Shusanah Pillinger on training, performance and the challenges of taking part in race across America

I didn’t start off to compete. I thought I’d enter a 5km race, like the Race for Life, something everybody does. I’d actually been playing football until 8 years ago, but became a bit fed up of being beaten and feeling demoralised at the weekends! Then I had a friend who competed in her first sprint distance London Triathlon. On the day, she might have been the last out of the water, but it was amazing to watch her. I was inspired to enter a sprint distance triathlon, then my first Iron Man competition, (which has basically become the new marathon). The training is addictive and soon you want to go faster or longer - I wasn’t going to look for faster so endurance became my goal. 

I’ve built my training into my lifestyle. I live in St. Albans so I cycle into London; it saves me paying £19 a day to stand on a packed train! Endurance events are all about consistency of training. It’s not about fast or long, it’s about consistency. You can go longer just because you’re used to it.

As soon as I’d realised I’d qualified for RAAM by competing in Race24, where I came 3rd overall (1st female), I started building up to longer distances, and multiday events. It’s one thing to run one long distance, then eat and drink what you want after it, but to be able to get up the next day and do it all again? That’s different. I competed in the Iron Man Triathlon where you get the benefits of training from both swimming and running. I’m also a member of Audax, an old institution of cycling, it’s long distance, really cheap, you stop at coffee shops and have sandwiches in the hedgerow. It’s fun. I like doing fun things to train. I’ll think, 270 miles... where will that get me?  I’ve done London to Paris with the challenge of doing so in 24 hours and cycled around the M25 (which took 3 attempts to get the route right...). I went to do the Race Around Ireland, a key race in preparation for RAAM. I wanted to be the ‘second 1st’ British woman to complete it. I got to 220km and the weather was awful, the North had been fine, but as we cycled into the West it was like heading into hurricane conditions. You learn a lot of things when competing in this kind of event: logistics, preparation, about the crew. For example, we didn’t have enough kit for the conditions; I ran out of dry kit and we had to figure out how to dry what we had quickly. I also didn’t have enough food at the start which is fine for the first few days but then it hits you. Ireland is very hilly. By 1,903km I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore. The crew had to stop me because I was all over the road. I’d actually been hallucinating since day 3.5. I was driving down a dark tree lined road, the car was behind me with its lights on, but I thought I saw 1,000 goblins along the trees. You know that it’s not real but it was one of the most real things I’ve ever seen. I tried to find a picture afterwards but only pictures from the Lord of the Rings are comparable. I also saw a gorilla crossing the road in front of me!

Sleep is going to be my biggest challenge - trying not to fall off the bike. Driving through the desert, the road is long, dull and boring. The route is difficult to start off with, but after the first 1,000 miles it’s mainly flat and that’s where I’ll have the most sleep deprivation issues. The crew have got some funny costumes to keep me alert.

I’ve been using Actigraph monitors. I went on a training holiday in Mallorca just a few weeks ago and I wore them the whole time. It monitors daily activity levels along with sleep quantity and quality, so it tests what my sleeping patterns are like. My optimum sleep efficiency is in the 3rd hour but it’s also pretty good right at the start too. It’s important to strike a balance in those short bursts of sleep. If you don’t get the balance right, and enough sleep, then you’ll fall asleep on the bike. Although 3 hours is a luxury during the RAAM. The guy who does RAAM in the fastest time, 7 days and 22 hours, sleeps for 1 hour a day and covers a huge amount of ground for the rest of the day.

Most recently I’ve been doing more body composition stuff. I did one on day one, when it was literally a case of ‘this is how much of you is fat’. I did another test recently, in March, when I was at the height of big miles and big training and I will do another one when I get back. In other visits, I’ve done VO₂ testing, sweat testing, the heat chamber and strength tests. The team also tested my core temperature. I had to take a huge pill, they scanned me like a bar code, and it gives the team a baseline of how my body cools itself down. Luckily it turns out that my body is quite efficient at that. There is a limit to how hot a person can get and I need to make sure that I don’t reach that point. The aim is to keep my temperature below 39.6 and 39.7 degrees. The crew will spray me with cold water from the car, pour cold water on my head, I will use ice cubes, but of course they will melt quickly. I have a white kit, white helmet and white cooling shoes. 

The number one thing is the work that we have been doing with nutrition. I got it very wrong with the race around Ireland. We’ve also been testing my carbohydrate oxidation rate – how many carbohydrates I can eat until I am sick or ill. I need to make sure that I have enough fuel and find the optimum amount that my body can process. We’ve built a bespoke drink for me to use during the race, ‘GSK HPL Endurance Fuel Plus’, with added caffeine. Fuel is a big thing, we’ve been testing out strategies. It’s very difficult to train with nutrition on your own, you can’t carry everything. I’ll be stopping every 10-15 minutes to get another bottle of water from the nearest petrol station. I used the 400 mile race in India to train in the heat and test nutrition strategies, keeping my uptake of liquid every hour and the results were phenomenal. It’s important to know that information and have someone who can support you.

I haven’t done any cognitive stuff before working with the GSK HPL, seeing what the effects are of prolonged endurance activities. There is an app (Axon Sport Cognitive Priming App) where I basically have to chase green and red dots around a screen. It has been used less to support my training, but more as a biomarker of total fatigue. The cognitive element of the support to date has been more a monitoring for baseline rather than training. An app is convenient because I can use it on the go, I can be using it with my right hand and eating a sandwich with my left. It’s also good to be seeing some more results.