Pre-race I was cautiously optimistic about Six Days in the Dome. However it went badly wrong in multiple ways, and I'm only just getting around to blogging about it a year later. It's always hard to piece together exactly what happened when in multi-day events. When it's a six-day race on a 400m indoor track and you wait a year it becomes almost impossible. So this is going to be a cut-and-paste of tweets and photos, with a few words thrown in.

The day before

I arrived in Milwaukee ~36 hours before the race, just in case there were issues with flights etc. Everything went to plan so I had a free day, where I did more than I probably should have done. Milwaukee has decent public transport for a US city, but none the less there was a bit too much walking. After stocking up on snacks at Walmart I dropped into the Ice Centre to pick up my race packet and Bob Schultz gave me an enthusiastic tour of the facilities. I got to see (Harvard Physics professor, and now US women's transcon record holder) Jenny Hoffman on her way to qualifying for the US women's 24-hour team.

Day 1

On paper day 1 went well; I racked up 87.9 miles, 6.6 more than at Kauhajoki. But already various red warning lights were flashing. I'd read about people with asthma having problems with the cold air in the ice centre. I've never had breathing issues while running, not even at -20 degrees C in Sweden. So I wasn't expecting it to be an issue for me. Very soon though my nose was streaming, and a few hours later I was coughing. The cool temperature also meant I felt both sweaty and cold at the same time. More alarming though was my heart rate. I was doing my usual track race day 1 routine of walking 1 lap every hour and every time I restarted running my heart rate would shoot up to over 170, even though it felt like I was running very slowly. I also made problems for myself by taking splits on my watch every lap, which made my ongoing shoulder injury flare up badly. I stopped doing that and the pain faded but I spent several hours running with it either limp by my side or held across my chest.

Day 2

Things started getting seriously hard on day 2 (far too soon). I've still got no idea what caused it, but the 'knuckle' of my big toe got very swollen leading to major shoe modifications. The breathing issues also got much worse. For the first time ever I had the disconcerting experience of breathing in, but feeling like no air was was reaching my lungs. I tried breathing through a buff (to warm the air up) but it didn't seem to make any difference. And the cough got much worse. Ella Lomardi (who I hadn't yet spoken to, and would go onto finish first woman) very kindly told me that she'd leave some throat lozenges out on her table for me to take. And some cough mixture was unofficially bought for me from Walmart. Even in the warm sleeping room the coughing continued. Beforehand I'd been worried that other people's snoring would stop me sleeping, but in fact my cough was the issue. I'd expected that running on an indoor track would be mentally hard, however actually, with audiobooks to listen to, it was fine. There were some other unexpected challenges though. The frequent, but unpredictable, thudding of ice hockey pucks against the boards made me flinch and the track was quite hard under foot.

In Kauhajoki the other runners slept a lot more than me. But the Americans typically slept a lot less, and in some cases 'zombie walked'. That meant that I'd fall down the leader board overnight, but slowly work my way back up again through the day.

Day 3

The foot issue from day 2 eased, but I hadn't been careful enough about the positioning of the timing chip on my other ankle and my anterior tibialis got very unhappy. This has happened in the past and usually I can manage/work around it. But this time I couldn't, possibly because I was slow spotting the issue due to the breathing and foot issues. There was more shoe surgery and none of my socks would fit.

Annabel Hepworth (one of the best female multi-day runners in the world) had a bad fall and injured her knee. Before leaving she asked me if she thought I could manage a PB. At that point I was keeping going because it wasn't impossible, but it was looking increasingly unlikely due to the multiple issues, in particular lack of sleep due to the cough.

Day 4

The afternoon session at the beginning of day 4 was tough; I was struggling to move at 3 miles an hour. I decided to have a longer and earlier sleep in the hope that would 'reset' my body. It didn't. I struggled to walk even the half lap round the track to my table. My ankle wouldn't bend, and I coughed so badly I threw up in one of the waste bins. Bad patches come and go, but trying to carry on like this would be pointless and stupid. It was time to hand in my timing chip. The organizers, not unreasonably, asked if I was sure, but I'm not a premature DNFer. I was less impressed by the bloke who tried to tell me that 'it's all in the head' (especially since he then stopped himself 24 hours later…). Hotels in Milwaukee were ridiculously expensive, so I spent the remaining 2.5 days at the Dome recovering and trying not to disturb people with my coughing.

Afterthoughts

The main takeaways from this are that the Dome doesn't work for me (too cold, surface too hard) and that I can't wear an ankle timing chip in multidays. The northeristerone (period delay) tablets did their job. However I suspect they might have played a role in the various wierd things my body did during the race, so in future I'll probably just try and handle the period that inevitably starts during, or shortly after, a multiday race. Part of me is miserable about spending so much time and money on a race that went so badly wrong. But there were some positives; I met some really good female six day runners and some of the things I tried (listening to audiobooks and the Ultimate Direction waistbelt) worked well. Most importantly it's given me a better appreciation of the 393 miles I ran in Kauhajoki. Six day running is hard. I still want to break 400 miles, and really believe I can. But if I don't ever manage it I've still done quite well (for a plodder) at six days.