By Grace Jones | posted on October 27, 2017
ALBANY’s Steven Williams is putting the final miles into his legs ahead of an epic 180km endurance race in Victoria next month.
Williams will be running from Mount Buller to Bright for the Great Southern Endurance.
Preparation started in December last year and has consisted of a solid regimen of clocking up the miles.
“If I’m not doing long endurance walking, I’ll still go for a walk each morning,” he said.
“Training hasn’t been too intense, but I do try to make my way to the Stirling Range once a week.
“I’ve been steadily increasing the mileage that I run and make sure I do lots on inclines.
“I try and run on average 100km a week. I’m aiming to do 130km this week.”
A large part of Williams’ training hasn’t just been limited to physical training, but also experimenting with high calorie food to eat during the race.
“The biggest challenge is eating enough food and the right food to give you energy for the race,” he said.
“It’s all experimental to make sure your body and your mind are working properly.
“I’ll need to eat roughly 200 calories or 800 to 1200 kilojoules per hour to keep me going.
“Your body struggles to digest food when you’re running as well.
“Having the right things to eat during the race is the difference between finishing and not finishing.”
Williams said he enjoys the challenge of an endurance run and pushing himself to the limit.
“I’ve done two 100km races and a 120km self-supported run before,” he said.
“One of them I couldn’t complete and stopped at 70km. The other was the Wild Goose Chase in June, which was more than 100km.
“This will be by far the longest competition I’ve done to date.”
