Racing Centurion A100 On Dad Hours
Kallum Pritchard sharpens up with Lean Miles and Big Intent
New baby in the house, Centurion A100 on the horizon. In between 3 a.m. feeds and stolen miles, Harrier PRO athlete Kallum Pritchard has rebuilt his race prep with a sharper, leaner approach this time, and a mindset that breaks big efforts into bite-sized wins. We caught up with Kallum to talk sleepless nights, speed over volume, and the simple systems he’ll trust to tackle the Centurion A100.
Let’s dive in.
KALLUM, HOW’S YOUR SUMMER OF RACING BEEN?
"I was supposed to do a few races, but I picked up an injury a week before the first one in May. So I was off for about six to eight weeks. Just cross-training a lot, so still keeping fit, but not the same. Over the last two to three months, I've started to pick up fitness to prepare for the Centurion A100. As part of that, I did a half-marathon last weekend, which was more of a training race to see where I'm at, a bit of fun local race."
SO AN INJURY AND WELCOMING A NEW BABY TO THE FAMILY! HOW HAS ALL THAT CHANGED TRAINING FOR YOU?
"It's impacted it quite a bit, but I'm not going to complain. It's been great, but I've had to be realistic with my training. I'm waking up every two to three hours to feed through the night at the moment because the little one's so young.
So I haven’t been able to do the 90 to 100-mile weeks, which I'd expect to be doing at this point in the buildup to a 100 miler. To get around not being able to do the quantity of running, I looked at the quality. So instead of doing 100-mile weeks, it's been more 60 to 90-mile weeks, depending on how much sleep I've had, plus a lot of speed sessions. So short sessions focused on getting myself as fit as I can, rather than conditioning for long runs.
I've still been doing a lot of strength training each week. But yeah, I've been realistic. It seems to be paying off because at my running club, we see our results from the sessions against our history. So you can compare yourself to that same session a year ago, six months ago, two years ago. And it's trending in the last month or so that I'm doing better on sessions than I was before my injury and last year."
THE CENTURION COURSE DEMANDS BOTH STRENGTH AND ENDURANCE. ARE YOU DOING ANYTHING TO PREPARE MENTALLY FOR THE INEVITABLE LOWER POINTS IN A RACE LIKE THIS?
"I won't be at mile five thinking I've got 95 miles left. I always break it down to checkpoints. I never think about the main distance. So I’ll always think, right, what do I need to consume to get to the next eight-mile checkpoint, to get there and feel good and be able to carry on.
I'm not planning to have a crew there. All of the kit that you need will be at one central hub, the village hall. So I'll have everything lined out, all my bottles made up, all my gels all labelled up for each 25, 50, 75. And I'll be using that rather than the other checkpoints. So every 25 miles, I'll come back there. I’ll know exactly what kit I've got there for me in terms of nutrition, drinks, and gels. So I can plan it out really well."
AND DOES THAT PLAN COME WITH ANY TYPE OF GOAL?
"If I had an A, B and C target, A would be under 14 hours, which I think is doable, especially for this course. B target would be under 15 hours. And then C target would be just to get round, you know, if something's gone wrong, get round with no injuries."
IS THERE ANYTHING YOU’VE BEEN DOING TO TRY AND PREVENT INJURIES?
"I've been using the AlbonApp, which is a coaching and data-oriented app made by Jon Albon and his wife, Henriette, two very good athletes. It looks at your last six months' worth of running on Strava, pulls all that data in and gives you plans of where you should be when you're working towards your target races. It knows where you are in terms of stress, so it will tell you if you're doing too much or going into a high-risk area or if you're not doing enough to build. It's for cardio, speed and impact, and it's quite a nice way of managing your training load, to know you're not dropping, you're not doing too much, or you're not doing too much speed, you're not off cardio."
WHAT DOES YOUR KIT LOOK LIKE FOR THIS RACE?
"Just the mandatory kit list, I don't typically carry much extra stuff, to be honest. I’m looking at either the 5L Curbar or the 10L Kinder race vests at the moment. Probably the 5L, if I can fit everything in. If it were up to me, I'd just have the Baslow waist belt on, but I can't fit everything in there for 100 miles."
"The good thing with the new Exmoor PRO waterproof is that it packs down really nicely. The standard Exmoor is really comfortable, but for packing right down into a race kit, the new PRO one is really nice, especially if you like your kit really compact and light, which I do.
And also copious amounts of the Harrier soft flasks. I'll probably have about 10 or 12 of them filled up, ready to go at the checkpoint. I'll start with two on me, and then most of them will be filled up in my bag, so every 25 miles, there's no messing about, I can just grab them already filled with my carb drink and go from there, rather than undoing them and refilling and stuff like that."
Good luck, Kallum - we’re backing you all the way! Keep an eye out for part two: we’ll check back in after Centurion A100 to see how Kallum’s plan played out.
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