We assembled in the dark at Okehampton and saw the stunning dawn from the bus on the way to the start. It was full daylight when we started which was good for the soul, and having seen the dawn we knew we had the full amount of daylight ahead of us. Last weekend I’d realised that my trail shoes have done 650 miles and started to go through at the heel and rub my skin, so I panic-bought a new pair, and standing at the start they were bright and shiny. Although they were the same as the old ones so I knew they’d be comfortable, they were thick and puffy with their new-ness, and I spent the first hour constantly re-tying the laces. If they were too loose they slipped, but if I have laces just a fraction too tight I get shooting pains across my foot.
My aim for the day was to get round with as little muscle fatigue as possible, as close to the cutoffs as possible, but it was quite hard to run that slowly on the road sections at the start, and it only took me 1:19 to do 10k, which felt a bit fast given I was going to be running all day. So I just continued went as slow as I could, as I already felt a wreck. I already had aches and pains too - my right hamstring felt tight, as did my left calf (where I had had an overnight cramp the week before), and I had an intense pain between my shoulder blades which has been building for a fortnight. This didn’t really matter though, I knew I wasn’t super fit, and yet I had still been really looking forward to the event, and it was so beautiful in all the autumnal colours, with so much of the route being along tree-lined tracks or along stream valleys. And the curious cow field at Ashburton was empty to boot! We were blessed with a good day too - the sky cloudy but bright, no rain, and a balmy 9 degrees before dawn rising to about 13 degrees in the afternoon.
There was a steep hill just before the first checkpoint. I had only seen 1 or 2 others at this point, bringing up the rear, but I bumped into two more who had taken a wrong turning and had to backtrack, and we stomped up the hill together. I was surprised to bump into a few other runners at the checkpoint too. I was very well looked after at the checkpoint, I was so incredibly hungry due to limited fat-burn training and carrying more weight, and things appeared without me having to ask for them - a sausage roll, hot soup, a plaster for two of my toes that were running together. I left feeling fit, then the second I started running I got stabbing pains on my foot under the laces, and intermittent problem I’ve had before that no physio can seem to diagnose. Sometimes I can walk it off, sometimes I can’t, but thankfully it was manageable as I walk up to Haytor, then along to Yarner woods, and eventually eased off. This section of the path, all the way to Bovey and then on to the next checkpoint at Manaton was familiar to me, and it was nice to be able to switch off and not have to navigate, through more stunning tracks lined with yellow trees and fallen leaves. It was all too easy to speed up here (about 19 miles in), so I just tried to keep my heart rate under 160 (I would prefer it lower still, but it’s always higher than normal on a race with an early morning start).
I was having some technical issues as well as body aches. My watch has a ‘low power’ setting where it only samples the gps every minute, but there’s a bug with it where it keeps losing gps (it works fine on full power mode) and after a while it fails to find it again altogether. I kept having to stop the track and start a new one, which meant I lost my average pace, which I had planned to use to time my arrival at each aid station. I had anticipated this and was running a second log on Strava on my phone, but my phone tends to zig zag around and log extra mileage, so the pace wasn’t correct there either. I could calculate it from the map against elapsed time if needs be, but I was about an hour inside the cutoff anyway so didn’t really have to worry.
At the second aid station there were even more people, and I stuffed my face as much as I could and set off again. There was a chill in the air so I put on my long sleeved baselayer (having been in a vest and shorts up to now, despite it being mid November), and typically after a few minutes I was roasted again but decided to take the sweaty body over cold skin. I had a company on the next sections, briefly with Claire, then yo-yoing with a chap called Antti who’d left me behind at the start when I re-tied my laces, and running a stretch with another chap called Alan. My GPS went haywire on some shapeless, dark bracken-fields just before Cranbrook rendering my navigation useless, but Alan’s was co-operating, so it was reassuring to have his company then. My left knee started to hurt at the shin tendon on the downhills, but Alan had some aches too so we ran/walked a stretch together, approaching Fingle bridge. We had passed the Bude crowd too - an energetic bunch of 6 or 8 all running as a group, although they passed us again here, then we passed again as they met their support crew for snacks. It was 3.9 miles to the Chagford aid station as I pushed on up the hill taking me high above the Teign gorge. Darkness has fallen now so I couldn’t see the stunning view, but I knew this section and even in the blackness I could sense the deep, v-shaped valley on my left down to the tree-lined river below.
As I descended to the river I began to feel a bit weak and shaky, even though I had just had a cereal bar, and pushing on took a lot of effort here, it was the actual motion of running and bouncing up and down that was making me feel nauseous. As I ran the flat stretch along the river my right quadricep suddenly developed some pain, and I slowed to a walk, which was heartbreaking on such runnable ground, but I didn’t want to sustain an injury that would prevent me from finishing. The remaining 2 miles to the aid station felt like it took 2 hours. I walked in in a state but body seemed to notice, I guess that’s par for the course after 40 miles. This was already the second furthest I’ve ever run and on my longest ultra I also got injured on route and yet finished running strong with no lasting damage, so I didn’t see how this should be any different. I was waited on again, with coke and soup and sandwiches and freeze spray. It was 7pm and the cutoff was quarter past midnight so I had time to walk the rest, but I got going again as soon as I could just in case, although I think I was there for longer than I imagined. After half a mile of walking I was bored of that, especially as I’d looking at the tracker to pass the time while on a road stretch and seen the people I’d passed gradually getting further and further ahead. So I tried a slow shuffle-run and it felt okay, and there weren’t any steep downhills to test my knee, and that was it, suddenly I was fine all the way to the finish, more than fine in fact. I still felt destroyed, and it sounded like somebody was talking to me quietly as I was wheezing on every breathe, but somehow I felt strong at the same time - I was able to dodge rocks and mud. I genuinely raced the last 10 miles, although my pace graph shows I wasn’t any faster than I was at the start, but my pace was incredibly consistent throughout which I guess is a feat when you’re getting progressively more tired. I had no targets regarding finish time or table position, so I set myself an arbitrary aim to catch up with the Bude group again. As we left the road for the trail section I passed the two guys I’d seen before the first checkpoint, then somebody else alongside the roaring river Taw just past Sticklepath. Last time I had looked at the tracker I saw Bude were still 0.36 miles ahead, but I knew they might stop again at one of their popup aid stations, so I kept pushing, even though I felt shaky again now and I couldn’t get any food in this time. I finally saw them just as we reached the hill up to Belstone village, and thankfully accepted a Jaffa cake from their support crew who I passed just before they did. The next section of the route was glorious solo running - first over the final hill with a steepish ascent and a steepish descent that didn’t flare up my knee as it was on grippy grass, then a good track that gradually descended then zagged back to cross the East Okement river, followed by a hellish river track over slippery rock slabs. I am fairly comfortable on rock, and my legs were still pretty mobile, and I passed another small group of runners here who were being more careful. It was pretty much all over then. A friend messaged me to say there was no-one else between me and the finish as I couldn’t check the tracker on this terrain, so all I had to do was run it in, about ready to collapse but ecstatic with my achievement. In the end I finished 34th out of 57, and 9th out of 21 women, despite aiming to plod round, with a finish time of 14:12:44.
I knew I needed to eat then, and was so thankful to find the cafe at the finish line still open, doing chill and rice, it was hard to get down me but I managed the lot before driving myself home.
I couldn’t walk the next day (today), but don’t believe I have hurt anything, just general fatigue and stiffness. I couldn’t sleep well, I had a stomach ache and a sore knee, despite propping it up on the pillow. I had 8 hours of sleep, of which just 2:40 were restful, 1:24 restless and 4 hours awake. There’s time for that though. Second furthest I've ever run, my 9th ultra (6 in events and 3 in personal challenges), and one that went from a real ‘can I even finish?’ to a ‘wow, look what my body did!’
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