PureTrail Tsunami

I love it when a race *feels* good. That's why I train, it feels awful if your body is sluggish and your muscles are undertrained and you're in pain on the way round. I used to feel that for a 6 mile cross country race 13 years ago, I've come a long way since then! Not that all the prep went well for this. I badly sprained my ankle at the end of January, taking me out of full training for 12 weeks which left 5 weeks to train and 2 weeks to taper, and I picked up another 3 calf strains in that time. Then the night before the race I was in a strange town packed full of football supporters making queues outside each eatery and I couldn't find anywhere to get a substantial meal, I eventually had to go for a tandoori (which I'd been trying to avoid). I also couldn't sleep that night - my usually comfortable car was roasting hot and seemed shorter than usual and at a funny angle. On race day morning I couldn't poop, and in running round the registration field to try to expedite that I found I'd wrenched my knee from an uncomfortable sleeping position. Thankfully a combination of ibuprofen and light wiggles on the race bus to the start line sorted that out, and the poo would have to wait!!

In anticipating the race, I knew I could do the distance, but there were four cutoffs which worried me, especially the first - 11 miles to Clovelly in 3.5 hours. It doesn't sound too bad, but this a notoriously hilly route, 7,800 feet of ascent over the whole thing, and over a long run without even that much ascent I am often close to that speed so I felt like it would be a tight thing. I also heard that it may be closer to 12 miles to Clovelly in reality, which threw my calculated needed-pace out of the window so I did a quick recalculation. I set off trying to maintain 16 minute miles and settled at about 15:30 which gave me a good buffer against any steep hills. I was actually running to heart rate - with a cap of 158... if it went over this (which was anything above a light uphill) I switched to speed-hiking until it came down again. This cap stopped me going crazy at the start on the flats, as my legs felt full of beans for the first few miles.

The route to Clovelly was mostly in woodland and it was so pretty with the dappled lights and the foxgloves nicely complementing the pink PureTrail route marking flags. A couple of other runners commented how you could see the town of Clovelly in the distance round the sweep of the bay but it never seemed to get any closer, but that didn't bother me, I wasn't think of the race as a series of points that I needed to reach, just an amazing stretch of coast path to enjoy along the way. The first few miles were up and down and then it levelled off after about 8 miles. I reached Clovelly after 2:37, 38 minutes before the cutoff, and the panic was over then. In fact, I felt really good so I carried on at the same pace.

I started to get a rub on my left heel - I was wearing Injinji socks with the individual toe compartments to try and stop my toes running together which usually causes me big problems with blisters, but I haven't used these socks much and it turns out there is a ridge where the material goes from thin to thick, which sat right where the back of the shoe meets my heel. Thankfully I had brought a change of socks, my beloved low cut balegas, so I changed the left one which felt great so a couple of miles later I changed the other one. Thankfully that did the job and the blister that had already been appearing settled down and I had very few other foot problems, they started rubbing towards the end but much less than I am used to - that's down to a recent change to 361 Taroki 2 shoes which are very soft.

Once I'd found my rhythm I used my usual motivational tactic - to spot the next runner ahead of me and try to slowly catch up with them. In a race I usually start slow and gradually speed up once I get an idea of how I'm feeling (I don't find I get caught up in the vibe too much and start too fast), but I thought that wouldn't happen this time with the faster start due to the harder first cutoff, however I still managed to find a bit of extra oomph and actually I was feeling thankful of that faster start to get me going as obviously I was capable of it after all.

All the other runners I met before the race were talking about the hills - there are certainly a lot of hills, with steep ups and steep downs, but I've got to admit I didn't mind them one bit. I spend a lot of time on the South West Coast path, and I have now completed 70% of it, and hills are just par for the course. There was no one hill where I started to think 'blimey this one goes on a bit', unlike when hiking up mountains in Scotland, I guess the time I have spent ticking relentless mountain summits has helped me here.

The second aid stop came at 21 miles at Hartland Quay, there were lots of marathon runners here which was a shock after the quiet trails so far, they'd even drunk all the coke 😉 The aid stations after this came more frequently, every 4-5 miles instead of every 10-11, which was really great as it was a warm day and I could have coke in one bottle and squash in the other without having to worry about running out. The aid stop staff were all wonderful too, all making you feel like you were doing great. All the snacks were individually wrapped due to covid regulations, so after I'd filled up my bottles I pocketed a pack of crisps and two sweet items and ate on the move. I was so hungry around lunchtime I was craving sandwiches (and beer and gin!) but between aid stations and my own snacks I managed to get enough down me to stave off the hunger. Speaking of food.. and thinking of the tandoori the night before... I still hadn't had my morning poo! At some point I squatted down for my third wee and I realised that it was ready, but I was in an exposed spot so couldn't go there. I ran on trying to find somewhere to stop but it was a narrow path fully all hemmed in by prickly undergrowth. Finally at 26.6 miles we ran past a quarry and just after there was the perfect spot to be out of sight and go. Ooh that was a relief!

The views kept coming and were all amazing. I have't run any of this stretch previously as I was saving it for this race, but I had been rock climbing at a few points along the coast in 2006, and there were certainly a few areas that looked familar - Backchurch rock, Vicarage cliff and Dyers Lookout among them. I took lots of photos but my phone was easy to get in and out and each only required a split second pause for the photo itself.

One of the other runners doing the ultra is somebody I know from wednesday night runs - they were near to me for the first few miles, then went ahead at Clovelly. For motivation, I had been trying to catch back up with them since then, but as I came into each aid station they were just leaving - I finally managed it at Morwenstow but was sad to hear they were having knee pain, it's always a struggle completing a race if you're suffering in pain. I was thankful that my own legs were still feeling amazingly good - three years ago I had done as similar length hilly ultra and a series of stiles near the end had nearly killed me, here there were stiles too but although my muscles were tight everything was still working. So just before Morwenstow I hatched a new plan. At some point my average pace has slipped from 17:30 to 17:45 to 16:20 minutes per mile. I worked out that if I picked things up a bit back to 16 minute miles I could finish in 10 hours. I tried my best to keep pushing, not being too strict on my heart rate cap now I had just 7 miles to go. But there was then a series of steep hills and my average pace slipped further, to 16:29. I was still running the flats and the downhills and now the light uphills, but with the steeper uphills only a plodding hike was possible. There was a glimmer of hope though - the Morwenstow aid station was listed as being at 30.5 miles but on my watch it had appeared at 28.5. That could mean that my watch gps had gone a little strange and maybe I didn't have as far to go as I thought. I checked the map track I had saved, and sure enough it said I had 1.3 miles less to go than I thought, which meant I only needed an average of 16:29 minute miles, so I was dead on! I just had to push on and hope. Nearer to Bude, there were more downhills and some flat bits, then suddenly I could see all the way to the finish line. My pace came down and down until I had 20 minutes to travel 1.2 miles, I would definitely do it now unless I hurt something. I picked up as much as I could, trying to spot the flags through the town, and was reassured to spot some marshalls in high vis waving me on towards the line. I crossed the line in 9:47:32, I couldn't believe it! What a race, I was jumping with joy!

I really, genuinely, loved the whole day. The course was perfect, the setup was great, and we were incredibly lucky with the weather - dry and warm with mixed sunshine and cloud just when you needed it. I am writing this the next day - I am very stiff, particularly glutes, lower back and abs, but no injuries and only one blister, I'd say that was a success.

Official results - 30th place out of 52 (including 4 DNF). 6th woman out of 7.

My 2020 in review

I meant to write a summary of my 2020 for New Year but didn’t reserve the time to sit down and turn my notes into sentences. Then I thought I could finish it for my birthday in February – but that still didn’t happen. So the anniversary of lockdown will have to do instead, before the whole thing is out of date.

This probably won’t be what you expect to hear, but I actually had a really good year, one of my best years in a long time. It had its fair share of stress but in general the pandemic didn’t cause me any noticeable upheaval, if anything it was good for me. So why was that? I’ve thought about it and identified four reasons. Firstly – the areas where other people struggled, aside from financial impacts, seemed to be mainly because they couldn’t see their friends and if they could they weren’t allowed to go anywhere with them. This is my life on a normal day, pandemic or not! I don’t have friends that I meet up with, and I rarely go out socially. So my life was poo anyway in that sense! This causes me anxiety and stress and unhappiness and has done for about 10 years, so the pandemic didn’t introduce anything new there, it’s tough but it’s also what I’m used to, and for once everyone else was in the same boat so my issues seemed less dramatic and I was less isolated. The second reason, is that I applied the same approach to the pandemic that I apply to when things are poo anyway, and that is to try and live the best life I can. I consciously decided to live out my life in spite of the changes, rather than to wait until things were back to ‘normal’, because I had heard knowledgeable talk early on that we were in this for the long haul. Thirdly, I never expect things to be a certain way (or perhaps the only way that I expect never happens so I'm used to expecting the unexpected), so even if something really unusual happens I tend to just accept that and get on with it. Finally the fact that our lives suddenly shrunk, was actually beneficial to me. I finally realised that the on-edge feeling that I’ve been experiencing for many years was anxiety, and it came from not having an anchor (for me that would be a family or a best friend or some close friends) and without this I didn’t know how to focus my time, and I would spend all my time searching for that missing link, and my search would take me further and longer and wider each time to maximise every opportunity available. When the pandemic hit, you may think that my anxiety would increase as I could no longer go in search of this missing link, but actually the fact that all options were entirely taken away meant that I was forced to relax and slow down. To simplify my life. To sit in the garden. To run the same running route as yesterday. To meet the neighbours and talk to passers by in the park, and develop friendships from this. To get fish and chips from the van every Friday. To do all the normal, local, sedentary things that I once did but had become so detached from when instead I started responding to each and every stimulus the world offered me. I wouldn’t have been able to make a conscious decision to stop, but when the world’s stimuluses were taken away, that decision was made for me. And my anxiety completely went away.

It sounds fairly blissful and in terms of a reassuring and limited routine and lack of anxiety it was, but there were still large periods of extreme unhappiness. I started a career change on the 30th March, one week into lockdown, and I was really out of my depth. And there were personal difficulties too, so it wasn’t all rosy. But actually, these also taught me more about myself as a person, I learnt a lot there.

But back to the good stuff. What did I do that made it such a great year, what was it that I did regardless of the restrictions? Exercise was a large part of it. I started training again in March after a break over the winter, and set myself a challenge to run at least 100 miles a month which I met (at least until I borked my ankle on 24th January 2021), totalling 1190 miles over the year. I took on some big personal challenges too - a multi-day self-supported trip on the north Cornish coast in September totalling 100 miles in a week when I slept half of the nights in B&Bs and half in a bivvy bag on the trail. In October I also ran 35 miles coast to coast across Cornwall to get an FKT (‘Fastest Known Time’ – all the rage for runners with events being cancelled, and good for me as I prefer challenges to races anyway). I gave myself full potential to enjoy the value of the outdoors by cutting out digital time sinks – I gave up Hollyoaks and Pokemon Go for lent and didn’t take them up again, and in June when I moved houses to rent a little space mostly to myself, I stopped watching TV for the rest of the summer.

As well as the running there was much swimming too, 54.4 miles swum in total over the year, up 12 miles on 2019, and every stroke of it was in open water. The mileage was less of note than the swims themselves – I thankfully realised quite early on that swimming was something that could still be done inside the restrictions, and I could enact my mental wishlist of particular swims that I wanted to do. I did a linear 4km swim from Paignton to Torbay, swum through the arch of London Bridge, circumnavigated Burgh Island, and much more. A lot of that was with a wonderful, fun, friendly group of 4 other swimmers, who are my mermaid pod and became good friends. It has been 10 years since I had a regular group of people that I met up with for activities. From 2004 to 2009 I went rock climbing every weekend, met hundreds of climbers many of whom knew each other in overlapping circles, and ended up part of a close knit group of like-minded friends. When I stopped climbing I lost that feeling of belonging and nothing has ever filled its place – until now, and I am very thankful for the development.

There were a few notable other things that passed the time. One was bird watching, and thanks to living in a new part of the country I ticked off some more firsts there, with my first sightings of Dartford warblers, avocets, cirl buntings, lesser spotted woodpeckers and crossbills. There was also Topsham folk club, I participated in this before lockdown but sometimes I found it hard to leave the house and go there – with it moving online it was much easier to engage reliably, and my guitar playing has improved when I was forced to accompany myself rather than co-opting others in. I also got to try new things such as sailing, and paddleboarding on the sea.

All of these achievements alone don’t account for my happiness, I know that in the past when I have posted about my runs and swims on facebook people believe that I am happy and fulfilled but that’s far from the truth, filling my time with achievements is something I do as focus to keep my head straight, and a distraction from not having what I really want. So the big thing that made 2020 special was having a companion. In addition to my new found mermaid swim pod, I gained a valuable friend - for 4 months of the summer as a boyfriend, but when that wasn’t quite the right option I gained a best friend instead. Someone who understood the value of a shared experience and how it surpasses two individual ones. We ran various stretches of coast path in Cornwall, slept out in the car, had parties in the garden, went on various wildlife trips, some more successful than others, cut each other’s hair, had a tomato growing competition, made wine and cider, and I even got to try my hand at giving swimming lessons. We even established ourselves as locals at the nearby woodland cafe, it's decades since I was a regular at a pub, and is quite a special pub in the woods, with with an outdoor kitchen and seating and half price cocktails. This companionship has brought me a contentedness that I have been lost without, and helped prevent my anxiety from coming back as the restrictions eased in the summer and our worlds expanded.

There was an element of luck too. I got to celebrate my 40th birthday with a group of friends in February, I was lucky to see my parents in March just before lockdown started, and in June before further restrictions. The timing of my September running trip was also spot on, thanks to a prudent punt by my aunt which I would have missed otherwise.

I was conscious of this luck, and also that I was in a great position with a good job and good health, and I tried my best to not take anything for granted, and to be aware of the situations of others. It was important to make the most of things for my own health and wellbeing, but this didn’t mean I couldn’t think of others so I tried to help wherever I could. I started donating regularly to a charity in Laos, as well one-off donations to local charities and I started putting an item into the food bank every time I went to the supermarket. I made an effort to support local shops and quiet pubs. I bought things for friends where I could, and put out intermittent offers to help in any way feasible, whether that be a phone-call or a purchase or support of a business. I hope my friends know that this offer of help still stands, any time. And I hope my story of having a good year doesn’t make anybody feel sad that they didn’t, we all have different stories to tell and they're all valid.

Smugglers Way

I was inspired to look into an FKT due some friends submitting FKTs, which is how I found the website for it. I’m not fast, probably never will be, but I can run long. I had a look at the routes on the page and found one that really appealed to me – the Smuggler’s Way – and it didn’t have any submissions either. I later read that you can submit your own route, but it couldn’t get better than this: a) it’s in Cornwall, where I have spent so much of my summer, b) it’s a Coast to Coast, which makes a change to the Coast Path, c) it’s not a waymarked route and requires navigation, d) there is a variety of terrain, e) it summits Brown Willy, the highest point in Cornwall.

I wanted to attempt it Saturday 3rd October before the days got too short, but I wasn’t very well and there were very strong winds forecast so I postponed it a week. That gave me a change to do more prep too, as I’ve never felt so under-prepared for a route. I was following the route as given in the gpx on the FKT website, but I found a detailed trip report by a guy who had walked it following the instructions in the original Smugglers’ Way booklet, so I used this to re-plot the route in more detail, and to familiarise myself with all the sections. I decided to go unsupported, carrying all my food and drink in my pack. My pack was 6.3kg starting weight, and 3kg finishing weight by the time I had drunk all my water and eaten my snacks. I wouldn’t say all my prep went perfectly – my printer ran out of ink and yellow/pink OS maps aren’t so easy to see on route. I printed a mixture of 1:25k maps for the moorland sections and 1:50 for the road section, but I missed a section of moor so navigated off my phone for that. I also forgot to take chlorine tablets but it turned out I had enough water. I also wasn’t 100% fit and well yet, I had constipation after a week of diarrhoea – that sorted itself out on route though!!

The route itself was fantastic, if tough. I ate my first sweet chestnuts of the year, picking a couple of up before I squashed them underfoot. I surprised a deer on a quiet, overgrown footpath, and later a buzzard. I saw the lake where King Arthur was supposedly given Excalibur by the Lady of the Lake. I went the wrong way through a field, following the perimeter rather than cutting straight across, and walked past a bull I could have avoided. There were a lot more cows after that, but I used my 2020-learnt cow whispering skills and all was fine there. I was glad I thought to pack gloves, I wore them for most of the first half, but the weather was pretty kind, there were several patches of light rain but nothing that made me hide my phone in my dry bag. I initially tried to keep a heart rate cap of 153, but it kept creeping up to 160 and later on I could only go at one speed so I didn’t bother looking.

I’m not sure why the route takes such a convoluted zig zag path between the disused Davidstow airport and Rough Tor, there didn’t seem to be any point for the zig zags down to the plantation but I followed the route, not wanting to cut corners. I hadn’t been looking forward to the moorland bit since this was the one part of the route I had been to before – we’d set off for Brown Willy and given up at Rough Tor, and now I had to do both, but the sun came out for that bit and lifted my spirits. Only for a moment though – on the way down Rough Tor I twisted my knee on one of the loose boulders and wrench a tendon at the top of my calf which was excruciating. Gutted – just over 21km into a 58 k route (I usually work in miles but I had my watch set on km still from a recent 5k). I took ibuprofen and stretched it out. I had to walk all the steep descents but thankfully it was fine on most other terrain, and got better the further I went. It still caught me out unexpectedly on some later descents leaving me hopping around and yelling in agony, but there was no way I was giving up, and mostly it behaved.

What didn’t behave was my watch. Firstly, it gave me the ‘one hour to go’ warning twice as quicky as usual, so I plugged it in, and it took a full 10km to charge. Then - I had a lift arranged at the other end and I used my quarter times to work out what time to ask them to collect me. I then realised that when my watch said I was 3/4 of the way (43.5km) I’d actually only run 38km. It’s because I had my watch on medium gps accuracy (and the FKT website says powersave gps mode is fine), but I forgot how unrealiable it is then, it’s been a while since I ran an ultra distance). It’s supposed to only sample less often, but it seems to lose the gps too. In the Kilminorth woods towards Looe there were huge stretches where it lost GPS, although this has the silver lining that it offset against the longer mileage from before, and when I finished the total distance exactly correlated to that from the route that I had plotted.

My watch issues and my knee pain made me quite dejected for the second half of the route, but I still enjoyed the scenery. My favourite part was the West Looe river higher up, around Herodsfoot I think, but I was still using my phone to navigate from here and it didn’t show me the town names and it all passed in a bit of a blur. There were all sorts of interesting steps and staircases taking you up to a higher path whenever the lower one was about to run out in the water. I also enjoyed the road sections – I am not normally a road runner, but it was so much easier on my knee. There were so many sections of this route that were rough underfoot, usually with an obvious route along a channel between two walls, but through grass with no track, usually I’d relish this but today it was just painful. The final hill was a killer and quite unexpected too – why doesn’t the path take the lower route by the river?? It would be more consistent, and flatter! That part really dragged. I was thankful when I came out of the trees and could see Looe ahead and the concrete walkway. The section through town down to the Pier was familiar as I’d done that on a coast path run. And there it was – the pier. I couldn’t believe I had done it, harbour to harbour all the way across Cornwall from coast to coast! When I reached the first quarter point in 2:25 I hoped I could finished in under 10 hours, a nice round number. Due to my knee and the terrain this gradually slipped and my final time was 10:37:03 (strava elapsed time. My watch said 10:34:48 but I am not sure this is genuine elapsed time, as I paused and (very quickly) resumed twice to try and force is to look for the gps again when I came out of the woods)). The time didn’t matter though – that was just an secondary aim set as I run to keep my motivation up – the main challenge was just to complete it, and I had!

4 years as an open water swimmer

Early swim awards. 3km and 5km age 9, 8.8km age 15

Synchro squad 1990

(Click on the photos to enlarge them)
I did my first open water swim on 18^th August 2016, at Astbury Mere in Cheshire. That’s not to say I hadn’t thought about it before – I have always been a bit of a waterbaby, first synchronised swimming ages 9 to 12, then lifesaving. In 1994 aged 14 I went to lifesaving classes every week and almost went to an open water swim in Poole harbour but it never came off. I also looked at swimming in local gravel pits but that never happened either. So, now 36, I was standing in a borrowed wetsuit on the shore of the mere as a guest of the local tri club NTC who I later joined. On entry I was encouraged to take a few moments to get water down my wetsuit to acclimatise, then I was off, with some companions to guide me round. The lap was marked out by buoys and was 400m, and I was surprised by how hard it was. Until then I’ve never found it a struggle to swim, I get bored way before I get tired (and I once swam 5.5 miles in 4.5 hours as a child for a sponsored pool swim), but here I was constricted by a the too-small wetsuit and my goggles steamed up. I managed three individual laps then I was knackered, but at the same time I really relished the experience of swimming without touching anything but water, with no walls to turnaround at.

Astbury Mere with Newcastle Tri Club

Due to other commitments I only went once that summer, and just twice the next year as I still didn’t have my own wetsuit and didn’t get on with the loan suits, but that year at least I got to go to the beginner sessions where I benefited from the entry and familiarisation techniques taught by the tri club.

In early 2018 I bought my own wetsuit and made one session at the mere with the tri club where it all finally started to click (see separate article here: https://newcastletriclub.co.uk/?p=4732), but shortly after, I fairly unexpectedly moved across the country for work and started again in Pembrokeshire. I joined a new tri club but they didn’t do regular open water sessions, so it was just down to individual inspiration to arrange get-togethers. Keen to make the most of the sea being on my doorstep, one day I met up with one of the club members at Broadhaven West. We swam out into the bay then turned parallel to the shore to swim to a rock at the far side. It was quite the experience. There was a sizeable swell with accompanying surf, which I wasn’t used to at all. I was too alarmed to swim crawl and breathe facing the shore, as then I wouldn’t be able to see the waves coming towards me, so I swam breaststroke to start, in order to be aware of the surf before it hit me. The trouble with breaststroke though is that you don’t go up and down with the swell like you do with crawl, and every wave hit me in the face, making it pretty hard to breathe. I eventually talked myself into swimming crawl, facing away from the waves and going with the swell and trying not to panic that I would get engulged by an early-breaking wave, and we swam about 1 mile, but it was quite the eye-opener, and a useful baseline to refer back to later. It was also the first time I had seen a tow float, although I didn’t get my own for a few more months.

Abereiddy Blue Lagoon

That summer I came across a group called the Bluetits who swim all year round in skins (swimsuit only, no wetsuit), and in Sept 2018 I did my first skins swim in the beautiful Blue Lagoon at Abereiddy, an old quarry pool connected to the sea by a slit between two rocks. My summary of the swim was: “First I was like ice then I was on fire!”, the stages of my body and skin reacting to the temperature. I remember one moment just after swimming out, where one of the experienced swimmers swimming nearby asked me if I wanted warming up. I said that would be good, thinking she would come and give me a hug. She moved towards me, smirking gleefully, saying “I’m peeing!!”

Later that month we swam in Solva harbour by the light of the full moon, my first introduction to full moon swimming (an interest I have continued since), and the Bluetits used the emotive Turkisk word Yakamoz (moonlight on water) to title the swims. The cold was a massive obstacle for me that evening, I already felt cold and getting into icy water was a hurdle my brain just wouldn’t surmount in any particularly useful way. The entry to the harbour was down a slipway, and I walked at a constant yet glacially slow snail’s pace into the water, getting gradually deeper over the course of maybe 15 minutes, while the rest of the group swam out and round one of the boats two or three times. If you filmed it as a timelapse and sped it up so I was walking normal speed, the rest of the swimmers would have been flitting around the harbour in jerky high-speed motion. I finally got my shoulders under and swam round the boat, keen to see the bioluminescence that many swimmers mentioned as they passed me on their way back in, but I just couldn’t seem to see it.

The Bluetits host a chill swim challenge over the winter months, to swim in skins for 10 minutes twice a month from November to March, and on 1^st November I was at Tenby beach with them, at night, ready for my first chill swim tick. Stood on the beach I couldn’t visualise getting into the water and swimming, how can you do something if you can’t even picture it? All I could do was walk forward into the unknown and see what happened. It’s a flat, shallow beach, meaning the entry was nearly as slow as at Solva as we waded out, and I screamed at the cold on each part of me. Really screamed. It took me more than 10 minutes to get my shoulders under and by then everybody else was heading back in, I had only just begun swimming. As we left, a boat arrived with a searchlight blaring – drawn by my screams, how embarrassing.

First sea swim of 2019

I didn’t complete the chill swim that year, not even close. In December I moved to Devon, which brought many of its own challenges, and the cold water wasn’t really something I handled well, so open water swimming took a back seat entirely, and I went pool training with a new tri club. The moment the clocks changed though I was there on the beach, 8^th April 2019 at Jacobs Ladder, Sidmouth, with a group called the TEDs (Team East Devon). My new tri club hosted organised weekly sea swims too, which started up their sessions in June. I was still struggling with the cold, and the jellies, and my wetsuit (chafing and coming undone and getting holes in), but I was determined, and I was swimming at least once a week. I was also in the perfect location for it – Pembrokeshire, while peppered with sheltered coves good for swimming, often has a large swell and is even better for surfing. South Devon, on the other hand, is largely calm in its entirety and is an open-water swimmer’s heaven. I was so taken with the challenge of open water swimming that I haven’t swum in a pool since the middle of May 2019.

On the 24^th June with TEDs, encouraged by some of the other swimmers, I did my first skins swim of the year. The screaming was back! It took me 12 full minutes to get my shoulders in even though the water was 15 degrees, and then I swam for 12 minutes. But looking back, this was the proper start of my progression to skins and was probably the making of me. In July, the main Devon Wild Swimming group was hosting a Unicorn challenge to swim for so many hours in skins, and on the 14^th I earnt my 1 hour Unicorn badge, repeating it the week after.

The tri club only ran their open water sessions until September, and there are so many swim and run groups in the South West providing opportunities to partake in the individual disciplines that I gave up the triathlons as I don’t particularly enjoy cycling anyway. I do, however, prefer to swim for distance rather than just for the experience and the feeling of the water, which is why for me I call it “open water swimming”, rather than the currently popular term “wild swimming”, although that’s not to say I don’t value the environment I am swimming in. In Devon there are a mix of swimmers, some who dip for the cold-water immersive benefits, and others who swim for distance. I found two groups of swimmers in my area that do longer swims – the TEDs, and a group of mermaid friends that are an offshoot of the Torbay Shoal group.

Breakwater swim, leaving the boats

Throughout 2019 I swam in a variety of different locations with these groups, and encountered many jellyfish, there seemed to be at least one every time I went in! In July I swam on 13 different days, although I dropped off in August and September as I had a couple of large running events that I had been training for all year, as running is still my main activity. With the swimming I engaged in a niche sub-activity of drawing shapes in the sea – I swam in the shape of a jellyfish, a shark, an octopus, a hedgehog, and wrote various phrases such as “Happy Birthday”. There were events too: in August, just before flying to the states to run a marathon, I swam with the Chestnut Appeal, 3.5km from Plymouth breakwater into Tinside beach. It was quite fantastic - boated out to the centre of the Plymouth sound and jumping into a bit of open water far from land with a bunch of other keen entrants, barely able to see the finish point at that time.

Polar Bear
December solstice swim

Winter brought a new challenge, or at least a second bash at a familiar one. Mama Bear, the lady that runs the Devon Wild Swimming group, runs a Polar Bear challenge which is similar to the chill swim challenge that the Bluetits ran, but has a massive uptake nationally and beyond. There are different levels, but I ended up entering gold: swim 250m twice a month from November to march, and a total of 5km over that time period, with just a swimming costume and standard swim hat - no wetsuit, no neoprene, no woolly hat, no gloves. I thought it would be really hard due to my persistent inability to get into the water. Well what do you know, it wasn’t! Firstly I was very lucky and we had a mild winter, but the rivers and lidos did go down to about 6-7 degrees at times. Secondly, I still got in gradually, but it wasn’t all that much harder to get in than any other day throughout the summer, and I’d had enough practise at that by now. My lovely mermaid friends and I met regularly at Torbay and occasionally elsewhere and enjoyed the camaraderie of the challenge.

Sometimes got the old fire in my body that I felt that first time back in the Blue Lagoon in Pembrokeshire. I found that for me there were stages of a cold swim – for the first couple of minutes you’re cold and it feels insane to be doing what you’re doing); then you’re in and swimming around and you know that at the very least you can do what you came to do (if the fire is to come, it precedes this stage); then after 10-15 minutes (depending on how cold it really is) you feel warm, honest to god genuine warmth, and it’s lovely - to have defeated that miserable day to be able to experience something incredible, with all the walkers in their woolly hats and duffel coats looking at you from the promenade as if you’re mad. The stage after that is that you get cold again, and that’s when you get out, because nobody wants to find out what the stage is after that! I really did love this challenge, despite it being hard and me questioning my sanity at times. I’ve suffered from winter blues all my life in various intensities, and tried various things to fight it, but most of the time you just feel like you’re doing something that would be much more fun if the weather was sunny. This was different, this was an experience that was solely for the cold days, embracing them rather than fighting them, and I was living it. The shivers afterwards and inability to speak due to a frozen jaw quickly became normal and each time I went I seemed to have a new piece of kit in my after-swim arsenal to be better prepared – woolly hat, snowboarding trousers, flask of hot squash, mesh to stand on, knitted foot wraps to wear until I could get my feet dry.

"BIG5", Leap-day Hares

I even revolved my Christmas plans around partaking in the Lyme Regis New Year's Day dip, that I'd been disapponited to miss the year before. Another great event in the winter months was the Buckfastleigh Ice Gala (BIG), where we got to swim in a frosty, unheated lido, with other swimmers, AND dress up in fancy dress, wonderful. Then the next event was the coronavirus lockdown! Okay this was an event of a totally different type, but it definitely impacted all our swimming, although we had just completed our Polar Bear challenge before being confined to our own neighbourhoods. I don’t live near enough to the sea to visit during the most restrictive part of lockdown, but I managed to get out for a dip in the local river every Sunday to keep my acclimatisation up, swimming in the shallows against the current for just 15 minutes, keeping my head out to avoid risk of Weil’s disease. Towards the end of May I was back at my local swim spot, Torquay steps, for a half hour swim which I kept up at least once a week. Seeing my first jellyfish of the year was a bit of a shock, it takes a while to get used to those again!

As the restrictions eased swimming opportunities started to increase, before I knew it I was accidentally achieving my aims for the year despite the pandemic, so once I realised this I started to focus on them consciously and swam more often. I swam at many different bays that I had not previous visited – Meadfoot, the salmon leaps on the Teign, the Exe in the city, the Dart at Totnes and Dartmoor, at Budleigh, the London Bridge arch near Torquay, and other places beyond. I also swam over a school of dogfish which count as sharks and wasn’t freaked out by those either – mostly because I didn’t realise what they are until afterwards! I made my peace with crystal jellyfish and compasses, after an initially freak-out when I saw my first of the former and didn’t know what it was. I touched my first ever jellyfish in July (accidentally of course), followed by 2 more in the dark on a full moon swim, which actually helped loads and they’re surprisingly firm and I stopped thinking of them as the slugs of the sea. I still haven’t been stung though, at least not knowingly, but my hands are so numb when I swim and my skin so prickly I’m not sure I’d ever notice. For some time I was feeling the cold, and only lasting 35 minutes before my hands went numb, but on a swoosh (one way with the current) down the Dart at Totnes, I went past 35 minutes, then 45, then pushed on to pass the hour mark, equalling last year’s best effort.

Compass jellyfish

Something started to niggle me though, and that was my speed of entry. My usual approach was to creep in, allowing each sensitive body part to warm up before introducing the next - feet, groin, boobs, armpits, shoulders. It was usually 3-5 minutes to complete this process before I could lift my feet up to swim, which was starting to hinder me on group swims. People had proffered all sorts of tips - blowing bubbles, splashing the back of the neck - but nothing helped, it was a mental block from the sensory overload of the cold. I had only managed an immediate entry 5 times - once in large waves breaking on a beach shelf where you couldn’t hang about or you’d get tumbled, twice in the lido training for the ice gala, and twice for the gala itself, but without these rare motivators it was the usual slow creep. However, one day it dawned on me that I was no better at getting in water of 16 degrees than I had been of 6 degrees, when all round me there were non-acclimatised holiday makers splashing around like it was a heated pool. And what’s more I had once been one of those holidaymakers. So I started to work on some visualisation - a powerful tool employed in coaching for various sports, and I had a hunch it would be helpful as even when imagining it in my mind I could never get in the water fast. I also identified that as my brain couldn’t visualise me getting in the water, the expectation of the future stopped at that point and my brain therefore no longer knew that I actually enjoy being in the water when I am in, so I fed it that information consciously, to bypass the block. On 28th July, standing 

Synchro memories in Torbay

at Torquay steps for the second time that day after having failed to get in at all that morning, I stood with my toes clear of the water, psyching myself up. Having the toes out was important, as I had to break the chain reaction cycle of needing to pause for each part to warm up, and that meant no parts getting cold on their own. Then bang I went for it - one step, two steps, and launch off up to my shoulders before the cold sensors sent the information back to the brain. I was in! And I was happy! Amazingly it wasn’t 5 times as challenging due to 5 sensitive body parts hitting the cold in one go, it was only the same as one. What a feeling, to be in the water and afloat, without all that faff. You may think that I was a changed woman after that, but there’s a reason it took me over a year of skims swimming to get to that point, and that’s because I find the initial cold shock supremely hard to handle. I could, however, see that it was a better way of getting in, and once I had done it once I knew I could do it again, so it has been my method of entry ever since. I even stopped screaming so much. Lately I have even managed to get my legs in first and pause before the rest of me goes in, without allowing my brain a matching pause, which would be fateful.

With this new entry method, and surpassing an hour in the water, I felt much happier planning distance swims with mermaid friends as they no longer need to wait for me at the start, and I have, with relish, completed some of my other objectives for this year - a swim round Burgh island, a 4km linear coastline swim, and swimming for over an hour in skins.

Endurance badges with mermaid friends

The journey is far from over, I have way more I want to achieve. Running is still my main activity but open water swimming is a very close second.  Now it’s nearly polar bear season again, and this year I have my sights set on Jedi, where you actively have to seek out water down to 5 degrees in addition to the other requirements. Will I manage it? I don’t mind if I don’t, because my target is not the achievement I get at the end, but the learning I experience along the way. I do this because it’s hard and it challenges me, not because it’s easy. Open-water swimming, to me, is way more than just swimming.

 

Thames Path Challenge 100km Continuous

Saturday 7th September, I was finally standing in Bishops Park, near Putney Bridge, about to start my challenge of running 100km continuously along the River Thames path. This is not just a day that I had been looking forward to since November when I entered the event, but for the last 4 years since I first learnt about it. That year (2015) I ran my first marathon and was looking for something else to take on while I was fit. Over the last few years I had taken to running a little stretch of the Thames Path every time I went to visit my parents (from the midlands to Berkshire), and it had become a little bit of a tradition for me to piece the segments together. One day I‘d seen a sign for a race on the path and looked it up, and the top results on Google was the Thames Path Challenge, a 100km event from Putney Bridge to Henley, which you could do as the full challenge or in half or quarters. The Thames Path Challenge is predominantly run as a charity event though and I had just done one of those so it wasn’t fair to ask friends for sponsorship again so soon and I left it to the next year. The next 2 years though I was overweight and under-trained and it simply wasn’t an option. In 2018 I spent the summer living in Pembrokeshire which inspired me to run regularly on the coastal path and I started to get back in shape again but not in time to train and enter. By November I was as fit as I ever had been so at long last I submitted my entry for 2019. When I first discovered the race I had considered perhaps the 50km, but over the 4 years my sights had widened. I have a couple of friends who are ultra runners who run 100 mile events, and although I have never been a good runner I do enjoy it, and distances suit me much more than speed, so the seed was planted in my brain and it grew. This wasn’t 100 miles, but it was 100 something! I threw myself into my training: I moved to Devon in December, keeping up a base level of running over the winter and as soon as the evenings got lighter I realised what a fantastic part of the world this was for running so I explored the coast path, the estuaries and the moors as often as I could (sometimes when I couldn't too). Now here I was at the start line!

Action challenge make a big deal of you at the start, and actually throughout the entire event. There are dozens of banners; plenty of smiling, attentive staff that process you through the registration quickly; tea coffee and snacks to get you started; a charismatic compere; a keep fit warm-up; and a spacious starting pen full of other participants in varying states of enthusiasm. I was in the first start wave with the other runners, there is one wave every 10 minutes without about 150 in each one – there were 3000 people doing the event in total!

All this meant the start was far from an anti-climax, not that it would have been when I’d been waiting so long for it. I love running along the Thames, it’s so majestic. I spent the first several miles with a big grin on my face, enjoying the views and unable to believe what I was doing. I’m not even sure when I stopped smiling, it definitely faded later on but the novelty never wore off and I loved it all. As well as the man-made sights nearly the whole way was accompanied by the squawks of parakeets, and I caught the bright blue flash of two kingfishers too. I made sure to remember my grandparents while enjoying the views, since I was fundraising for Royal Osteopororis which my grandma had suffered from. She really enjoyed hiking with my grandad, so I wanted to remember all my grandparents on this journey.

Despite the wonder I was still concentrating on the running mechanics. There are many strategies you can employ for an ultra: one is to walk the uphills and run the downs, but that was no good here as it’s pretty flat the whole way! Another is to do a run/walk combination and I had tried various of these in training but they are a bit intense and I a more relaxed approach on event day. Another is to run to heart-rate which is the one I decided on. Since it’s a flat route I wanted to try to stick to a heart rate cap of 141 which is what I’d done a large portion of my training WG, especially for the first half but I couldn’t bring my blasted heartrate down, it was sticking around the 160 mark even after testing a walking break. I wasn’t running fast, so I put this down to the energetic Action Challenge warmup, the early start, and the excitement of the event... but it’s important to not set off too fast in long races, and even more so since my right calf (which I have previously had problems with) tightened right up after only the first 100 yards. I figured I would give my heart rate 12 minutes to settle down which is the time I usually give my body to warm up… I looked at my watch and 32 minutes had passed already, wow! It makes such a different when you’re caught up in race-day vibe in a throng of runners. Just in case I didn’t believe it, I passed the 4km sign a moment later. I forced myself to try and get it down then, losing the people around me who I had been speaking to. I went slower and slower until it dropped below 150 but I couldn’t comfortably run any slower without walking, so I settled at that. Most of the 6:50 start group had passed me by this point but I ended up running next to a girl called Laura, who I stayed alongside for a good while and we had a nice chat. She had entered as a jogger (same as a runner but not expecting to finish within 16 hours) and had just done one marathon before. Unfortunately I didn’t get her surname so I can’t look her up to see how she got on. It was nice to have company, we only parted because I needed to go to the loo. This, as ever, was the theme of the early part of the race for me, I had to go for a no. 2 7 times by the time I got to the second rest stop including begging the use of the facilities at one of the numerous rowing club that line the river! Thankfully it settled down after that. Apart from the bowels I’m usually okay with eating on a race, but I’ve never run more than 58km before so this is new territory for me. I ate way too much at the first rest stop, which was breakfast pastries and snacks, as I hadn’t realise they had my favourite pastry so I went back for seconds. This wasn’t really something to worry about though, I can eat if I feel sick, I am a chocolate addict and I love eating whether I’m hungry or not!

At 9:23, 18km in, we merged with a steady stream of runners coming in from a track on the left – Kingston Parkrun! It amused me that I’ve only ever been to 12 park runs as I never get up in time on a Saturday, and yet here I was already 2 ½ hours into a race after a 1 hour drive and a warm up. Shortly after that was the first rest stop, then we passed Richmond, on the edge of which we passed a field of Belted Galloways – cows, right into the centre of London! We ran right past Hampton Court Palace too which was impressive with its golden gates round the gardens. So many sights one after another. A friend of mine Debbie had entered the challenge on the 2-day walkers’ version and started half an hour after me, and was taking time to photograph all the sites so it was interesting to see her facebook posts as she followed along in my footsteps, it felt like we were sharing the experience though not actually side by side. The second rest stop came quickly - sandwiches, cookies and snacks - and I indulged myself with a sock change - not something I usually do but everybody seems to recommend it and it seemed like sage advice.

There was a certain amount of distance-watching going on for me, I was conscious that my calf was still tight and I hadn’t even covered a marathon yet, and there were still so many unknowns given this was my first 100km event. I noticed that I reached the 30km marker exactly 5 hours after the starting countdown, my watch showed time on feet as 4:22 so I was spending about 20 minutes at each rest stop. 4km later I was still enjoying the scenery and all was going well except for my tight calf, but I had a sudden flare up of my SI joint problem. My left hip joint is locked back from two falls (1999 and 2011) and in runs of over 10 miles the muscle above it (the pirofirmis) tires, and impinges on my sciatic nerve, which causes shooting pain and a lottery of issues down my left side. Half way into my training I had had a problem with my left foot, which I strengthened. Then my hamstring, then my glute. My sports therapist got to the route of the problem, my SI joint, but although I sorted the subsidiary issues I didn’t managed to solve the root problem and it has got worse of late, so I saw a chiropractor twice just before event day and went armed with ibuprofen for the race. It got the better of me though and here at 34km it hit me in my left knee via my back. I could only run for 30 seconds at a time before the knee twinged, thankfully I only had to walk it off for 10 seconds before I could repeat the process. Not planned for, and very short repeats, but it was still forward progress. The third rest stop  was at 37km and I took the opportunity to visit the medic tent and take advantage of all they had to offer – freeze spray, paracetamol and more ibuprofen to replace some I had lost, and I stretched out and taped up my knee. The medics said the only thing I could do was to keep it mobilised so every few walks I also held onto something and swung my leg side to side in front of my body, which definitely hit the spot. Every time I did this I had a few sweeties to keep my fuel up – the third rest stop was pic’n’mix only which I usually love but wasn’t ready for as I was still feeling sick from over-eating earlier, so I had pocketed them to take with me. Between all of those treatments something started to work as about 43km I was able to run for longer stretches before my knee twinged, and soon after I was running properly again.

We were leaving the grandeur of London now but there were still plenty of sights – Chertsey Weir where I went kayaking age 19, sculptures in Staines, passing the M25 (although I didn’t twig what the big bridges were until later), and finally Runnymede of Magna Carta fame where the half way rest stop was. Half way, wow! There was a good party vibe going on here as this was the finish for those doing the first half. I had left a shoe change here which I was looking forward to trying as I think the extra cushioning in my road shoes may have contributed to my sciatica problems. My trail shoes felt really clunky though and I really wasn’t sure, so I decided to try them but cram my road shoes in my pack as my parents were meeting me a little way on at Windsor Bridge and I could give them whichever pair I didn’t want.

After the half way point I got into a rhythm. I didn't have to worry about pacing as I couldn’t go fast, as fast as I could go was as fast as I needed to. The pain had also totally gone and I was niggle-free. Phase one had been finding the pace, phase two the injury phase, and phases three here was the sweet spot. I caught up with Laura again who had hit the wall and was walking though it, it was nice to say hi again then I pressed on. This stretch wound across fields and commons, not so much to see, but still notable as before I got to Windsor I went past 58k which is the furthest I’ve ever run before – into new territory now! I was passed by two pairs of joggers, who were doing a bit of a walk-run and I started playing yo-yo with them as they shot past on a run and I swung back past every time they had a walking phase. I discovered that all 4 of them were together - one had moved away to Australia, decided to take on an ultra this year and had roped some friends into doing it with him. It was lovely that they were all running together and supporting each other, and when they did running phases they were quick!

It was a great to see my parents on the bridge, to get a hug, a photo and some trousers for my pack, change back into my road shoes and lighten my load. My parents had given me wonderful support for this, not least of which getting up at 4am to drive Debbie and I to the event, which involved driving in central London which is never fun, and here they were again... just for me. As I sat changing my shoes my new friends ran past and heckled about my extra provisions! Then it was only 3km to the next rest stop, a fairly quiet section through urban fields. I caught up with the group of 4 about half a km before and we all ran in together and chatted over the ubiquitous Freddos. Sitting at a chair I looked at my timings to see if I could make it to the finish in under 16 hours now I was running well. I hadn’t set myself a time objective knowing that that was just tempting fate and injury, I just knew that my total running time was likely to be about 12 hours and with rest stops I could be up to 16. Action Challenge request that if you enter as a runner you should be able to complete within 16 hours otherwise it’s best to enter as a jogger. Due to my injury I was behind pace for 16 hours and I felt guilty that I wasn't meeting their recommendation. I worked out that if I carried on as I had been doing I would be 40-50 minutes over, so it didn’t seem too difficult to shave that off now I was moving well again. I waved adieu to the 4 and set off with renewed vigour. I felt better about my progress as I started to pass the joggers again, not because I was competing with them but because I didn't have to feel guity about the free bag transfer that is afforded to runners but not joggers.

I was really in a sweet spot now, no longer taking so many photos, purely absorbed in the running. I ran the 15km to the 78km rest stop without a pause, and not only that it was at a pace the same if not faster than I would do on a regular training run (11 minute miles), and it felt great. I started to tire at 74km but I kept on pushing as I wanted to see if I could do it, really challenging myself and my body here but in a good way. What's more is that just before 40 miles/64km I had a realisation that I would definitely finish no matter what. Some kind of subconscious assessment had processed all the parameters - the journey so far, the section left, and the motion of my legs - and told me that beyond all doubt I could continue putting one foot in front of another to get to the end. (Incidentally I think the part of me that did that calculation is the same part of me that, when the alarm goes off in the morning, knows that I can put my alarm on snooze one more time and still *just* be on time, despite me being convinced the night before that I had to be up 10 minutes earlier. It's the in-the-moment-necessity calculator!). The part of the river after Maidenhead was really beautiful too, even more so as it was the golden hour with the sun sinking towards the horizon – it was very quiet, tree lined on both sides, with single boats on the far bank giving a splash of colour to the stunning reflections of the near-autumnal trees in the water. I could see a National Trust sign on an island on the far bank but I couldn’t make out the name, only that it started with ‘C’. I thought it might be Cookham as we weren’t far from there but the day after I realised it was Cliveden which is where I was born! How delightful to get that experience of it. I came out of the trees to run across a field that was open to my left just as the sun set, and I got to see a vivid band of red at the bottom of the darkened sky, another sight to remember. I arrived at the rest stop just before I needed to get my headtorch out, perfectly timed.

Here was the moment of truth – 22km to go, it was just after 8pm, could I finish before 22:50? Instead of working out what time I would get there from existing average pace I needed to know what pace I would now need to keep up to make it, but I didn’t have the time or the mental capacity to calculate it, so I sent the maths request out to a friend on facebook and got the feet moving ASAP. I had read that after dark on a Action Challenge event you’re not allowed to leave the rest stops without being in a group led by a Trek Master, and I was wondering how this would work for the runners. It’s a nice idea for safety but not something I would benefit from as I needed to be able to go at my own pace. Thankfully they had a different system for us, they gave us a glow torch each and we were allowed to go!

I was surprised and even gleeful by how well the route was lit up for us in the dark. There were flashing lights on gate posts, glowtorches on every marker, and the text on all of the pink-arrow markers (of which there is always one in sight anyway) was glowing in the dark! There was no worry about getting lost, I was following a line of beacons of which I could see at least 3 at any one time. My friend replied to say I would need to maintain just under 11 minute miles to finish within 16 hours. This was a lot faster than I had previously calculated. I was a little dissapointed as I knew I couldn't maintain the pace I had just done, but as I ran on from the rest stop I was actually making this pace and I had a burst of optimism. I felt really at one with the moment running in the dark. There were bats flitting around me and the river was at ground level to my right, wisps of mist laying on it in a regular pattern - long, low walls of mist in a grid, lit by my head torch. On my own running across a field I saw a couple of mice, less than an inch wide: one of them bounded away from me in arcs as high as they were tall and many times taller than the mouse was, I didn't know they could do that. The wonders of the night. I caught up with some people at a gate, one lady had white-reflective flashes on her jacket, pack and trousers that in the day wouldn't have stood out at all but in the dark made her look like Tron. I also passed a man in army green shorts and jumper who had started the same time as me and walked the whole way, he said that I looked like a Christmas tree from the back, at the time I couldn't process that but I guess my pack had reflectors on too.

Pain started to return, but these were normal pains brought on by the simple repetitive impact of running such a long distance, and I didn't have the brain capacity to acknowledge them so they weren't a problem. This was a fourth and final phase - the just-keep-going phase.  I know the top of my quads were tight; my was left knee was sore too as I had strapped up my left arch as it was fatiguing and hurting - that helped the arch, but I had done it too tight and my knee was taking the brunt. I didn't have time to stop to fix it so I just tried to over-pronate as I landed to squash the tape. I'm not really sure what else was hurting but in hindsight it was the outside edge of my right foot. This is where it might have been an idea to pay more attention, as the day after this pain was quite crippling. Or maybe not. Depends on whether I wanted to finish at all costs. In second hindsight I think that I experienced what you are meant to experience, a mind-numbed determination to continue, and I am glad that I succumbed to it.

At 20:42 I messaged my parents to say I expected to finish about 22:50. Just 10 minutes later I messaged again to say my legs were slowing, and I realised I wouldn't make the 16 hour target. It didn't mean I gave up, that wasn't an option that even crossed my mind in this phase, it just meant I reassessed my objective to maybe finish in 17 hours instead. I would just keep trying and see how it went.

At 21:05 I went over a little humpback bridge and in the dark I didn't see how steep the ramp down was and I stumbled suddenly and pulled my groin. I didn't think much of it, I just wanted to carry on but over the next few steps I realised how bad it was - agonisingly painful. I couldn't walk. I hobbled on and looked at my new pace on my watch and worked out it would now take me 3 1/2 hours to finish, double ouch. A couple of people passed me and kindly stopped to see if they could help but there wasn't much they could do so I sent them on, and the green man passed too. I was less worried about me, these things happen and I would be happy to just finish, but I was worried about inconveniencing my parents. They had had a really early start that morning to take me and Debbie to the start in London, they'd also driven back to Windsor later to see me, and this meant they would have to come and pick me up in the early hours of the morning, and I felt really guilty. I desperately wanted to pick up the pace again although I knew I shouldn’t. A couple of friends online shared some stretches with me and these really helped. I was nearly due another dose of ibuprofen so I took one and this helped too. By half past I was running again (of a sort), the last couple of km to the final rest stop where I went straight to the medic tent and lay down, doing stretches and putting freeze gel down my shorts.

On the next stretch I was able to run on the grass and gravel but not on the tarmac, and there was quite a lot of that here. After a while we passed back into a large park slightly away from the river, with a flat field to a gate and then a grass path leading off left through the centre of another field which was on a a slight incline. I wondered if this was the one hill that was shown on the route elevation - not really a hill at all, the elevation of the whole 100km is only 100m so the smallest rise stands out as a big blip. I hadn't seen anybody for ages but there were two people glowing up ahead and I slowly gained and then passed. There was some incongruously loud music pervading across the field and they didn't know what it was either, we all commented it would be nice if that was the finish but we doubted it given we still had 9km to go. It took me ages to discover what it was but eventually I turned right onto Aston Ferry Road and it was just some people having a party in a posh house, unaware of me passing by them. There was a slight downhill here after the up, and the tarmac combined with the gradient was very hard on my sore feet so I slowed back to a walk. There were three people standing by a white van up ahead and they definitely weren't unaware of me, they started whooping and cheering and I felt quite emotional. I was no idea who they were, they weren't in high-vis or Action Challenge livery, and I walked up to the first one and fell onto her with a hug. The other two came over and hugged me too, while I blinded them with my torch. They enthusiastically willed me on my way and asked if I could run again so I did, away to the left on another footpath. I was immensely grateful for their support at the toughest point.

I hadn't been paying attention to the km markers for a while but they suddenly seemed important now I was inside the last 10km. I saw the 92km marker but didn't see 93km even when I was really sure I had been more than 1km and I was going to be seriously sad if it suddenly appeared but thankfully I saw the 94km sign next. I can't remember the next 3 but rounding the corner I could see lights up ahead - Henley, wow.  

Suddenly my gut turned and I felt sick, maybe because my brain knew it was nearly over, I'm not sure. I checked the last party hadn't caught me up - no I was safe behind and up ahead, alone in the dark. I went into a field by a sole tree, I just had to go. Back on the path I got a sudden build up of acid in my throat and threw up too, just a little but it got it out of my system and I was ready for the last 3km. Then the last 2km. I can't remember if was before or after being sick but I remember that I ought to eat to stop my body aching, I had spent more time in the medic tent than the snack bar at the last stop but I had pocketed some items. I had tried the peanuts earlier and they didn't taste right for the moment so I tucked into a box of toffee poppets. Another bad choice, far too hard, and in my effort to chomp down on them my teeth clashed and I chipped my bottom tooth. This hurt a surprising amount but it probably distracted me from my other pains.

I was so close to Henley now I could see the bridge, beautifully lit up across the arches. Mum met me on the bridge. As with all the other slight inclined I walked up it but ran down, a lady in a car stopped for me to cross and the guy behind got annoyed and overtook and nearly mowed down mum behind me. I ran to the finish, Mum ran with me for a bit. As I saw the finish banner I checked my watch and it was 2 minutes to midnight, I crossed the line at 23:59. Despite my recent troubles with food there was one thing I knew I wanted - the promised prosecco! This was the fourth of the finish lines, the quarter and half finishers had their prosecco at the earlier ones and now it was my turn.

My official time 17:09:28. I spent 2:24:24 at the 7 rest stops, that’s a known value as I stopped my watch at each one to charge it. Strava says I spent an additional 3:28:36 resting which means 11:16:28 total running time but Strava is known to be a little funny with moving time due to GPS glitches, and I had my GPS accuracy turned right down to save battery so I don’t trust this so much.

The results are done by challenge (the 100km continuous is different to the 100km 2 day) but combine the walkers, joggers and runners together. Overall I came 194/794, and I was 52nd woman out of 352.

Neither the results nor the time matter to me though, it was all about the distance. I’m not fast, worse than that every time I do any speedwork I get injured, it took me many years to realise this and I couldn’t even do a half marathon until I made up my own training plan and ignored much of the common advice. I don’t find running easy and due to mild hypermobility I get inquired easily too. Over the years I have grown to love it though, and I really wanted to take on this distance challenge - and now I have achieved it. The fundraising was another feel-good result, I have raised over £1400 for Royal Osteoporosis, way more than I expected.

I am very keen to do another 100km run in the future, it was the perfect level of challenge for me to push myself to my limits. I still need to recover first though, it’s now a week later and I still have pains, although they have subsided to dull aches.

Well done to all the other challenges, there were a lot of personal journeys being developed that day, and thank you to all the wonderful staff who were full or support the whole way.