Post race thoughts on my 42 miles (10 laps)

Yesterday was a lot tougher than expected. I had planned to do 12 laps and hadn’t really considered the possibility of doing any less. The race started at noon and I intentionally left my phone in the hotel room and told my fiancé and her parents that I would finish at midnight. The race started at noon and I was certain however hilly the course was, the race I did in Skiddaw would have been steeper and longer than what I would have to do in laps.

I found the first few laps quite comfortable and even though there was some decent climbs in it, there wasn’t anything I thought would be a problem later on. I got round between 43 and 47 minutes for most of my laps of 4.2 miles. The weather was quite settled and the ground was pretty steady underfoot.

I thought (perhaps erroneously) that if I wore me thermal base-layer top and leggings with my running top then saved the waterproofs, hat and gloves for once it got dark that I would feel the benefit more.

My boxer shorts had chafed quite badly after lap 3 so I changed into another pair which helped. A few laps later it didn’t cause me any discomfort so I didn’t take the paramedic up on her offer of support at that point for runners who had chafed. The lack of noticeable pain was perhaps me being foolhardy and I might have benefitted from taking her up on the offer in retrospect.

I found the 5pm-6pm my favourite out of those I managed. There was a warm(ish) breeze and the sun was slowly going down. The idea that my next lap would be in darkness was good to know as I wanted to see how much the temperature would drop and what I would be like managing with my headtorch.

The week building up to the race I found a TED talk video about “how to be a loser” by a former UFC fighter, Rich Franklin. This mentioned how he learnt from losses in his career and skill sets he had developed to manage his emotions through these. It’s a lot more interesting than it sounds and finishes with a description of the first olympic women’s marathon in 1984. The final part of the route included a lap inside the stadium and the winner finished in 2:24:52. Around 20 minutes later, Gabriella Anderson-Scheiss entered the stadium suffering from heat exhaustion and took nearly 6 minutes to complete the lap around the track. She finished 37th in a time that would have been fast enough to win the first 5 olympic marathons. I won’t go into further detail but this story was my anchor for the laps on the dark for when I would feel I couldn’t keep going.

My first lap in the dark (6pm-7pm) wasn’t too bad but the terrain was noticeably muddier than when I had started. Understandably 100-120 runners going over it will have this effect. I noticed my time was a bit slower but I was still comfortably within the cut-off.

The 8th lap was a bit tougher and my legs were cramping up for parts of it. I had found the time between finishing lap 7 and starting lap 8 very uncomfortable and really struggled to keep warm. I queued up for hot pasta which had been a majorly motivating factor but could only shovel half a cupful into my mouth before starting lap 9. It was ridiculously warm and the salt I had put on it was really tasty.

Lap 9 was my hardest lap by quite a long way. I had planned to only concentrate on the lap I was on but I couldn’t get the thought out of my head that I still had 3 laps to get to 50 miles. I found the effort to use the torch to guide my way more difficult than any other laps as I ran on my own for large parts of it. The time I finished this lap in, only left me with about 3 mins before starting lap 10. I was seriously worried about not making the cut off for lap 10 so told my fiancé the next lap would be my last.

I had checked with Sammy (one of the race organisers) that my 10th lap would count towards my total if it was over the hour and he confirmed it would. Still there was a massive pride element that wanted to get under the hour cut off. I was on my own for virtually the entire lap and managed to keep ahead of one other runner for the whole way and scraped under the cutoff by 9 seconds.

I was amazed when the person behind me set off for lap 11 having made it under the minute cut off to start each lap. I didn’t even consider setting off for lap 11 as there was simply nothing left.

I don’t think 50 miles in a day is unattainable for me but I will probably choose a race that is mostly in daylight for my next Ultra. The last few months have been very enjoyable to train in and I am happy to have maintained a similar level of fitness over the winter months to what I had for the Skiddaw race.

My next race will be at Bournemouth marathon in October as a part of me has missed running at a faster pace and I want to try get a new PB over that distance. Hopefully I can get over the 50 mile mark at some point in the Spring next year.