Preamble

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 forced me to work from home to help stop the spread of the virus. This new work arrangement allowed me to use the time I’d usually spend commuting to start running with less constraints. Naturally this allowed me to push my distances a bit further than what I had been used to!

One day, while nursing the aches and pains I incurred from a 16 mile run, Matt suggested in a Strava comment that I should join him on a 100k ultramarathon. Seeing as the 16 mile run completely destroyed my legs, the idea of running 100k was absurd. But it was a good half a year away, so I enthusiastically agreed to join him. Plenty of time to train!

First Injury

It turns out the day after I signed up for the race, I had already incurred an injury from the long run the day before. The inner side of my left ankle was aching a lot whenever I’d try to run, even after a week.

A quick visit to a physiotherapist quickly concluded it was shin splints probably caused by increasing the training load too quickly. I was perscribed a basic strength programme, as well as instructions to simply just walk for now.

If shin splints are a problem for me when my long run is 16 or so miles, I gathered I’d have huge problems ahead when running even further distances. But there were still 5 and a half more months to go before the race start, so surely there’d be time to fully recover and slowly ramp up the training base?

Starting the training programme

After 3 weeks of walking and strength training, I was finally able to run 5k without any painful sensation in the ankle.

Now it was time to find a suitable training programme. Matt had sent me his training routine, however due to my injury I had already missed a big chunk of it. So I decided to trawl the Internet and find my own free basic plan. I eventually found a plan on Marathon Handbook which looked sensible when planning around my daily life.

In a nutshell, the training plan consisted of base miles, speedwork and a long run, with an optional crosstraining day (which could be swapped for a rest day). The long runs went all the way up to 37 miles (!).

In order to ramp up the training free of shin splints, I decided against doing any speedwork sessions in the initial stages.

My first long run after recovering was with Matt. A cool half-marathon distance along the River Thames. I remember feeling a bit drained by the end of it, and we had been under our target pace, largely due to just chatting throughout the run (no bad thing!). Still doubting my ability at this stage.

Ramping it up with strength training

A month or two later, my training was taking me into sustained 30+ mile weeks consisting of 3 lots of 6 mile runs and a long run in the weekend, which is something I wasn’t used to without getting injured. To keep myself injury free, I tried to do 3 strength and conditioning sessions per week. These sessions consisted mostly of bodyweight exercises such as:

• wall squats
• calf raises
• side planks
• side lying leg lifts
• hip thrusts (with added weights)
• bulgarian split squats
• squats (with added weights)

These strength sessions took roughly 40 minutes to complete and were intensely boring. I’d usually try and find a crappy movie to watch while doing this, but the exercises required me to keep glancing at my watch to switch exercise.

Initially for the first 2 months I was skeptical of the benefit derived from these exercises. I don’t like the idea of doing gym work; it always seemed like ’simulated’ workload for a real life application I couldn’t quite understand. This was the first realization that my running training was more than just the act of running, but also blind faith in the strength training. Despite my apprehension, over the following months stairs and hills would feel easier to climb and the feeling of nimbleness when running would be apparent. Most importantly however was the absence of shin splints!

Long run routes

By the time I’d built up my base fitness to start a 20 mile run, I was feeling intimidated. This is the distance I decided that a hydration vest would be required to store water and snacks. I’d plotted a 20 mile loop from SW London into central London, passing by all my old bedsits/flats on the way.

The second time I’d felt intimidated before a run was when I had to tackle 28 miles. For this, I plotted a route which went westward from my flat, all the way to Kingston and back, purposely avoiding any ’trail’ terrain (any terrain that wasn’t pavement) in order to preserve my beloved shoes from damage. During the run I felt pretty fit and tireless and managed to complete it without grumbles. The day after the run however, revealed that my left foot didn’t share the same ideas. It was aching at the joint between my big toe and second toe, and worryingly felt similar to when I broke it about 8 years prior.

Second Injury

After waiting a week to see if the pain would clear up (it didn’t), I visited a local podiatrist to see if they could shed some light on whether or not I’d broken something.

I was subsequently diagnosed with a mild ’lisfranc’ strain, and there was no cause for concern, which was pretty accurate, as the pain from the strain completely cleared up about 3 weeks after it started. This also meant I was 3 weeks behind on my training plan now.

Bouncing back... with a 50k run

Once I felt like I could take on the miles again, I resumed training pretty much where I left off.

The next long run in the plan was a 50k. 80% of me thought it would be irresponsible to attempt to do this after taking 3 weeks off to nurse an injury, but I felt that the time between now and the race was too short, and this run would be better done and out of the way before it was too late. The pains in the problematic joint also felt completely gone, so the run went ahead.

This time, I started the run in the late afternoon. This was a huge mistake as I felt fatigued from whatever I had been doing that day, and in my haste to get out and just do the run, completely underestimated just how much water and food I’d need on my journey.

Again, the route took me westward towards Kingston and loop through Bushey Park, where it tracked all the way back home through suburban Wimbledon, purposely avoiding any non-pavement terrain for the preservation of my sacred running shoes.

I began the run at my usual slow run pace of 5:30 min/k, which after 3km in, slowed into 6 min/k. Something happened to my right knee under the joint which hurt each time I raised it. Another injury!? But this time I decided to just plod through it, making shorter steps and being careful not to raise my knees too high as to aggravate the sensation.

The first half of the route which ran parallel to The Thames was pleasant, however after Bushey Park it felt laborious. The temperature also dropped in which I felt it was time to put on my base layer. The subsequent run through the seemingly endless suburban sprawl of Wimbledon at dusk was soul destroying. After hitting 31 miles, I ran an extra few hundred meters just to be sure I hit the arbitrary 50k mark (as my watch is not set up to display kms) and finished the run!

At home, my lovely wife had prepared everything I needed on return - spaghetti meatballs and a soft drink which I gulped down. This made me extremely cold and I ended up intensely shivering with a blanket over me on the sofa for a minute or two - a sensation I have never had before.

Upon reflection, packing too little food and water had really hampered my performance during this run. By the time I had got back through my front door, I was definately more dehydrated than I initially thought.

Tapering

The 50k training run was where I decided to deviate from the plan and set that as the peak of my training to allow my new found knee issue to resolve itself.

Further long training runs included a really pleasant marathon distance run on the Thames footpath, and a second 20 mile run which obliterated my heels due to changing my shoes to something I wasn’t used to.

The final week of tapering involed very small 3 or 4 mile runs during the week, and a 2 mile run the day before the race. At this point, due to the injuries I had sustained, I was surprised I made it to the start line, let alone with really fresh feeling legs!

The Race

May the 29th came around quickly. Sleep was surprisingly plentiful the night before in contradiction to the horror stories I’d read of pre-race nerves and excitement. I estimate I got about 5-6 hours sleep the night before.

Pre-race prep was also very simple, and I managed to eat a quick peanut butter sandwich before the taxi arrived to bring me to the race start in Richmond. As the taxi drew closer to the venue, there were scaterings of people walking with hydration vests and technical clothes.

The starting venue was fairly quiet. I got there 5 minutes before I could go in, and bumped into Matt before we both headed in. Once we were temperature checked and allowed into one of the marquees, we were handed our race chip and bib numbers. A few bare tables were available to allow us to collect and reorganize our gear and allowed Matt and I to discuss race strategy. As it turns out, Matt had in mind to run the first 50km of the race sligtly faster than we had trained for - which I agreed to as it made sense to do so before being hit by the hilly terrain for the last 50km.

0 km

The race start was uneventful. We all coralled into the starting area with masks on, and away we went. No crazy sprints into the grassy meadow beyond, just a slight jog on. For this first section, Matt and I spent most of the time just chatting about stuff going on in our lives. This helped pass the time, as we ran dodged other runners and walkers throughout the length of the Thames Footpath all the way to Kingston.

After running in a pack with other entrants of the race, and eventually overtaking them, we ended up going through Nonsuch Park in Morden. A few kms after this, we entered some covered woodlands, ducking and dodging tree roots and branches. It wasn’t so technical, but as we were running through, I did hear a runner close behind me stumble and almost hit the deck hard. Luckily he managed to save himself from falling, and ran with us for another few kilometers before falling back.

56 km

By now, it was starting to get to midday. From here on, the sun was starting to bear down on us and the temperature was rising. I was on top of my hydration, drinking a full 1L between aid stations - a luxury I didn’t have when going on my long training runs. After a few beautiful country roads and meadows, we hit the 56km mark, which is the distance at where the half race distance challengers finish, and also the location of the ’mid-way’ point aid station. As we entered the mid-way point station, one of the race officials who was also talking on the loudspeaker checked to see which distance we were doing, and directed us into one of two fenced aisles, while assuring us that this was the "painful" way, as opposed to the way with "all the drinks, nice food and entertainment"! Up to this point, I found that time had moved very quickly, and it felt more like completing a 20 miler rather than 31 miles.

After a quick ’restock’ in which I fiddled around with my vest to transfer the remaining gels from the back pocket to the front pockets, we took off again to complete the second half of the race. These remaining kilometers were fairly uneventful. I remember struggling particuarly between one set of aid stations as I accidentally refilled 1 of my bottles with fizzy Coke, and the other with an electrolyte tab AND premixed energy drink. The combination of the sugary drinks and the sugary energy bars were really hard to stomach after this time. I am only grateful that it didn’t affect me enough to make me vomit!

As we progressed, we encountered more wooded sections which were bogged down in mud. This made running particuarly difficult as we were both using road shoes. This is also where my pristine road shoes with 340 miles on them got their first splatters of mud!

At around the 75-80km mark, I found it hurt to walk as the outside edge of my left ankle was in pain. Strangely, I felt like I could run on without much pain - but as I stopped to walk, the pain would come back even worse than before. Since I was relatively close to the finish, I decided to press on and try to finish. Walking up hills also seemed to be fine, and I know there was one more large hill to scale before we hit Brighton.

The penulatimate aid station is before Plumpton, a pretty steep hill. As this aid station I tried to use the toilet, as I felt that after consuming all those gels and electrolyte mix there’s gotta be something truly unhealthy with keeping all of it in. En-route to the toilets I was asked by some paramedics if I was OK. I said yes, although wondered if I looked like I was about to fall apart. Maybe the pain in my ankle was giving me a constant grimace that I was unaware of?

80 km to finish line

The route up Plumpton was a grassy path with switchbacks. I felt fine, despite the intermittent pain in the ankle, and scaling the hill wasn’t a problem. By now, general fatigue had set in, but was far from being overwhelming. In contrast to the ascent, the descent hurt my ankle a lot. It was a slight downhill grade with a gravelly singletrack. Each new angle that my left foot had to deal with introduced new pains. But still I pressed on.

After running through a nettley wooded trail and a short, sharp valley, we eventually left the greenery of the South Downs and found ourselves in what appeared to be suburban Brighton, not too far from the finish line. The suburbs of Brighton are still hilly however, and when we eventually got to 98km, we could see the race course. We ran up a semi-sand duney trail, crossed a busy road and ended up at the 99km marker, which gave us a plain sight of the finish line, at the end of a formidable race course run! We were lucky enough to have come to this point and what was essentially golden hour (roughly 7pm). Here, Matt wanted to gun it with a chance to beat 12 hours, and so he did, all the way to the finish line. I came up about a full minute behind him. As I crossed the line I could hear my mum who had lovingly waited all day for me.

As I crossed the line, I was sure to thank everyone who was cheering and welcoming me across. What an overwhelming experience! I was handed my medal after my timing chip was tapped, and got a finishers T-shirt as well as a free food coupon which I used to grab a hotdog, the only salty thing I had eaten that day! After a quick farewell to Matt, I decided to head back home with my Mum. I was beat. At this point I found it very hard to walk properly. Chafing was also now a serious issue I hadn’t registered throughout the race up until now, which made sitting down in the car extremely uncomfortable!

After the drive back with my Mum to my flat, I got out of the car carefully, and got home. My kids had drawn me their own versions of medals which I proudly took receipt of. The rest of the night I struggled to eat anything substantial, and I spent it looking eagle eyed at the race results, surprised with our performance of the day, where Matt came in 13th, and I came in 14th position out of a field of 700 or so runners and walkers.

Reflecting

Besides 2 Parkruns, this was my first ever running race. It was also the most physically demanding thing I’ve ever done.

The race was so well signed that I didn’t need to load the GPX route into my watch. The volunteers on the day were friendly, and the people standing by the route cheering on the runners were a great bonus. The sight of the Brighton Racecourse and the finish line at the end of the straight with the sun setting in the background will forever be burned into my memory, and I couldn’t have asked for a better start to the 2021 summer season.

My decision to press on with the race at 80km, despite suffering from sharp ankle pain is something I won’t do again. The injury I sustained from this resulted in 1 month of total rest. While I am happy with my placement in the race, it would be nice to do this again without sustaining injury.

There is also something to be said about the way in which I approached the training, and neglecting to build the mileage conservatively, given the sheer amount of injuries I picked up when training for this.

All in all, an amazing event with some harsh lessons to learn from.