the organizers, and must dramatically reduce the number of car trips involved.

Early morning, at the start

The K78 was not the only event held on the day - it's actually just the longest race in a series which also included the K10 (10km), K21 (half-marathon), K30 (30km), C42 (very hilly marathon), and K42 (even more hilly marathon!), as well as a series of walks and children's races - the weekend is very inclusive and caters for all abilities. The K21, K30, C42, K42 and K78 all use the same route and just start and stop at different points. The K78, as the longest race, does a full loop out from Davos and back again; the K30 starts in the same place and stops at a town called Filisur; The C42 ends at the next town along, Bergün, which is also where the K42 begins. Again, the rail system is used really sensibly, and those starting and ending part-way round the K78 course are shuttled up and down the valleys by Rhaetian Railways, all included in the entry price.

But there was to be no shuttling for me, since I was doing the full K78 from Davos back to Davos (thereby, technically, meaning I would run at zero kph no matter how well I performed). I was joined at the start line by my friend Vince, who a few weeks earlier decided he would come along and have a go at the C42 marathon, despite never having run more than 5 miles before. He's not one to shy away from a challange is our Vince.

Vince at the start line. He'd later regret carrying those sunglasses

At the start line

After our glorious ride across Switzerland the day before, the weather had dawned wet and grey on race day, and it would go on to rain almost all day. As we stood on the starting line, the announcer told us that it was forecast to get to no more than 7 Celsius on the Sertig Pass that day. I was glad of my arm-warmers. A guy with about 15 race medals jangling round his neck bounced past us waving a South African flag.

"I'm looking for South Africans!" he shouted.

"I'm married to one," I said. "Does that count?"

"We're hard work, aren't we? Have a great race!" He bounced off again like Tigger.

View from the start line

The race began right on time, with around 1500 runners bursting out of the sports stadium and onto Davos's streets. There was plenty of room to find your own pace, and Vince and I quickly settled into 5 minute kilometres as the route took a long loop through the town, the streets lined with cheering people who were undeterred by the rain. The staff of all the local bakeries were out waving and shouting.

We ran under the railway lines and then were out into the countryside - roads then tracks across rolling green fields hemmed in by dramatic mountains. Up through villages full of clanging cowbells and people shouting "Hopp! Hopp! Hopp!" to encourage us on. I was particularly impressed with one village where they had an automated cowbell-ringing machine - perhaps the most specialised labour-saving device I've ever encountered.

Between about 10 and 20 km, the route ran up into woodland on the lower slopes of some mountains, much of the way on singletrack full of tangled tree roots that required much vigilance. I pulled slightly ahead of Vince here, and last saw him still looking strong as I switchbacked downhill off a road just after Monstein.

Through Monstein

From Monstein we dropped steeply down through the scented and dripping pine forests, the rain drumming on our heads, to the Landwasser river valley. Leaving the woodland, the next 10 km saw the route hug the valley-side on a track high above the river. I ran through dramatic dark tunnels bored through the rock, unable to see what I was stepping on.

This valley was dominated by the river and by the railway hacked into the hillsides above it, occasionally crossing from one side to another on astonishing viaducts. I kept hearing the distant mournful sound of the train whistle echoing from the rock walls. The route took us on a narrow walkway over the Wiesener Viadukt, where the runner in front of me was so stunned by the sight of the river crashing below that he just stopped and muttered "WOW!". From there we dropped down and down to pass at river-level under the towering arches of the famous Landwasser Viadukt, which graces almost every tourist poster for Davos and the surrounding area.

On Wiesener Viadukt

That's the foot of the Landwasser Viadukt behind

From the viaduct it was a short run into Filisur, where the 30k race ended. Filisur, like most of the towns, had a flock of enthusiastic Swedish supporters waving a huge national flag. The Swedish supporters were easily the most vocal of the event, and would give a massive cheer if you even looked at them. They were great for morale! Sweden seemed to have the greatest number of entrants after Switzerland, most notably Jonas Buud, who had won the K78 every year since 2007. He would go on to win again today, with an astonishing time of six and a half hours.

Although nominally the difference between the K30 and the K42 was just 12 kilometers, in reality the two events were far more different than that. The next stretch, to Bergün, dropped right down to river level before firing up a long long twisting slope that climbed nonstop about 500 metres. I couldn't help but feel for Vince, who would soon be climbing all this on his first ever marathon.

I ran this leg in increasing distress. I had tried to kickstart the old digestive system that morning with two big coffees and a can of Red Bull. None of these had been enough to get the chew-chew train moving out of the station, but as I'd run into Filisur I had felt the terrible downward force of the Bowel Express working up to full steam. "Is there a toilet here?" I'd asked a woman at the Filisur aid station. "Just keep going," she replied with a gesture down the route - cruely failing to add "for another hour and a half" to the end of her sentence. All through the pre-Bergün climb I was eyeing up bushes for suitable hiding places but just about managed to hold disaster at bay. I burst into Bergün at high velocity, clocking a marathon time of 4:31:57 - fast enough that I would have come in 30th place if I'd been doing the C42! It just shows what alimentary distress and desperation can do for a runner. (If 4.5 hours sounds slow for a marathon time, you have to remember that this is with about 1200m of climbing on trails.)

Manfully masking my distress on the final descent to Bergün

Refreshed courtesy of a portaloo and nibbling on a bread roll, I started out of Bergün on the more difficult part of the day - into the high mountains towards the Sertig Pass. The route followed a sloping track of about 10% gradient alongside a mighty glacial river that crashed down its wide rocky bed. For about 6 kilometres the road sloped unremittingly up the river, and I made good progress up the ranks using a walk-run strategy whilst almost everybody else around me walked the entire way. With the C42 people gone, the overall pace felt far less frantic until the K42 runners started to appear later on. Everyone around me here was in it for the long haul.

Eventually the route left the river and started to climb even more severely - firing up a ridiculously steep and muddy track that seemed to go on forever. I counted my paces backwards from 100 to distract myself. The chill increased as the rain strengthened, and I slipped my arm-warmers back on. My watch was reporting gradients of over 30% (later confirmed by Strava) and my pace fell as low as 18 min/km up some of these paths - and I was going at least as fast as most of the runners around me. The long climb to Bergün now seemed like a happy memory!

At some point, without quite knowing how, I realised I had emerged above the tree line and was up in the alien world of the high Alps. Knots of tiny alpine flowers scattered the sodden grasslands; the ground was filled with streams and rivers over which we had to hop on makeshift stepping stones. Wet feet were inevitable. Everywhere there was the roaring sound of glacial meltwaters crashing down towards the valley below. The altitude was over 2600 metres and I was actually starting to feel some shortness of breath from the thinning air as a final steep and rocky ascent took the race to the Ketschhütte refuge.

At the Keschhütte

The temperature was cold up here, especially with the constant rain and drizzle, and the race organizers were handing out plastic ponchos. "Are you okay?" one of the helpers asked every runner, in very serious tones as she stared into their faces. Clearly she was tasked with looking out for any signs of hypothermia. Who'd have thought that we'd be worried about this in late July?!

Two thrilling kilometres of technical descent saw us begin to climb again to the highest point of the day - the remote Sertig Pass at over 2700m. Still fording streams and hopping rocks, the slope went up, and then up even more steeply, until finally, breathless and surrounded by the clanging cowbells of tiny grey Alpine cattle, I stumbled up to an organizer at the crest of the pass and called "Es gibt kein Luft hier!". "All downhill now!" he shouted back with a big smile.

At the Sertig Pass

I had a quick cup of warming soup from the aid station and then began the challenging descent to the valley. The path was steep and rocky, at times crossing ankle-snapping boulder fields and even a couple of patches of snow. I tried to focus on "flowing like water downhill", and really found myself in the zone, shooting past more cautious runners on the occasional points where the narrow track allowed passing. This whole section was enormously exciting as runners slid, stumbled and glided down 25+% slopes in a rolling mass of bodies.

Eventually we were on lower ground, with about 12 km to go to the finish line. Although at this point I was happy to start admitting to myself that I would finish, my legs really started to feel heavy. As the route took us on long rolling singletrack along forested hillsides, I felt myself bonking and was reduced to walking some sections until I could get more fuel in - clearly I'd not been hitting the gels enough. To force myself to run more I kept reminding myself of the most fundamental rule of ultrarunning: if you're wearing more than one piece of Salomon Exo clothing you look like a prat if you're not trying hard! Luckily the sugar replacement finally started to kick in around Sertig-Dörfli, as you can see from the photo below...

Sertig-Dörfli

By the time we were 2 or 3 km from the finish I really started to feel that second wind, and actually knocked off one of the fastest splits of the day as the track sloped down through the woods above Davos, crossing ski slopes and cable car routes. A final little uphill slope through the town and there was the sports centre ahead of me! I ploughed through the entrance, the crowds cheering all around. As a victorious Vince burst from the trackside to run in with me, the announcer called my name and I crossed the line in 10:19:01, punching the air with a massive smile on my face. Today had been about having fun. And although I secretly would have liked to have got back in under 10 hours, and my failure to eat enough had scuppered that, I didn't much care. It wasn't a serious ambition, and being fast really wasn't the point of the day.

Approaching the finish line - That's Vince with his medal in the background

So overall, the K78 was a fantastic run. The organization of the race was superb. The entire route was marked with flags and tape and there was no danger of getting lost at any point. There were aid stations about every 5 km or even closer, meaning you could happily get away without carrying water if you wanted. Each had a different selection of drinks, many had snacks, and towards they end they even started stocking flat Coke (for which I'm eternally grateful).

Perhaps the only negative point of the whole day was that there was far less conversation than I'm used to. Having mostly run ultras in Britain so far, I'm used to spending long stretches chatting to my fellow runners. Here, I hardly spoke to anybody all day. I don't think this was just me either. I tried starting conversation a few times and got little more than polite single-sentence replies; I didn't hear many other runners talking along the way either. Perhaps it was a feature of the international field (there were over 60 nations represented) or just a cultural difference, but the effect was that, without the usual distraction one can find from conversation, I spent 10 hours in my own head with little to think of except running and which bits of my body ached. Thank goodness the views were so extraordinary.

But that's a minor thing, and was really the only downside to the whole day. Otherwise the race was superb and I would happily recommend a running trip to Davos to anybody next July. And to emphasize what value for money the race is, I don't need to point to the inclusive train ticket, the lovely medal or the stylish finisher shirt - I just need to tell you how, now I've checked my GPS track, I see that the 78 km route with 2660 m of climbing actually gets you 79.5 km and a full 3192 m of climbing. Honestly, those Swiss race directors are so modest about how much they provide!

NoMad 50 Ultramarathon Race Report

It is quickly becoming clear that one of the best things about ultrarunning is the people who do it. For me, the bulk of the 2014 NoMad 50 fell into two slices of time, each of which I'll remember chiefly because of the people I ran with.

It began early when, slightly anxious at the thought of my first 50-mile race, I arrived at the back of The Navigation pub to find the smell of frying bacon and a quiet start line under a grey sky. Most of the runners had opted for the 0600 start and were already gone - there were just a handful of organizers making themselves breakfast while they waited for the 0700 start. A local club runner, whom I later learned was called Eddie Mathieson, checked in just ahead of me and opted to head straight out at about 0630 rather than wait. I hung around to see if I could pick up any tips about the route from the organizers or other competitors. What I learnt was that I was going to get lost a lot. I thought about asking whether I could start a mile ahead of everyone else in recognition of the frantic extra mile I'd already run that morning after forgetting my drop bag and having to sprint back to my hotel.

A low-key sendoff at exactly 0700 saw a small pack of us set off along a flat offroad cycleway, heading fast after the runners who had already left. I found myself up near the front of the group with Janson Heath, Sal Chaffey - who was last year's First Lady - and Daniel Hendriksen. From the flinty grey eyes to the craggy features, Janson looked like Figure 1 from "The Big Book of Fellrunning Hard-Men". As we ran, he told us how he had recently completed the Bob Graham Round in some unfeasibly short time.

"You aren't carrying any food or water," Daniel said to Janson. In response, Janson gestured to two tiny pockets on his shorts. "I've got some stuff to eat in here." Presumably the pockets contained rusty nails and gravel.

Daniel himself proved to be something of a dark horse. At first glance he looked dressed more for a day at the beach than an endurance event, in baggy shorts and a loose T-shirt. I initially pegged him as an enthusiastic newcomer trying to keep up with the front-runner - an idea whose arrogant wrong-headedness became apparent when he casually mentioned his excellent performance at the Spine Challenger race back in January. Shows what I know.

The route dropped off the cyclepath and fired across crop fields towards Draycott. Past a hulking abandoned brick-built factory capped with an ornate clocktower, down a narrow alleyway and back out of town, I continued with Janson and Daniel as the route climbed onto a grassy bank and headed southeast before swinging around, over the river and down to Shardlow where we joined the canal for a few miles of easy running, the three of us men slowly easing away from Sal.

My training has been based around paying attention to my heart rate, which I find great for knowing I'm not pushing myself unsustainably when doing long distances. Unfortunately, everything was out of kilter that morning. At the start line, my watch was reporting 80 beats per minute - at least 20 higher than I'd normally expect when standing around doing nothing. I'd hoped to keep it down around 145 for most of the run, but as soon as we left the start line it went up into the 150s and seemed to want to go even higher. Clearly it was adreneline doing its thing [edit: I think it was actually the early signs of a cold, which hit me hard the next couple of days]. Along the canal my heart and I reached a compromise that, like all compromises, left neither of us happy, and I found a pace that kept things at a high but steady 155 BPM. As you can see from the screenshot below, I was able to run extremely steadily at this level of effort, going at an almost metronomic 5:08 pace. But it soon became clear from his frequent watch-checks and the almost imperceptibly widening gap between us that Janson was religiously sticking to 5 minute kilometres. As we continued to follow the canal, those few extra seconds per kilometre meant I slowly but steadily dropped back. Daniel stayed glued to Janson's heels and eventually, as I choked noisily on a hastily gobbled dried date, the two frontrunners disappeared around a bend and I didn't see them again.

A pleasant spell of running alone alongside the colourful narrowboats was disturbed when I glanced back and saw a runner in a white cap who, it quickly became apparent, was steadily reeling me in from behind. This was Matthew Ma, who soon overhauled me and trotted away up the towpath after a brief chat. Somehow I caught up with him again just before Checkpoint 1 where, remembering James Young's advice to look strong at aid stations so as to demoralise your opponents, I grabbed a handful of jelly babies, shouted something about how amazing I felt and then ran off, leaving Matthew behind. Weirdly, this tactic didn't actually stop Matthew from running faster than me. A few minutes later he caught me up and passed me as we climbed over the A50 and back to the canal.

Several more miles of narrowboats, then back over the A50 a second time, skirting Findern and over some fields of corn, I must have been closing in on Matthew as I arrived at a scruffy farm just in time to call him back from heading down a lane in the wrong direction. We ran together for a while, over fields, around the edge of a housing estate and up to Checkpoint 2 in a pub car park. Here I grabbed a handful of flapjack pieces (which sat like fatty cannonballs in my stomach for the next hour - when will I learn not to eat these?!) and was off up the road whilst Matthew was still sorting out his bag.

The route led out of town, following yellow arrows helpfully painted on the ground by the organizers. These took us up to a dead-straight stretch of cycle track, and I ran bursts of faster and slower pace to avoid my legs doing exactly the same thing over and over. I got a nice morale boost as I passed three of the 0600 starters.

Matthew was a steady 150 metres behind me along much of the cycle track, but as I left that part of the route by climbing up some steps and heading north I somehow lost him and didn't see him again for the rest of the race. The route went across a long string of difficult and slow fields here. The ground had been mangled into ankle-turning badness by those twin environmental scourges: cows and tractors. Crossing from one lumpy and pock-holed field to another was made even more difficult thanks to the local farmers fighting to win the coveted East Midlands Most Preposterously Narrow Stile Award.

Here was the lengthy stretch of running alone that separated the two parts of my day. Eventually I hit Checkpoint 3 in another pub car park and passed a big crowd of 0600 starters, including a woman whose back was being flayed horribly by her rucksack. A few hundred metres on I called to a group of 0600s who were heading in the wrong direction up a hill and then, as the poor buggers lost the altitude they'd just painfully gained, I headed off over more fields of wheat and hairy barley, feeling the first signs of fatigue start to appear as I approached the half-way point. Over a road, and the land became more rolling. Dropping down a rough grassy slope I looked back to see a woman dressed in black come flying down behind me at an astonishing pace - indeed, she was going so fast I at first assumed she must be one of the relay runners (who each run just a fifth of the route). This turned out to be Helen Pickford from Sheffield, who later explained she only ever trains on hills and so is happier firing up and down slopes than running on level ground (I challenge you to a cross-Netherlands race, Helen!). She took up a position just in front of me and soon, as the route led us along a field-edge past Kedleston Park, we were joined by a lovely chap called Justin and, shortly afterwards, the three of us caught up with Eddie, whom I had last seen at the start. I'd started later than these three, and presumably they had steadily maintained right from the beginning a pace similar to what we were all now doing; the faster speed I had held up easily for the first leg no longer felt quite so feasible, and I happily slipped into the pace of this group.

Passing through a strand of trees with Justin a few minutes later, we hit the 42.2 km point. It's relevant to note here that I only started running 9 months earlier, and ran a marathon for the first time last December. As I ducked under a branch and looked at my watch, I was delighted to see that my 42.2 km time today, for what was just the first half of a race where I was having to hold plenty in reserve, was slightly faster than had been that death-or-glory lung-shredder in Portsmouth 6 months ago. A highly satisfying sign of my progress as a runner (or perhaps just testimony to the curry-and-beer pre-race ritual I've adopted since then).

Justin and I lost Helen and Eddie for a short while just before Duffield, a town in which the race organizers went above and beyond the call of duty - or perhaps anticipated the runners' mental collapse - by providing a marshall to press the pelican-crossing button for us as we crossed the main road. Leaving the town after Checkpoint 4 ("Only a half-marathon to go!"), we climbed some steep steps and headed back out into the countryside, thrashing painfully through shoulder-high nettles and scraping our flesh through more leprechaun-sized squeeze-stiles. Rejoining Helen and Eddie, the four of us nervously clapped and shouted our way through fields of inquisitive, drooling bullocks. Somehow, despite the presence of three new potential victims, I missed this opportunity to attempt the flock of cows joke*.

(*"Look, a flock of cows!"
"Herd of cows"
"Of course I have, there's a flock of them over there")

We ran through woods on a muddy track, Helen and Eddie slightly ahead, Justin and I trotting along together as he told me about running the fearsome-sounding Ring of Fire race. At one point he sealed his place as Best Person in the World by looking over at me and saying "I'd kill for a running style like yours". Helen, Justin and Eddie were all great company and I was grateful to have them pull me along and make sure I didn't get lazy at this point, as I fear I easily could have done. We passed more fields, then a lane, a track, and a dog barking on a wall. When the dog barked we turned left, because that's what the race directions told us to do. (Reading the directions the week before, I'd thought this sounded like something out of Father Ted - "Turn left where you see a barking dog on a wall" - and yet the directions were all correct and the barking dog was indeed on the wall telling us where to turn.)

Still we ate up the miles. As we ran up a gravelled drive I quaffed a gel and then stopped to spray a nettle patch with disturbingly cola-coloured piss. But my looming dehydration was forgotten as we passed through the last checkpoint and set off on tracks that were now increasingly familiar to local boy Eddie. Through a kissing gate and up an alley, back into fields full of green wheat and swelling rapeseed pods that swished around our thighs and tried to trip us with their roots.

And so into the final stretch. We ran across the fairways of a golf course under the revolted stares of the players; at this point Eddie and Helen scented the finish line and showed their class by digging deep and pulling ahead. But that's not to say Justin and I were out of it. As we realised we could respectively break 9:30 and 8:30 finishing times, we also found the reserves to up the pace considerably for the last few kilometres. Off the road, down a narrow and overgrown footpath, and then we powered through the final few fields, my watch counting down the distance to the finish line - 800m, 600m... (Incidentally, I'd like to nominate the last field for a special award in the East Midlands Shit Stiles Contest. Not content with the traditional barriers of barbed wire or laughable narrowness, this farmer had somehow contrived to wedge a pony into the gap we were meant to pass through.)

A narrow stretch of ground by some railings and then suddenly the path opened out and there was the inflatable arch and I was finished! Eight hours and 28 minutes after starting. Janson and Daniel were already standing there, having finished in 7:41 and 8:10 respectively - thoroughly deserving gold and silver medalists. I thought that might mean I had come third, but I didn't know for sure - I had no way of knowing whether any of the 0600 starters had run a fast race.

The placing was resolved after a slightly awkard moment when the third-place medal was handed to Helen along with her Fastest Lady trophy. Helen quickly handed it over to me, and after some checking of paperwork, the organizers agreed that I had indeed started later than the other finishers who had just crossed the line and so had run the course in less time, meaning I was officially in third place. Phew!

I hung around the finish for an hour or so, cheering in some more runners (including Matthew, who had lost time by getting off-route) and Jonathan, who had kindly given me a lift that morning after deducing that the person walking up the road in shorts, calf-guards and clown shoes might be a fellow ultrarunner. I would have stayed longer but there was a brown dog scratching at the back door begging to be let out, so I had to head back up the road to do awful things to my hotel toilet.

Walking up through the outskirts of Long Eaton, the brightly coloured Buff hanging off my head, the embarrasingly tiny shorts, the weird rolling plantar fasciitis limp... things that had looked totally normal back in the ultra world I had just left were glaring oddities back in the real world. A woman walking her dogs glared suspiciously at me, clearly wishing for a small child so she could have pulled it to safety. I didn't care. I'd just put up a better performance than I could ever have hoped for in my first 50-mile race, particularly as a 40 year old who has been running for only 9 months. That would do me just fine. Balls to the suspicious dog-walkers of Derbyshire!

And the NoMad 50 itself? Well frankly it was a great event. The organizers were enthusiastic and helpful, the event was low-key, fun and surprisingly cheap. And there was even a well-stocked goody bag. It is, when all said and done, mostly around and across fields, and so isn't the place to come if stunning mountain trails are the only thing that move you, or if you're terrified of nettles and cows. But with the great organization, friendly atmosphere and lack of climbing (less than 800m in total), I would definitely recommend the 2015 event to anybody who wants a great day out and to go for a good time on a relatively flat 50.

Strava track here

Lessons Learnt

• Going out fast and then slowing down a bit was totally fine. I started doing almost 5-minute kilometres and towards the end was mostly running at between 6 and 7 minutes (partly because I started to get tired and partly because the terrain became more difficult). I'm pretty sure that if I'd held back at the beginning and gone out at 6 minutes/km then the only difference in outcome would have been that I'd have finished the race slower! Of course, the staggered start times of this event made my inevitable slowing down almost a pleasure - as I came off the gas near the half-way point I was able to fall in with a group of runners who were good company and who were going at just the right pace; if everybody had started the race at the same time then this wouldn't have happened and I would not have had company to keep me moving, particularly in the 60-70 km zone where I felt at my most sluggish.
• I could have gone faster! Yes, I had a few kilometres of feeling slightly leaden and allowing myself to be pulled along by companions, but that's always going to happen for some part of a long race. The fact is that, apart from exacerbating some plantar fasciitis that had already been developing over the past few days, the race didn't leave me feeling too bad physically, and the next day I could definitely have run if I'd wanted to (I didn't want to). I now see I could definitely have gone at it considerably harder and faster if I'd had to.
• I ate less then I thought I would. I'd told myself that I would alternate between a Mule Bar and a gel every 30 minutes, but in the end only ate about 3 bars and 4 gels, plus a handful of jelly babies and the like from aid stations (and that dried date that tried to kill me by the canal). In the end I was still carrying a lot of the food in my race vest and didn't touch the extra food I'd put into a drop bag. Interesting. Perhaps I can carry less weight on my back next time?
• Following the GPS route on my watch was superb. I had downloaded the track from the event website and spent a couple of hours cleaning it up to make sure that it stuck as closely as possible to the actual paths visible on aerial imagery. I was able to navigate the course almost without problem just by keeping the arrow on the line. There was only one point where I had to backtrack more than a few metres, and even then it was because we were just on the wrong side of a hedge.
• Calf compression: oh my god! I've only tried calf guards for the first time recently and they're amazing. My calves are usually the first part of my body to feel the strain and yet here we are, 50 miles of running and they feel totally fine. Even the next day as I write this, they feel perfect. They should be compulsory. I might never take them off again. 

Are you a nanokiller?

I have been intrigued for some time with Ronald A. Howard's idea of micromorts: a way of putting the risks we take in our lives on a human scale. The idea is that one micromort is a 1-in-a-million chance of dying. So, for example, if we say doing a skydive has a risk of 7 micromorts (as that Wikipedia page that I've linked to claims), that means 7 jumps out of each million lead to somebody dying. Or, in other words, if you jump from a plane there's a 7/1,000,000 chance you'll die (assuming you've used a parachute - without the parachute I suspect the chances are far worse). As we'll all die one day, of course, just being alive carries a background risk level of more than 30 micromorts, as the article also explains.

Anyway, I wondered if we might apply a similar principle to road deaths, as a way of making salient a very important point: each time you drive a motor vehicle, there's a small chance someone will die. I've long thought about how, each time I drive, I am effectively killing a tiny fraction of a person because I'm complicit in the overall number of deaths that take place. Today I realised that something analogous to the micromort concept provides a useful way of quantifying this.

So let's find some statistics! The Department for Transport statistics web page reveals that in the United Kingdom in 2012, motor traffic travelled 302.6 bn miles and led to 1754 deaths. Let's do the maths:

• 302.6 bn / 1754 = 172,519,954.39 miles for each death
• 1 billion / 172,519,954.39 = 5.8

And so, ladies and gentlemen, I present you with the nanokilling. Every mile you drive, you commit 5.8 nanokillings. Drive 12,000 miles in a year and you've committed 69,600 nanokillings, or 0.0000696 killings.

So clearly, the typical individual is fairly unlikely to kill over the course of their driving career. Let's say someone drives 10,000 miles per year for 50 years. 50 * 10000 * 5.8 = 2,900,000 nanokillings, or 0.0029 killings. This means you'd need to get together with about 344 other people before you could be reasonably sure that, collectively, you've managed to kill somebody.

But that's the thing, isn't it? 345 people isn't really that many. There's probably that many within a few streets of you. And there are a lot of streets in the country, aren't there?

Obviously the nanokilling would need to be recalibrated from time to time as new statistics on numbers of deaths and the amount of travelling that took place to cause them emerge, but of course that's also kind of beside the point. The point is that as long as there is motorized travel and deaths on our roads, the number of nanokillings will never be zero, which means the fundamental point of this article will endure - when we use a motor vehicle, we commit nanokillings. Unless you foreswear motoring (and the products of motoring, and do nothing to push for alternatives) you're to some extent complicit in causing little bits of a death. I know I am, even if I'm not happy about it.

Thinking out loud: Are cyclists the new weather?

You find yourself standing next to a stranger, perhaps in a pub or a Post Office queue whilst waiting an unbelievable time for a simple stamp. You decide to strike up a conversation with this person to pass the time. But what do you talk about? The list of topics one can raise with a stranger is quite slim. You can hardly start out with "Isn't the current Prime Minister an incompetent buffoon?" as you risk upsetting their political sensitivities. Sport is also risky - they might support a team you do not. So what's safe? What can you be sure they'll not get offended by? Two topics that never fail are weather and traffic.

"Traffic's bad today, isn't it?" is as safe a conversation opener as you can find. The traffic might be light, but don't worry: this won't go challenged. What else is a safe opening line with a stranger? How about "It's hard to find a parking space, isn't it?" or "Cyclists are a nuisance aren't they? Always riding through red lights and on pavements?" Nod nod nod. Safe. Nobody's going to be offended here. We all agree, just as we all agree that winters aren't what they used to be.

These statements about cyclists, of course, raise the hackles of cyclists a great deal. One only needs to look at yesterday's drama about a survey of red-light jumping behaviour and how it was reported. The old saw about cyclists and red lights is one of a family of statements that are so often repeated I recently suggested somebody should make a bullshit bingo card: red lights, pavements, no tax, no insurance, license plates, helmets, lycra...

And this got me thinking. Yes, these statements are repeated an AWFUL lot, aren't they? I've been hearing them regularly for at least 8 years. They crop up in the comments on almost every article about cycling that gets published online (they'll appear below this, no doubt). Yes, they recur suspiciously often. Hmm...

The thing is, what should we take from these statements? Should we take them as evidence for endemic anti-cyclist feeling? I'm starting to doubt that. It's the fact these statements are repeated SO OFTEN and practically verbatim from a hundred thousand different mouths and keyboards that got me thinking. Because they appear almost as a reflex, and because so many people who don't know one another repeat exactly the same phrases, I suspect that these aren't true opinions; I reckon they are merely memes. They are cultural conventions that have grown up over the past years.

I'd like therefore tentatively to suggest that all these statements such as "Cyclists? They all ride through red lights, don't they?" are fundamentally NOT ABOUT CYCLISTS and should not really be taken as such. I believe they are really a set of social conventions that serve the same role as conversations about the weather: They allow a socially acceptable and safe way to find common ground with strangers. They are (in many people's minds) as uncontroversial as statements about how gravity still seems to be working fine, or how politicians can't really be trusted. They are not intended to challenge or provoke; they are intended to provide comfort through the repetition of a familiar and long-standing ritual, not unlike a religious service.

So perhaps we should not make the mistake of thinking that such statements are the product of considered thought, or really represent people's true opinions. People have not looked into these matters deeply enough to really have deep-seated opinions. If people really studied the weather and climate data they'd stop saying that winters aren't what they used to be. If they studied the traffic behaviour and accident data, they'd stop pointing fingers at cyclists.

Because these beliefs aren't really being examined in depth, people take evidence as it comes rather than going and looking for it, and when this happens one usually sees confirmation bias: the tendency to pay attention to information that confirms what we already believe and ignore information that challenges it. So a person doesn't really notice 25 cyclists stopping at a red light and 50 riding on the road, but spots the one who cuts the light and the one who rides on the pavement because these are what they expect to see.

Of course, the notion that a subgroup of society is a menace could not have taken hold were that subgroup not relatively small and perceived as outsiders. The context in which these social norms arose is fascinating and something I've also thought about, but would be a digression here. The main point I want to explore is that perhaps these statements we see so often are merely conventions that are repeated as part of the social glue that holds society together, and do not necessarily reflect people's true opinions about cyclists.

At first glance, the idea that these incorrect views about cyclists are not deeply examined convictions might suggest they will be easy to change. But if I'm correct in what I'm thinking here, we'd have to suggest the opposite: these views will be difficult to change - they came to hold the position they do in our society because they seemed so self-evident and obvious. Perhaps to challenge the idea that cyclists are all law-breakers is like challenging the idea that winters aren't what they used to be.

Why I hate pedestrians

You know what I hate? Pedestrians. That self-satisfied, striding, boot-bedecked bunch of scum. Is it just me, or does the country suddenly seem to be full of them? I've never tried walking anywhere myself -- why would I? I'm a successful adult -- but it seems I can hardly travel down the street these days without one of them stepping off the pavement in front of me without looking, their face set in a holier-than-thou expression as they jump out of the way of my car in a burst of expletives. Something clearly needs to be done, and it's good that the government are starting to realise this.

The thing is, it's not just that pedestrians are all smug and annoying when they bang on about "health" and "pollution". That's sickening enough, but if their smugness was the only problem I could just ignore them - after all, they and their silly 'shoes' flash past quick enough when I get going, and their smugness can't penetrate my car's tinted windows. But the thing is there's more to it than that, because have you noticed that even though pedestrians walk millions of miles on our road system every single day, they contribute nothing at all to the cost of that road system? They have thousands and thousands of miles of dedicated pedestrian-only travel routes -- pavements, they're called, or sidewalks if you're that way inclined -- which they don't pay a penny for! Whilst honest motorists are taxed left, right and centre, they don't pay anything at all for all these facilities they enjoy. It beggars belief.

And recently, of course, it's got worse. As I'm driving up the street I constantly come across pedestrians walking across my part of the road to get from one of these pavements to another. I mean, what the hell...? Do they want the shirt off my back as well? They've been given vast tracts of pedestrian-only routes, where I'm certainly not allowed to drive, but apparently this isn't enough for them. Oh no, they want to keep encroaching into my space as well. Sure, we've all heard these walking zealots who say that it's because the 'pavements' don't form a joined-up network, meaning they can't walk to where they want to go without having to step onto the road from time to time. Aw, bless their little hearts. To pedestrians I say this: get off my part of the road. If you walk there when I'm coming along then I'll happily run you down, that's all.

In the long term there's clearly only one solution to all this. If pedestrians want to walk on our streets, which we pay for with all our driving taxes, then they need to pay their share and take their part of the responsibility. Anybody who walks anywhere should undergo training, should have to pay an annual tax towards the facilities they enjoy, should display a license plate so they can be identified, and should each be made to carry insurance in case they are ever involved in any accidents. Until then, they can sod off back to Shoeville or wherever it is they go when they aren't freeloading off the rest of us.

Research with People published

It's a red-letter day in the Walker household. My textbook, Research with People: Theory, Plans and Practicals has been published. This is a practically based introduction to the issues involved in human testing. It is written to work for anyone who needs to collect information from people - medics, psychologists, sociologists, management types, etc. - and also works for readers who don't carry out research but who want to understand the research process so they can better make sense of what they read. Enjoy!

A (red) herring in the shower

A few days ago I was asked by Tom Vanderbilt, author of the very readable and interesting book Traffic, to write a piece for his blog summarizing my thoughts on bicycle helmets (thanks, Tom).

Karl McCracken has written some interesting words on the subject as well today. The thing I'd like to pick out of his post is the issue of showers. Like Karl, I have again and again heard people say "Oh, I'd love to cycle to work but we don't have any showers so I can't." Let's have a little look at this, shall we?

When I was doing work on how drivers overtake bicycles, I needed somewhere in Bristol to store my bicycle between testing sessions. I called Sustrans and asked them if they had somewhere I could keep my bike. "Yes, we'll find somewhere," they said. "Just turn up."

When I arrived, where do you think was the one place in the building - a building where everybody cycles to work - that was unused? The shower. And sure enough, that's where the bike was stowed.

Item 2. Last year I attended a meeting at the CTC's headquarters in Guildford. Again, this was a building where everybody cycles to work each day. I saw their shower, and I don't think it had ever been used once.

I think we can learn something from this. Here are two buildings in which the whole staff cycle in every day, and in neither is the shower used. It is clear that showers are a red herring. Like bad weather, they seem a huge concern to people who do not cycle but, after only a little experience, everybody realises it is just not the issue they thought.

So heed my words, people! Of course you'll be a little sweaty the first couple of times you cycle to work because you're not fit! Give it a fortnight and it will no longer be an issue. My workplace is on top of a mountain and I've never showered after getting there. If I have been a little sweaty, simply rubbing it off whilst it's still wet is all that's needed to avoid any smell. And cyclists: spread the word. We need to fight this barrier by showing people that it's just a non-issue if they will only try.

Or could it be that people know showers aren't really an issue, and use a lack of showers in their workplace as a way of justifying a no-longer-acceptable preference for driving? Oooh, what a cynical thought.

What's changed, behaviour - or the willingness to talk about it?

The University of Bath, who graciously stick a few quid into my bank account each month, have just completed a large survey of how people get to the campus. The headline finding is that between 2002 and 2008 the proportion of staff driving to the university has dropped from 69% to 58% and the proportion of students driving has dropped from 29% to 12%. Proportions of people catching buses, walking and cycling have gone up.

So does this represent a dramatic shift in behaviour? I hope it does, and that's certainly how the university will perceive it. But this is a campus whose many and massive car parks are groaning, despite being greatly expanded in area since 2002, and where the buses do not appear any more full or numerous than they did 6 years ago. This all leads me to suggest an alternative interpretation for these findings: people who drive are no longer as willing to discuss it as they were in 2002.

If you regularly do something 'wrong', would you take the time to complete an optional survey on that behaviour? How about if you do something perceived as virtuous? It just seems quite likely that these days, a cyclist or pedestrian is more likely to fill in the survey - and thus receive a little glow of satisfaction from talking about their sustainable travel habits - than a driver who will more likely receive a little twinge of annoyance at yet another attack on their habits. So the survey captures a greater proportion of the cyclists and pedestrians than the motorists, which creates an illusory shift in travel behaviour.

Unfortunately, I can't see a solution to this which doesn't involve obliging people to take part in surveys. But as short-distance car-use becomes less and less socially acceptable, we'll have to expect to see more bias of this sort creeping into transport surveys. And we need to be very careful we don't interpret this as people driving less and cycling more!. Mark my words, this mistake will happen.

Of course, if I'm correct in my interpretation, we might try to read these figures as showing that driving to the university is 100 * (1-(58/69)) = 16% less socially acceptable amongst the staff than it was 6 years ago, which is at least a small victory!

I am a scientist...

I've spent the past two weeks taking part in an event called I'm a Scientist, Get Me Out of Here. This was funded by the Wellcome Trust and was all about forging links between professional scientists and school students to further the students' understanding of science and remove a lot of the mystique that surrounds the area.

I was in a knockout contest against four other scientists - two cancer researchers, a chemist and a cosmetics researcher. Over the fortnight students from around the country bombarded us with questions about our work (and ourselves!), and we took part in many frantic live chat sessions where we were grilled mercilessly and made to defend our work in short snippets of text. They voted somebody out every few days.

And the result of all this is that after a week of eliminations, yours truly has been chosen by the students as the winning scientist. I win £500 for science communication - woo-hoo! I'm very surprised: I really thought one of the cancer researchers would get it (not only did the students clearly see cancer research as really worthy, but they were both much nicer than me in the chat sessions!).

But tempting as it is to gloat about winning, I see this as a victory for psychology rather than me. From the questions I was asked (which you can read if you look at the website - log in as a guest and choose GCSE 2 from the menu at the top), it was clear this was an area that the school-aged students simply hadn't been exposed to, and which they found really interesting. School science teaching is rooted in the 'big three' of physics, biology and chemistry, and these are massively important subjects. But there is clearly an appetite for psychology amongst the students too. Already hugely popular as an A-level, it's time for a lot more schools to start offering psychology at GCSE too. If nothing else, it surely would act as a powerful way of keeping girls interested in the more scientific end of education.

Segways and the law

Here's a cutting I ripped from the painfully inoffensive Metro newspaper a few weeks ago. It's about the House of Lords - Britain's strange, unelected upper chamber - discussing whether Segways should be legal. I love this story, because there are clearly so many layers of untold story behind the scenes...

Lords: Give green light to Segways
Scooters known as Segways should be allowed on the roads, peers said yesterday. The electric two-wheelers got the backing after peers tried them out.... Segways are used by police and the public in parts of Europe along with the US. There have been concerns here about safety. But [Liberal Democrat] Lord Redesdale said: 'I drove one straight at Earl Atlee and failed to do him any damage at all.'

Doesn't that last sentence just reek of disappointment?

[Edit: I just found the whole debate here. There are a couple of words missing from Metro's report... "I drove straight at the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, with his consent, and failed to do him any damage at all - unfortunately!" I was right about the disappointment!]

The family minibus

I have a neighbour who regularly travels with his wife and their two children. To move the four of them around, he bought a minibus with 20 seats.

'Why have you done that?' I asked, choosing my words carefully. 'There are only four of you - wouldn't a car make a lot more sense? It would take up less space and use a lot less fuel.'

He gave me a level look. 'But once every six weeks it's my turn to take my son's football team to their match. I need a vehicle with 20 seats.'

'Er, okay. But why not buy a normal car and just hire a minibus on the odd occasions you need one?' I asked. 'It would be a lot cheaper, and probably easier for you.'

'Oh, who can be bothered with that?' he replied, and stomped off.

Okay, so this neighbour is fictitious, but I've had almost exactly the same conversation with many people, with the only difference being that the numbers are all 5 times lower. There are so many people who buy a car with five seats primarily to move one person around. When challenged, they always point out some achingly unusual event as justification ('What about when I need to take rubbish to the tip?') I mean, what's that? Twice a year? Three times?

As plans for congestion charging force us to think about the consequences of our travel more and more, it is the sheer bone-crunching illogic and irrationality of this thinking that drives me crazy. Cars are fundamentally badly designed in various ways (e.g., their need for huge slurpy soft tyres to stop them flying off the road), and one of their basic design faults is that they take up the same amount of valuable road-space to convey one person as five. As I've mentioned before, people are going to have to realise that if they travel alone 95% of the time, it is better for everyone - including them - if they get a one-person vehicle and hire something bigger on the odd occasion they need more space. It's such a shame that we're going to have to go through masses of congestion and heavy-handed legislation to make people act rationally. Bah.

Yellow lines

, originally uploaded by Alex Craven.

There has to be a better way to manage parking than these eyesores.