London Ultra 50K

In an attempt to kick-start my training for the Trailwalker, I figured a 50K trail race would be good preparation. With this in mind, I did the London Ultra 50K trail race a couple of weeks ago, which took a band of 226 brave runners from Streatham Common to Wembley, following London's Capital Ring.

As this was my first ultra-marathon, I was a bag of nerves on the morning of 20th Feb. It was interesting to look around the group waiting to start. There was probably about 10g of body-fat between them (myself excluded).

The route took us through some residential roads for the first 10K then into parks and along canal tow-paths for the bulk of the race. I didn't appreciate just how big Richmond Park is, nor how muddy it gets after rain. It stayed pretty chilly and overcast for the whole race, but didn't really rain, which was nice. However, there had been so much rain on Saturday that many of the parks and woods were incredibly muddy, slippery and treacherous. Running downhill through muddy woods was one of the more challenging aspects of the race, I have to admit. By running, I really mean slipping and sliding. I ran pretty consistently for the first 30K or so, but the last 20K proved more challenging.

There were a couple of brutal hills through woods that were particularly muddy, so there was nothing for it other than to walk. The worst hills were at about 40K and 48K, just to test your endurance. Needless to say, I walked both of those as did the few people around me. The last mile or so was pretty much downhill, which almost harder than running uphill due to the additional pressure on tired limbs. As I was heading to the finish line, I could hear someone close behind so put on as much of a sprint finish as I could muster and finished 4 seconds ahead of three guys just behind me. I didn't even know there were three people so close behind me until I checked the results! I finished in 5:09:36, which put me 72nd out of 212 finishers. I thought I'd be around 200th so I'm delighted. And I'll be back next year.... maybe.