2025 HCC Landcrewing

UTMB live coverage now includes Strava segments

First signs of summer

Bobbin Head, at night

How not to drive, Sydney edition

I’ve recently been asked a few times what I plan to do with the level of fitness I’ve obtained. Mostly I brush this off, suggesting the person asking the question is being overly generous. Recently I came to realise, yeah I have a pretty high level of fitness.

Today, I have an answer to that question. I decided to run the most insane experiment I could. An experiment I doubt has been done before, and I doubt will be done again. I decided to see how hard I could push my training with multiple acute injuries.

Going back 24 hours, I woke up pretty sore on Saturday morning. I went for a short easy run and felt terrible. The day was hot and humid. My left Achilles really hurt. I almost skipped going to my strength session but dragged my arse along and beat myself up there. When I got home, I realised my leg was not getting any better. I had planned to run 21km in the afternoon. I cut this down to 14km, then 10km. I gave up entirely and stayed at home. It’s been a long time since I skipped a workout due to an injury.

The logical thing would be to take Sunday off, rest and heal everything up and ease back into the program on Tuesday. The problem with being in the 1% is what works for the 99% doesn’t really apply. As my physio says ‘tendons need load’. How much load could I put into the system? Let’s find out. I started by getting an extra hour of sleep and eating half a tray of brownies for breakfast. 1,600 calories in about six minutes. Oh, dear.

I planned to do a 10km run, long bike ride and finish off with a second 10km run. The weather has been bad all day, and I hate going back out in the rain. I changed the plan on the first run and did the following:

- Run 11km, 
- Ride 53km,
- Run another 11km,
- Ride another 47km in the rain with my ski goggles on;
- Finally, run 9km in horrendous weather

Over seven hours I ran almost 30km and rode 100km on a leg I could hardly walk on yesterday.

That’s my insane experiment. See if being incredibly fit allows you to take on more load when injured in a day than most people do in a week. When I headed out on my first run, Garmin told me I should rest today. Stay in your lane Garmin. If I want your opinion, I’ll ask. There is not a single person that would have recommended, endorsed or even accepted my plan today. What makes this so interesting, is that I’m applying well known and broadly agreed to ideas, I’m just doing it in a way that almost no one else can.

My model of an endurance athlete is the combination of mental toughness and physical resilience. Today I achieved both of these in a way I didn’t think would ever be possible. 

I'm just getting started.

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Andrew Pratley

Night Run - workout 5/n. Sunday done. It's after midnight and I just spent another hour in the driving wind and belting rain.

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2025 HCC Landcrewing

UTMB live coverage now includes Strava segments

First signs of summer

Bobbin Head, at night

How not to drive, Sydney edition

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