The British Spartathlon Team

OK. The anxiety is over. No more waiting for my Spartathlon number. I got an email last night that confirms that I will be number 65 this year. I can't believe 64 people got in before me, I was up at 3am entering my details. Anyhoo, stress over for me and many others, now is the time to get on and think about running the race.

I first toed the start line of the Spartathlon in 2009, I was a boy amongst men. I listened in awe of some of the running achievements that my fellow runners had completed. It was a magical but humbling experience that I will never forget.

I also remember looking around at the truly international field that was present. It really is. I looked at the beautiful kit of the Korean team, the Japanese, the Croatian, Hungarian, German and Brazillian. They all looked amazing in preparation for this wonderful event.

I looked back at us Brits. We had guts and experience and resilience and speed. However we looked like the cast from Shameless.

And so I thought, why don't we have our own kit? This happened first in 2011 when Peter Leslie Foxall designed a brilliant T-Shirt with the slogan on the back "What have the Spartans ever done for US?"

Last year Stu Shipperly created an amazing T-Shirt which I wore for the who race (and bled on). Suddenly The Brits were looking like a smart outfit. SHAMELESS???

This year I want to take this further. I want to create a real "team" atmosphere. I think I have done well in my own personal objective of convincing others how magical this race is and take some pride in knowing that I have at least helped convince some people to attempt the worlds greatest race.

But as we all know, starting the race and finishing the race are very different things. This is one of the few races I know where finishing is not a given. I want more Brits (or anyone really) to kiss that foot because I can never put into words just how amazing it feels.

And so I have created website (with great help from Mimi Anderson, Matt Mahoney and Mark Woolley) for the British Spartathlon team which I hope will serve as a resource for all those heading out to Greece this year. I am hoping it is something that all Brits will find useful and will want to contribute to. I want this to be a longer term project too, not just for 2013 so if you have any designs on running the Spartathlon then this is for you.

Hopefully we will get some sponsors on board that will help our athletes on their journey to the feet on Leonidas. Also we are hoping to organise a "Spartathlon Boot Camp" in Spain to get us pasty Brits in the sunshine.

I am quite excited by all of this and hope you are too. If you are a Brit who has been accepted for the Spartathlon then please let me know. Any feedback, suggestions, contributions are most welcome. The site is in it's infancy right now as I collect content and figure out wordpress. In the meantime enjoy :)

British Spartathlon Team Website

Race Ready Shorts Review

Ultra runners can be girls sometimes. Well actually some ultra runners ARE real girls, but that's not my point. What I mean is that ultra runners like carrying around lots of crap and like buying bags of all different shapes and sizes to put things in. Am I wrong? I probably own about 10 running bags. This is probably around half the amount owned by an average girl for various special occasions, first date, second date, third date (likely to put out), third date (still deciding), birthday party, work casual, work formal, gym bag, shopping bag, wedding bag (usually needs a new bag), holiday bag etc.

I am not sure what girls fill these bags with. Phones, lipsticks, three different lip balms, tissues, umbrellas, those little sweets that seem to get spilled out all over the table in busy office environments, at least according to some TV adverts I've seen.

With guys its a bit easier, we have jeans with pockets. These pockets were designed to carry a phone, a wallet, some keys and there is this little tiny pocket for a condom.

Now when the first running short was invented someone decided that the only things now required for a man while running were keys and a condom, judging by the pockets. Whose idea was this? It's crazy. I always leave my front door unlocked anyway.

So for years we have been struggling to run without either carrying a bag/belt or by not taking stuff we need (usually for me - toilet paper).

So I was quite pleased when Race Ready shorts became available in the UK. I had known a couple of people who got them from the States but never really saw an equivalent here. Now I can carry lots of things, keys, phone, money, food, gels, condom, spare change to buy some lovely flowers for Gemma if I pass a florist.

Basically they are very lightweight running shorts that have two secure pockets on the front and 5 mesh pockets at the back. On first inspection it looks too much. How would your shorts not fall down? Doesn't everything bounce about too much?

I was pleasantly suprised on both counts.

First let me tell you about the phone pocket. Well there are two of them but you can use one for cards, money, travelpass etc. I have a Samsung Galaxy S II, its a big chunky phone that allows me to facebook on the run. I slid it in and went for a jog. It was fine (except that I forgot to lock it and I kept calling my sister and speaking to her with my left testicle). So far so good.

I then decided to really give it a test, I ran a parkrun with it. 5k as fast as I could (which is not too slow actually under 20 minutes). I put the phone in and then started to bounce around a muddy trail course at 6.30 minute miles and was really suprised that I could not even feel the phone, it was pressed right against me so that it didn't feel like it was there. In fact I kept having to check, sure it had fallen out. It hadn't. A great start, you can run quite fast with quite a big phone in these and not feel any discomfort or annoyance.

But obviously I didn't buy these for parkruns. I bought these for the longer stuff and gave them another test in the country to captial ultra in Jan. 45 miles of trial and canal, hills, mud, rain and cold. I had a few things to carry, phone, food, electrolytes, toilet paper, lube and emergency cash. I had a backpack on too but this was a test to see if these things would hold.

Again they performed brilliantly, nothing fell out, everything was easy to access and you generally feel more comfortable knowing that you have all these things to hand in case you need them.

Aside from the obvious huge benefits of what they can carry they function very well as shorts too. They are light and comfortable and are showing no signs of deterioration yet despite my heavy use of them. They are quick drying (not waterproof so be careful with your phone if it does rain).

These are now my shorts of choice and I'll be wearing them for all races where I need quick access to a few items. In the upcoming Northburn 100 miler I'll be taking my phone, compass, food/gels and lube in these. In the Spartathlon at the end of the year (a race I like to run carrying as little as possible and only a bottle belt max) I'll be using these to carry my electrolyte, tissue, sun block, phone and a small light.

These shorts are exclusively available (in the UK) from the UltramarathonRunningStore who I also recommend for great service and are the first confirmed supporters of the British Spartathlon Team.

2013 Resolutions - I am committed now cos I wrote it on the internet.

I weigh 86kg. It's been a long time since I pushed the scales that high. It means I am much faster at falling down hills and harder to stop when I run into people but other than that it is way higher than I want to be.

I am starting the new year with new hope of things being awesome, unlike the start of 2012. I am going to approach this year very differently to previous years in terms of health and training. Did I really just say the "T" word?

Racing

I have set myself two massive running challenges this year which I am calling my A races. I have one B race and then a few fun runs. I am still deciding on a few things but the difference this year is that I am doing a lot less events.

My two "A" races are;

Double Grand Union Canal Run - May (290 miles)

I have never run more than 153 miles non-stop before. I know I can run all day and all night and then all day again. The most I've ever been on my feet was 39 hours in Badwater. I have run races where I have been on my feet for more than 24 hours 6 times now. I know I can do a day and a half of running without falling apart. I wonder what would happen to me if I extended that to two days, two and a half days, three days, more?

This will be the "new territory" I will be treading when I attempt to keep myself going for more than twice as long as I ever have before. I know I can do the GUCR or the Spartathlon or Badwater. I don't know I can run nearly 300 miles in one go.

When I say "one go" I will obviously rest and sleep at some point (probably). The clock is always ticking though and to give me motivation to keep going at a reasonable pace I am actually going to run the GUCR in reverse before the start of the actual race and then run the race. Starting approx 42 hours before the GUCR I intend to run from Little Venice to Birmingham in about 38 hours, have a rest and then join the other runners on the way back to London and hope to finish the second leg in the cut off of 45 hours.

I thought of doing this about a year ago and mentioned it to Mimi Anderson whose eyes lit up at the prospect and she is doing it with me. Now we are both committed. I thought long and hard about whether it was right to do this, we in no way want to undermine the race or deny anyone a place. It was a tough call but in the end we decided it was a good thing to do.

Double Spartathlon - September (306 miles)

There are many versions of the story that unfolded 2500 years ago. Some say that a messenger ran 26 miles from Marathon to Athens and died. Some say he ran from Athens to Sparta to summon the Spartan army to help in battle. Some say he ran from Athens to Sparta, was turned down and then ran back. I've run from Marathon to Athens before, I've run from Athens to Sparta three times now. I've not yet completed all possible versions of the story and run back from Sparta to Athens.

I may have mentioned before that this is my favourite race. I didn't think it would be when I signed up the first time, I just regarded it as a "must do". But many things about this race just force me back year after year and next year I want to make it even more special.

I am in no doubt that this will be the hardest thing I have ever attempted. Yes I am including LA-NY in that. In contrast to the GUCR I intend to complete the race first and then head back to Athens. I know too well just how hard it is to finish this one way and this year as I was nearing the end, staggering in the heat I said there is absolutely no way I am going to be able to do this twice next year.

But there was a time when I thought there was absolutley no way I'd be able to run 153 miles non-stop. I am again running this with Mimi who said that it's different when you go in knowing that you have to run 306 miles rather than 153. I will have to take her word for it and see.

The hardest thing I will ever have to do will be turning away from that statue after 153 miles of blistering running and then heading back to do it all again. That will suck.

And now you have to run back....

The "B" race

My "B" race is the Northburn 100 in March in New Zealand. 100 miles and 8000m of climbing in Mordor wilderness, this looks incredible. "You don't race it, you survive it". It will be a week after I get married to Gemma and it was her idea to do it. What a lovely wife she is going to be, it's as if she has taken inspiration directly from the "Don't for Wives" book published in 1913 that I got her for Christmas. "Don't object to your husband spending Saturday afternoons playing cricket just because you can't play, you can watch and derive pleasure in him enjoying his outdoor sport". Thankfully times and attitudes have changed in the past 100 years, cricket is no longer regarded as a sport.

But this race looks awesome and will be really hard. I am really looking forward to it. Check out these awesome photos.

Other races

There are a few things I am doing for fun. The start of the year will not be right without running the Country to Capital ultra in January. I love that race, seeing everyone looking fat after Christmas and making various comical attempts to leg it for 43 miles. I may puke this year.

The only other two races I have planned are in the middle of the Summer. The Mont Blanc 80k looks like it will be slow. 50 miles and 6000m of elevation and a 24 hour cut off shows how long they are planning on having people out there. A week after that (if I can somehow figure out how to get to Greece from Chamonix without spending a fortune) is the Olympus Mythical Trail 100k in Greece. It looks stunning. 100k, 7000m of elevation and probably very hot. Should keep the Barkley training ticking over..

Oh and at the end of April I am running the Shakespeare Marathon, more about that it a bit.

Right now I am torn between two events in August. There are now just 6 days left to register for the UTMB, 100 miles around Mont Blanc. I tried this race a few years ago and only completed 2/3 of it as there were landslides. I don't really have too much desire to do it but it does look like a fun weekend away with friends. If I did it I would not try to go for a decent time, I would just go to eat the cheese. I will have to practice avoiding getting my eyes jabbed out by twats with walking sticks.

The other event I am drawn to is the 48 hour track race at the Ultrafest. I have never done a 24/48hour race before and reckon 48 hours would be the limit I could go for without needing to sleep. However the risk for this would be that unlike the UTMB I would feel like I had to run as far as I could (I reckon I could do over 200 miles) and hence screw myself for the main event in Greece a month later.

Decisions decisions.

Training

Oh dear, I just used that filthy word again. I don't think I have done anything you would call "training" for years. I run events for fun and that gives me the base to do bigger events. When I ran across the States I was told that the first two weeks were the training and they were right. I have not been to a track for years, done any "fartlek" or tempo or whatever. I've just been clocking up miles. I feel like right now if I had to I could run 150 miles or across a country. How do I train for running 300 miles?

I don't think there is a way I can "train" for running 300 miles that I can do in the next 5 months. In the last 5 years I have run about 16000 miles, run 100+ marathons and ultras and 6 times run over 135 miles in one go. I don't think there is much I can do that will make me better prepared for running 300 miles than I am now and so I am going to do something a bit different and potentially a bit risky, I am going to train for a sub 3 hour marathon.

I plan on training 60-80 miles a week as if I were going for a sub three hour marathon in April. Apart from the minor digression of a 45 miler in Jan and a 100 miler in March I do not plan on running any long distances in the next 4 months. I may do marathons as training but my intention is to run as many 5k, 10k and general fast running as possible. In the Shakespeare marathon in April I will see whether I can run a sub 3. I will find out a month later whether it worked.

Eating

My favourite subject. I like to eat. There is something quite satisfying about running all day and then eating a load of food. However to complete these runs (and to fit into my wedding costume) I need to lose a few pounds. Actually I hope to get down to 75kg by March, that's about 1kg per week. I am saying this all out loud on a blog so that I get badgered into doing it.

I had an idea about making this fun, or at least interesting. I am going to pick various foods and cut them out of my diet for one month. This I hope will do two things, one it will see whether I can live without a certain type of food for a month and two it will give me a chance to explore food in the way I did when I tried veganism for a while a few years ago.

First up is sugar. In Jan I am going to give up adding sugar to things and eating sweets, the hardest part of this will be not having it in coffee.

Other things I will give up in the course of the year are - Gluten/wheat, caffeine, dairy, meat, all animal products (so be vegan for a month), eating out/takeaways, modern food (so eating paleo for a month), processed food (so cooking everything from scratch). I still have three more to find. Gemma has suggested one that begins with "A" but there is no way I am giving up aubergines. The month after the double Spartathlon I suggested to Gemma that I might have to give up something beginning with "S". She was not having it though, I still have to have a shower every day.

Writing

I hope to have a book published early next year. I am more likely to self publish it as publishing does not really pay for itself. I don't anticipate making big money on it but it would be nice to buy some time to do more writing and running.

I have plans for another two books as it stands, one will be an online book that will be available on this blog for free, another is more of a creative idea. I hope to have all of this done by the end of the year.

I want to blog more. I read a hell of a lot of books and should review things more. I have yet to do product reviews or too many advice articles and want to do more writing for magazines ro websites and plan on pushing that more.

I also want to speak more, I enjoyed every time I spoke this year and want to do more of that. I like preparing the presentations and trying to think up funny things to say and then panicking that no one would get them. That's usually gone OK.

Race Directing

This year was a first for me. I (sort of) organised a race. Well I came up with the idea of the Piece of String race and overall it went well despite the horrific weather. It will be repeated again next year, possibly with a larger field. Who knows whether the miles they ran this year was on the "short" or "long" end of the scale. Who knows whether we'll use the same scale again next year? I certainly don't.

Oh an I have another idea. Will have to convince James Elson that it is a good idea....

Coaching

OK, I am not planning on "coaching" as such but I have recently taken a run leaders course and plan on helping out at Serpentine running club sessions. I am going to see how it goes. I'm not sure whether I am the person to coach people but am open to it.

And finally..

Team Spartathlon

I am going to take personal responsibility for getting more UK runners running the Spartathlon next year and also helping more to finish. I want to try and organise a proper "team" with a website, videos, kit, sponsors and all that. Am not sure how to do this as yet but just putting the idea out there in case someone has any thoughts. Sponsors, media, website techy people and of course runners.

I have just bought 10 new pairs of running shoes, lets smash them.

2012 - The year review

OK as everyone else is doing it.....

I mentioned in an interview recently about feeling like Brooks in the Shawshank Redemption. If you don't know the story Brooks spend 50 years in prison from around 1910 to 1960, when he got out the world had changed so much he could not cope and he killed himself. OK it was not at all like that but I did have a weird depression with running that I don't think I had felt before. Certainly not for so long. The post race blues are a common thing for any runner who has just achieved something they were obsessed about achieving, as I was with the GUCR, Badwater and the Spartathlon when I completed those. However this one was different.

I had nothing else next. Well nothing nearly as big as as running across the USA. From the day I started running I always had something "big" to aim for whether that was a marathon, my first ultra or some much bigger ultra. I was always comforted by the thought that at some point in the future I will be presented with another unique challenge. It was easy to keep going.

A few friends hinted that the year after would be difficult. The few weeks after arriving in New York were very difficult but made much better by being reunited with my friends and normal life and being given the opportunity to talk about it at length, as if I were able to re-live it all.

The year started well enough, the great ultra running social reunion that is the Country to Capital in Jan. James Elson made us all run too fast in the first half and it was hard work hanging on but managed to finish in reasonably good time. I then did my first Endurance Life event for the first time in years and really remembered why I love them so much. I was given the opportunity to talk about my American Adventure with them and also I became an ambassador for them. A great start to the year, see the video of me saying ummm a record amount of times here.

I spoke at some more events and ran my first Centurion Running race, the Thames Path 100 miler. It was actually my first 100 miler. The weather was horrid and I was not really putting in much but I finished in a little under 24 hours.

In April I started something that really was impossible. I said earlier that I had nothing "big" to look forward to but in reality I had something much bigger than anything to look forward to. This was going to be by far the hardest thing I had ever attempted. There it is, "attempted". I never said "I am going to attempt to run across america or run Badwater". I always said I am going to run across America or I am going to run Badwater. The continual use of the word "attempted" before I even flew out there.

Now realistically a race where 10 people out of 200+ attempts means that any effort I put in was unlikely to succeed but I have never gone into anything before where my expectation was failure. I just wanted to go and see what it was like and see how far I might get. I realised in retrospect that this was a mistake, I should have gone "out there" without at least hope that I might do it, however unlikely. I actually had no chance, the finishers of this run have 4 things going for them, they are insanely fit, they are very well trained, they are at the top of their game and they get a bit of luck. It takes more than just some stubborness to get through this, stubborness that will get you through most things. I gave up too easiliy but was out of my depth and I do one day want to return but will make sure that when I do my chances of finishing are at least better than zero.

On returning from the USA I decided that I was not going to be able to give the Grand Union Canal Run my all and decided to withdraw. It was a hard choice but thought that someone should have the place who was not just doing it for the sake of it. While that race was running I got engaged to Gemma, that more than made up for it. She has been so wonderful and understanding of my ultra running obsession since she started seeing me about 3.5 years ago. I never forget her first words to me "GET THOSE HIDEOUS BLISTERS OFF OF FACEBOOK".

The next big thing I tried was the Ultra Tour South West (UTSW), a 100 mile really hilly run on the Cornish Coast organised by Endurance Life. I should have been able to do this but my mind wasn't in it from the start and I bailed after just 20 miles. Nothing wrong at all I just really didn't want to be there. This was a low point for the year, wondering whether I could ever be bothered with it all again.

This continued into the 10 peaks challenge; a brutally hard fell run that will take most the best part of 24 hours to finish. This time I bailed right near the end, with 19 hours run and one more peak to complete I just went back to the hotel. This was another low point.

This indifference to running got me reading about motivation and sports psychology and gave me a lot to think about. Why could I not be arsed with anything anymore? So many times I would have normally have gone for a run but instead I stayed in, ultimately feeling worse. There were a lot of things bothering me, stress and anxiety and a general feeling of there being no point to it. It was a pretty miserable time.

Heading towards the end of the year and for what has been the "main event" for me in 3 of the last 4 years I feared my own surrender again. I gave in too easily in Barkley, in the UTSW and in the 10 peaks. I worried that I would contrive a set of circumstances where I would justify quitting. When you go into a race without a committment to give it everything to finish you have a much lower threshold for the pain, the tiredness, the boredon, the point. It's so much easier to say "well I've done enought for today, well done me, I'll just head back to the hotel now, I don't need to finish this".

Fortunately for me I underestimated the power the Spartathlon has over me and over others. This race has gone from something I was merely going to "tick off" a few years ago to one where I feel compelled to go every year and recruit an army of UK runners to race too. This is the main event of the year, of every year. I can't imagine every being away from Greece when it is happening.

I finished the Spartathlon, or the Spartathlon made me finish it, it's hard to tell. This year was amazing, brutal heat forcing the most retirements ever. I immediately felt like the year had been a good one, that's what this race means to me. I feel like it's miy job to make others feel the same. Listen to me banging on about it in the Economist. I can't believe I said that at the end...

And though the big races were over for me I still had a couple of things to occupy me. First off is an idea I had about a year ago for an evil race. It actually happened, the Piece of String race was a success of sorts, the weather was terrible and 2 out of 10 runners finished. I was amazed and humbled by the determination and attitude of everyone who took part, doing a race with no defined finishing line in such hard conditions. I really enjoyed planning the race, looking for routes, thinking of more evil things and then staying up for 48 hours watching the whole thing unfold. It will definitely happen again next year. Thanks again to James Elson for staging it and for all who were involved.

Lastly I finished my book. I still have lots of speeling mistakes to correct but it looks like how I want it to look like now and I am looking at publshing and self publishing options. Pros and cons of each. Hopefully it will be released soon in the New Year.

And that's it basically. I've decided what 2013 will look like, long runs, weight loss, more writing, more speaking, more race directing, new race obsessions and of course a trip to New Zealand to wed the lovely Gemma. More detail to follow.

Things I learned in 2012

• Barkley deserves 10 times more respect than I gave it (and I already gave it a lot of respect)
• Being lighter really does help with the running
• Prolonged periods of indifference mean I need to find another challenge
• The UK is full of great people willing to try something completely different and unique
• Gemma is pretty awesome (I actually already knew this)
• The only way out of the Spartatlon is to finish or be finished
• No matter how shit you think your running year has been it becomes an awesome year if you get to kiss that foot
• It's hard to get interest from publishers, unless I call the book 50 shades of brown

 Roll on 2013.

 At least my monthly mileage is more consistent?

Spartathlon 2012 Photos

Some Excellent photos of the Spartathlon from my friend Jon who flew all the way to Greece to watch my nipple explode.

The Chimp Paradox - A book every ultra-runner should read

So this might not be on all endurance runners "must read" list but I recommend you do. The author Steve Peters has spent the last few years as the head psychologist for the British Cycling team (who apparently have been doing pretty well recently). He has now been put in charge of the minds of the Athletics team for Rio in 2016.

The book is not specifically about mind management for endurance atheltes but some parts of it will resonate with you in your training and racing as an ultra runner.

The book is very simple and fun to read. Steve Peters simplified what goes on in our heads as a battle between a Human and a Chimp. Sounds silly but it is quite a fun and useful way of thinking about what happens inside your head, particularly when you have run 60 odd miles, it's cold, wet and dark, you are exhausted and grumpy and feel like the whole world is conspiring against you. And you still have 40 miles left to run.

The premise of the book is that we are made up of a Human, a Chimp and a Computer (and some other stuff). The Human is the part of us that is measured and rational, it needs purpose and meaning. It is this part of us that sets ourselves goals and gets pleasure from achieving something that is not part of basic survival (such as finishing an ultra marathon or winning an Olympic medal).

However whilst trying to achieve these goals we are often hijacked by the chimp. The chimp is the part of us that is obsessed with basic survival. It is much stronger that the Human part of us and will have a tantrum whenever it feels threatened (such as there being the wrong coloured jelly babies at a checkpoint or a downpour of rain during a race). It will usually recommend quitting to safety. There is no point fighting it head on, it is too strong and is the result of millions of years of evolution that has made the Human race so successful. The only way to deal with it is to manage it.

This book gives great advice as to how to do that. I read this just before I ran the Spartathlon this year and glad I did as I feared (like with other events I have quit this year) that I would quit too easily. I didn't and I think part of the reason was the way this book allowed me to think.

I would definitely add this to my shortlist of essential reading for ultra runners (and any sport that requires a huge amount of commitment through tough times).

Endurance Life CTS - Dorset

It's been a long time since I saw the Jurassic coast. I came here with Gemma for my last nice relaxing weekend before I headed off to the States last year. Usually weekends on the Jurassic Coast are anything other than relaxing. Driving into Lulworth cove it reminded me of some of the pain I have felt in previous races. A couple of years ago I completed the ONER which involves running 78 miles of this coastline in 24 hours. It took 21 I think and I was delierious at the end, it was so muddy and hard.

A few years before that I did my first ever multi-day event here, the same course but sensibly breaking it up over three days instead of one. I forgot once again how tough this trail is. Today was a gloriouslysunny day, it had rained a few days before and the path was going to be muddy but we all very much appreciated the fact that it was not pissing it down.

I want to digress for a bit and go on about how brilliant I think Endurance Life are. I ran some of their events in 2008 and since then have loved them though I have not done as many as I would like. Their ambition is to create fantastic events in beautiful locations that are really challenging too. Every CTS event (there are now 11 throughout the year) has a 10k, half marathon, marathon and ultra marathon to pick from. The courses are well marked, the organisation is great and they are now filling up very fast and so would recommend getting in early.

I would say these events are great if you are looking to "step up" from road marathons to trail marathons and also if you are thinking of a first ultra. The fantastic format of the events is that for the ultra you will run the marathon course and then run the 10k course, so if you really needed to call it a day at that stage you can and still get a marathon finish. Not that you should be thinking like that of course....

I listened to the race briefing where they went through the normal saftey things and two things were said that struck me as nice. Firstly there was a request for each runner to pick up one bit of litter on the way round. Rarely do I see litter on these well looked after coastal paths but I thought that was a great touch in helping keep the coastline beautiful. Another request was that if anyone should run into any trouble and you stop and help and perhaps sacrifice your own race then you'll be given a complimentary entry to another event. I'd hope that this would not be a deiciding factor in stopping to help someone in distress but it added another nice community touch to the events.

I have been an ambassador for nearly a year now and love everything that Endurance Life stand for.

OK lets get onto the race. One of the things you should come to expect here is the "artistic licence" that is used when coming up with a marathon route. If you are a stickler for an exact 26.2 mile race then perhaps this is not the event for you. I think the Endurance Life trundel wheel might have a few dents in it that means it doesn't turn around all the time.

We all set off from Lulworth Cove at about 8.30, individually dibbed out and headed up some steps. The individual dibbing out is a great idea I think, we all set off one by one and relieving most of the crowding that happens at event on trails. Obviously there is always one who some how can't stick a small plastic thing into a hole, like those annoying people who spend hours at the cash machine trying to re-mortgage their house while you just want to withdraw some money for beer. Anyhoo, it all went off fine and soon I was bounding up some steps. And very soon after that I was walking up some steps.

I set off with Rob Westaway and Kris Duffy. Kris ran all of the CTS events last year and took some great photos that you can see here. There is so much climbing on here that I regretted putting on some weight recently. I figured with every step up this harsh terrain I was burning calories which I could spend in the pub later. That is the real reason I do this kind of thing.

We completed the first 10k loop in around an hour and were back at the start to head out onto another section of the coast. Some of the hills here are breaktaking and on such a clear cool day they were a joy to be on. You sometimes had to look back on what you had just climbed, the photos just don't do it justice. Looking is a good excuse for taking a break though and many people did. "I no I am not resting and struggling to breathe I am just admiring the view".

After CP two there was a flat section that was blighted by mud. It was much flatter than before but we were all slipping about all over the place. I still don't own any trail shoes, I really should invest in some. I have run my last trail races in some adidas running flats which were perfect when I ran the Greensands marathon a while ago, they offered good grip and thought I had discovered a new perfect trail running shoe but it was not to be, these were terrible and I may as well been in bare feet. I had some sense of humour failures as I made slow progress though the mud, almost feeling sorry for what I put the Piece of String runners through two weeks ago but at the turnaround at around 19 miles it flattened out a bit and we were treated to some lovely running along a ridge parallel with the coast. We could admire all the tough miles we had just run without having to explode a lung on them again.

This whole thing was taking me much longer that I was expecting and I doubted that I'd finish in daylight and decided to cut it short at the marathon stage. When I say cut it "short" the marathon was still 29 miles and took nearly 6 hours to run. I ran the final stages with Dan De Belder and Martin Cooper who came up with the quote of the race "you wouldn't want these buggers doing your tax return would you?" True. If Starbuck organised ultras they would be 1.5 miles long. I had to finish earlier anyway as I had no headtorch, Gemma was waiting and I was going home via the Badger Brewery that would be closed soon. Those are my excuses :)

But I have decided that the Jurassic coast is my favourite trail in the UK. I still have a lot to do but this takes some beating.

Piece of String Fun Run - No one knows what the hell is going on...

We arrived in Strealey on Thames at about 9pm on Friday night, the river was wild, trashing the sides of the banks with a roar. We had plans in this town this weekend but were given a very clear early warning that we humans would not be running the show this time.

Strealey is in an very interesting location, it sits on the UK's most iconic river at a point where the water cuts through the "Ridgeway", an 85 mile chain of hills and high ground stretching from the west of England almost to the capital. Streatley sits low on the river but it is surrounded by high places, wonderful forests and meadows. Armies and Pilgrims marched along this high ground thousands of years ago, it was the ancient M4. The river would have brought trade and culture from afar. This place was a crossroads for ancient England. It was also the ideal place to hold an interesting race.

They have no idea what they are doing

The location of Streatley, on a flat river path and in the middle of challenging hills and trails presented an ideal opportunity for James Elson of Centurion Running to create a unique 100 mile race, where runners would run out and back 25 miles each of the 4 spurs of the town, heading north on the river and heading back, then south on the river and returning, east on the Ridgeway and back and finally west on the Ridgeway and finishing in the town.

It was also the ideal location for something a bit different alltogether. A race I thought of as a way of challenging people who may have already been challenged in all the conventional ways. We don't have mountains or jungles or deserts or tundra, we have the Great British winter. Without needing to use words like "hardest", "toughest", "longest", "wettest", "highest", "hottest" or anythingelseisest we wanted to put something on that would still be something to some of ultra runnings most resilient characters.

And so we devised THE WORLD'S MOST POINTLESS RACE.

This idea came to me a while ago when I thought about what drives me to the finish of a race. Whether I am running a 10k, a Spartathlon or across the USA there is always a point where I want it all to end. All the time in these cases I think about how much time I have remaining, I can usually estimate based on the distance I have to cover. I imagined what it would be like to take that comfort away, to not know what is left. I am not sure how I'd be able to deal with this. I wondered if others could edal with this.

Soon after I expressed this idea in an interview with Simon Freeman I heard from my friend and Centurion running race director James Elson, he said he loved the idea and we should just do it. I agreed straight away and started to think about how we would practically construct a race that I do not believe has been tried before. The Piece of String Race was born.

We had huge fun devising the routes, picking the runners, setting the rules and talking on and on about it but leaving out one detail, the overall distance of the race. Ultra runner friends and even non running friends were constantly intrigued by this concept and keen to know the answer, how far was it? We would not say. In fact we did not yet know.

I got to the hall around 9 pm and the only person there was Peter Cuisick. Sam Robson and Mimi Anderson were around the town somewhere. We just dumped some stuff and headed to a curry house for a final relaxed meal before the carnage started. While eating our food Wouter Hamelinck came in and we insisted he joined ud for the last relaxing meal he may have for some time.

I met Wouter in Knoxville Airport after we had both failed to complete the Barkley Marathons. I failed a lot more than he did. We went through the list of stuff we had done as you do in these situations and Wouters list was practically a list of everything everyone wants to do. Hardrock, Tor Des Geants, Grand Raid, Trans Gax, Himalayan 850k, The Dragons Back. He runs 100 milers about every fortnight. He is a phenomenal athlete who just seems to turn up to every event he can find just for the joy of it. I told him about this race in the airport and was delighted to see him put in an application for the race.

On entering the hall again we saw Mimi and Sam. James and Drew started looking at maps and figuring out diversions the the Winter 100 course and I was going to have to follow their lead as the POS run shared much of the same course. This race was supposed to be hard without these weather conditions. Looked like these runners had signed up for something even more miserable than we intended.

The start briefing felt unusual. It felt like by telling some of the most experienced ultra runners about saftey was making them suck eggs but it was essential to let them know what they were getting themselves in for. Even though the whole point was that they didn't know what they were getting themselves in for.

An idea we came up with to decide the length of the route was to have 5 different distances hidden in envelopes and for one of the runners to select the distance and hence condeming their fellow competitors to whatever misery was inside. This priveledge was bestowed upon Sam Robson who didn't quite send a photo of his suffering as was part of the race entry criteria.

He picked the envelope and James and I looked and grinned at what was instore. Was it the longest distance? The Shortest? In the middle? No one will ever know.

At 12.01 10 brave explorers left the Morrell room and headed out onto the Ridgeway path which they were told to follow until further notice. The paths ends in 50 miles at Swindon. Were we about to make them run to Swindon? Was that too cruel?

We sent Andy Humphrey and Jen Bradley to some point along the ridgeway, I said to Jen to make sure she finds the correct spot otherwise all the runners might die. They made it ok. We relaxed a little before the storm in the room at just gone midnight, James slept as in 6 hours he'd have 100 other runners coming in to try their luck against the British winter.

I got texts that the runners at the front wereabsolutely going for it, reaching about 9 miles in 1.10. Over that terrain its a very quick pace though they knew there was a chance that the race may only be a mile long and so the competitive runners made sure they were near the front always. This was not a way to pace a race. Or was it?

While they were out there Rob Westaway and I drew up their next maps, a lovely 11 mile circular route mostly on the Berkshire Circular. It was georgous in the daylight and in nice weather, not too sure I'd fancy it in the dark and wet mind. Wouter, Peter and Sam were the first runners back and I gave them their maps and sent them on their way. They seemed keen to stick together at the moment. Around 20 minutes after Mimi, Mick and Chris came through, looking in good spirits.

I heard early on that Lee was having stomach problems and during the second loop I got a call from him saying that he was not going to ocntinue. This was a shame as he was one of the runners who was most looking forward to this. We managed to get him picked up from a road in the middle on nowhere and bring him back to base.

We chose Lee because of his ultra running pedegree. Anyone who can run on a treadmill for a week is worthy of this test. Lee held the world record for this until very recently and I think is having a go at reclaiming this next year, after having a crack at the spine race. He made an ambitious attempt to run the JOGLE in world record time and has won other ultra marathon events. It was great having him here and hope that he comes again next time.

The leaders were going so fast that there was a chance that they would finish loop three before some of the runners had finished loop two. This was going to cause a problem as when designing the routes we tried to make sure that the runners never saw each other after the start, unless they were running together. The changes meant that there was a chance runners could get lapped and hence those behind will know they have another loop to do at least.

Inevitably this happened but did not think it was a big deal at first. Some of the runners got lost in the first loop but most had managed to get around the second time without too much bother as it started to get light. It was really muddy underfoot and at 10am as promised it started to piss it down which was going to cause all sorts of problems later on.

The 4th loop was a run along the ridgeway path towards Wallingford and then they were supposed to run back down the Thames with the bulk of the 100 mile runners who would have started about then. The timings worked OK except that the path had to be diverted to avoid the river and much of it was waterlogged. James gave the instruction that if you can not see the river bank then avoid. Drew Sheffield and Tim Adams had run over the course in the morning to make sure it was OK but the heavy rain and the rapidly changing nature of the route made it difficult.

Mimi, Chris and Mick returned from this loop having not completed the whole mileage due to not being able to get through the water. They were very honest about it and we said that we'd devise another loop for them to make up the miles. It was obvious now that it was going to be hard to really know what was going on in this race as self sufficiency was the key.

Who would have thought a race where no one knows what's going on would be so difficult?

One thing that struck me as the runners came in and left was that they had all proved why they were picked to run this experiemental race in the first place. We didn't necesserily want to pick an "elite" starting line up but we needed to pick runners who were capable and proven of looking after themselves. The race was to test the hypothesis that it would be very hard to finish a race where you don't know how far you have to go but also the race format itself was being tested. Could a race like this really work? Where runners came and went with different instructions each time, where even those helping out could not know fully what was going on? I was delighted to see that all the runners were taking this race in the spirit it was intended, as a test of psychology but also a test of race format. All ten runners justified their selection from the 50 odd applications we got to take part.

We started to announce cut-offs, with an estimated finish time in mind for the leaders and the opening times of some of the checkpoints we had to impose a schedule. At the end of loop 3 in looked like Tom, Niall and Robert were going to struggle to make the cut off for loop three but they actually sped up considerably (after Tom removed the house he was carrying on his back) and came in at the end in good time. Unfortunately loop 4 proved to be too much and they came in after the cut off we advertised. They were disappointed but relieved at the same time. Rob and Niall had been suffering with stomach problems as Lee had early on.

I had never met Tom, Niall or Rob before, I knew about them through forums and word of mouth and they were all a privilege to meet. Tom was a joy, really pleased to be part of the race and thankful of the idea. He made some suggestions about how to make it even harder, for example not letting runners know how far the loop was. This was something we were playing around with but couldn't do in the end due to the weather. Niall (pronounced Neil) and Rob were outstanding too, they were both looking a bit pale by the end and all three were looking to try again the next time. They would all be more than welcome.

Loop 5 was to be a nice 13 mile trail heading back towards Wallingford. It was light now and we didn't anticipate many problems. Wouter finished loop 4 way ahead of anyone else and Sam was now in second, Peter came in third but was going to drop out due to injury. I think he expected the race to be shorter than it was. It was a great shame to see him go too.

The route was lovely. In the daytime. In the sun.

This was the first time I met Peter Cusick. I have seen his name on finishing lists of some really tought stuff such as the world deca ironman championships in Mexico and the GUCR. He was a lovely man and very fast runner and it was a real shame to see him drop out. Hopefully next year he'll come back. Read his race report here.

So we were now down to five. Wouter tearing it up right at the front, Sam not far behind and then Mimi, Mick and Chris running as a group. These three were given an extra loop to do to make up for what they missed in loop 4. Alex Flynn was on hand to help divise something that was a long slog up a hill and back down again. Alex was supposed to be running this event too but pulled out during the week as he had other race commitments. I had read a lot about Alex before this race. He has been diagnosed with Parkinsons disease and has taken up some epic challenges to raise awareness and funds for the cause. It was a pleasure to meet him at last and he was really helpful over the weekend, popping in to give support and offer advice.

I had also never met Chris Ette and Mick Barnes before but again knew that they were incredibly tough athletes. Chris Ette is the son of Eddie Ette, the first person to complete the Arch to Arc triathlon of running from Marble Arch to Dover, swimming the channel then cycling to Paris. He had recently completed a deca ironman. Mick is a veteran of many hundred milers and a very strong character.

I've known Mimi for a while now. I had her and a couple of others in mind when I thought up this race and was delighted to see she was one of the first to sign up. She thought it was a joke at first. She has achieved more than pretty much anyone I know, world records, race wins and all sorts of adventures. I really wanted to see how she would fair in a race such as this. She sounds so relaxed when outside of running but as soon as she is in the arena she is super focused and determined to finish. Read her report here.

Loop 6 was going to be evil. Rob and I had ran this course two weeks ago and found a nice trail run to Reading, about 13 miles away and the intention was that they would do this really hard section, intercept the Winter 100 checkpoint on the Thames at Reading and then head back along the river, an easyish 12 miles. However the flooding of the river meant that we could not do this and instead, after about 70 miles of running we had given the runners a really really tough marathon to do, out and back along the trails, in the dark and with horrific mud. This is where the string started to unravel.

It was not the intention to make the race this hard. I wanted something that was predominatly on "easy" trails without the need for navigation. I knew this bit would be very difficult. Wouter can follow a map with extreme precision, I have never seen anything like it. Sam is quite handy too and set out on the loop sometime after. Mimi, Mick and Chris did their "penalty" loop before setting out. We sent Jany and Matt off to a pub near Reading to man the checkpoint. They were brilliant in helping over the weekend.

It soon became very clear as the rain thrashed down that this loop was a bad idea and in retrospect I would not have done it had we known just how muddy it would be. I was anticipating that perhaps the fastest would do this bit in 5 hours but it was more like 8. James and I decided to cut the loop short and Mark Cockbain and Alex were sent to a point that made it 10 miles instead of 13, the problem was that Wouter had already passed though at that point. He was on his way back when Sam was intercepted and told to go back. The others ended up doing something else entirely.

I wanted to keep people in the race as best I could. This wasn't supposed to be about the navigation, the mud or the rain but about the distance and the uncertainty. I didn't really have an idea as to how many people would finish, I didn't want no one to finish, that was not the point. I wanted to create something unique that would challenge some of the runners that had done it all before. I didn't want to send them into a mudbath and make things hard just for the sake of it. It was really hard trying to keep it all together at the same time as trying to make it a race where everyone was doing the same thing. I asked Dick Kearn whether he thought that organising races was stupider than running these races. He replied that the former certainly ages you faster.

Wouter returned from the evil marathon not long before Sam did though Sam had done less of the route. Wouter then left onto the Ridgeway where Mimi, Mick and Chris already were having been diverted. It was all a bit of a mess. I got a call from Mimi saying that they were on the Ridgeway and sat in an ambulance and deciding whether to drop out or not. It was a really tough call but all three decided to call it a day then at around midnight, they had been going for about 24 hours.

The Endgame

Wouter and Sam headed onto the ridgeway where the rest of the run as to take place. James and I had spent some time thinking about the endgame, where and how we were going to finish this. The loops now were going to be on the "easily" navigable trails on the Ridgeway and they would be in amongst the 100 mile runners. With various out and backs along the path and then a short 5 mile circular on the Berkshire trail we invented. When both runners left Streatley I was given a lift to a part of the Ridgeway where I was ready to tell the runners that it was all over. Sam was given an extra loop to make up for some of the miles he missed on the death marathon. I was looking forward to it all being done.

We headed out, the rain had stopped but the wind was vicious. Atop a beacon on the Ridgeway I waited for the runners to arrive. I got to a lorry parked up a hill and spoke to some people who said they had not seen a runner come through for hours. The leader of the 100 race Richie Cunningham and second place Nick Weston were through but there was no one else in sight. I managed to get some sleep in the ambulance before I saw runners coming it.

I had been up since 6am on Friday morning, it was now 3am on Sunday. I rarely felt tired, I was buzzing all over the place and a bit stressed by trying to keep everything together. I was clearly tired though as was James Elson who still had till 4pm to keep going to. Sometimes I was speaking in tongues, at some point I asked James "can you remember where I left the clip board" to which he replied looking at his watch "about 15 minutes I think". Now it was the final few miles and I was almost over. Paul and Luke were onhand to help out at the penultimate checkpoint which of course the runners didn't know. Those guys too were brilliant for dedicating their saturday night to staying in a car in the middle of freezing nowhere to help this race happen.

Photo nicked off Mimi Anderson

Wouter came through, looking releved to have finished and glad that he was not going to miss his 4pm train. We were trying to keep it all under wraps but in total he would have run about 115 miles, perhaps more. Jany and Matt bundled him into the car to drive him back to the base and I waited for Sam.

I met Sam earlier this year at the pilgrims challenge. I didn't know at the time but he was the guy who I read about in the news who ran the London Marathon and then ran home to Cambridgeshire. I was glad when he applied to be in the race and was also very glad that he was going to be one of the only two finishers in the first edition of this event. We could see headlights in the distance but they took an age to get here up the hill. Sam actually had a half hour sleep only a few miles from the end. Obviosuly I doubt he would have done this if he knew the finish was only an hour away.

When he finally came through with some other 100 mile runners he looked a little suprised to see me. The conversation went something like this;

Sam - "ahhh, Hello" (not quite twigging that this was the only time I had left the Streatley base

Me - "I guess you know what this means?"

Sam - (looking a little lifted) "Is that the end?"

Me - "Yes it is, congratulations".

Then there was a hug, not too much of the soppy stuff but a sense of relief from us both I think. Sam had finished the inaugural Piece of String Fun Run and no one died. Telling a finisher that they were finished was what I had looked forward to for the whole year I had this idea.

This was just before sunrise.

And so the endless race came to an end. It was the first time I have tried my hand at race directing and have learned so much. There are a load of things I will change for next year but it made me feel great to already be talking about next year. A lot of people seemed really captivated by this race and although I don't think I got the answers to the questions I originally had when I set 10 runners on this challenge I think there is now an appetite to continue this pointless race.

A few thankyous. All of those who helped out. Jen Bradley, Andy Humphrey, Rob Westaway, Gemma, Mark Cockbain, Alex Wilson, Jany Tsai and Matt, Alex Flynn. Keith Godden who was a really great person to have around and a calming influence when things seemed to be going wrong. Many of the runners here were geared up in the great things he has on his website so have a look here. Paul Rushden and Luke Charmichael were fantastic in taking on that last station in the middle of the night and it was great to have that covered. Dick Kearn, Drew Sheffiled, Jo Kilkenny, Claire Shelley, Paul (Ultra Paolo - sorry I don't know your second name), Richard Lendon. So many people around to help out at this crazy event.

I'd like to thank all the runners too. Like I said earlier you all demonstrated why you were chosen to participate and it would be great to see you next time.

Mostly I think James Elson deserves a huge well done. In the space of two years your races have become the standard to meet. It does not suprise me that your races fill up in days. Your dedication to putting on a great but safe event for ultra runners is unrivalled and if there were a poll for "UK race director of the year" I reckon you'll clean up.

In fitting with the ideals of the race we are not going to publish official finishing times, rankings or distances. All that we are going to say is that in the inaugural Piece of String race 2012 there were 10 starters and 2 finishers.

Now, about my other evil race idea...

The Event Horizon

You know that moment when there is less time between now and the start than there is between the start and the finish? For example 36 hours before the start of the Spartathlon; I call the the event horizon. The feeling of slipping into a black hole where the only way out is through the other side at the end. It is a time of nervous excitement and panic. Question is, those who are running the Piece of String from this Friday, have they already fallen in?

Well it is only five days to go till the start of the race now. Obviously can't give too much away but I am really excited and a little bit nervous about next week. We have the "routes" worked out now, all that remains is for them to chose one from a possible 5 combinations of races and off they go.

Many people think the £1.37entrance fee is a clue to how far this race will be.  They are exactly right. We don't want them to be disappointed if the race ends up being 10k but neither do we want them to be pissed if they have to take the next week off work.

Picking trails is difficult. I drew a line on a map that I thought would be a nice 10 mile loop. We got about 25% of the way in and were already over 5 miles. Whoops. How long is a Piece of String? I really don't know.

I want the main challenge to be the lack of knowing the distance. As I run around I think of other things that will make it hard. The paths can get muddy, there is some navigation involved, it will be dark, there may be longish stretches without support and it might get lonely.

HERE IS THE START LIST

For a moment I thought bad about this. Can't we make it easier somehow? More checkpoints, markings, nice weather, massage? Then a friend pointed out something that I seemed to have forgotten. People have signed up to this knowing it is going to be ridiculously difficult. People have signed up knowing this is going to take them places where they have never been before. And I am not talking about trails in Berkshire.

Also, these "people" are not the usual people. This is not a normal list of people, or even a normal list of ultra runners. We have a group of people who have done exceptional things in endurance, running across countries, deca Iron-mans, course records, world records, week long treadmills runs, 300+ miles non-stop, deserts, jungles, ice, mountains and roads, channel swims, double channel swims,  running home to Ipswich after running the London Marathon. This could be the highest standard at the starting line I have ever known in an ultra marathon.

Makes sense that they should want to compete in something so pointless.

I have been reading a bit about sports psychology recently. It is facinating stuff and makes me think that what we are attempting here is even more wicked. A key source of anxiety in sports and hence a hinderance to performance is the lack of certainty. This is why sports performers tend to do better at home, or by being familiar with the course, or at least what they are supposed to be doing. That is taken away from them now.

The ability of humans to visualise an end point is one of the many things that makes us such good persistence hunters and endurance runners. To know that it will all come to an end at some point and to be able to distribute effort accordingly rather than run ourselves to death like some animals.

"Flow" - Is a state psychologists say you are in when you seem to be in "the zone". 5 things are required for this. You need to be focused on an activity, of your own choosing, that's not too difficult, but not too easy, with a clear objective, with immediate feedback. Yep, Yep, Yeeeeeahh, NO, yep.

I also read about motivation. Highly motivated people are more likely to compete in events where the chances of failure are high. The chances of failiure in this are very high and as a result I think we have got a start group of 15 very highly motivated individuals.

I am still interested to see whether it is the same people who finish.

If anyone?

Email sent to those who were accepted.

I have some bad news. I am sorry to heap further misery on you in these times. A time when pensions are being devalued, banks are inflating your mortgages, floods are destroying your homes and reality TV is eroding the minds of your children. And now to add to all that you are one of the unfortunate 16 people who have been selected to run in the inaugural "Piece of String Fun Run". Later in life you will look back on 2012 and say "that was just not my year".

So what do you do now? Well your first instinct might be to badger the race organiser with all sorts of inane questions like "How do I train for this?" and "what kind of shoes shall I wear" and "what should my longest training run be?" By registering for this event you have clearly demonstrated that you don't really know what you are doing but neither do you need to know what you are doing. Which is lucky, because you don't. 

If I had to give you some recommended reading for this I would suggest two books. The first being "Usain Bolt - 9.58" and the second being "Just a little run around the world" by Rosie Swale Pope. Both are available on Amazon. I suggest also you opt for the cheapest delivery option that tell you that your delivery will be due "sometime between Tuesday at noon and three weeks next Thursday before midnight". You will learn valuable lessons from this experience.

You may doubt that you can attempt such a thing. If you can keep these feelings within your own mind that is OK. No one needs to know. Only you. If however your feelings should spill out in the form of an email to the race director telling us that you can not attempt such a thing then that is fine (for you) and will enable us to forward this bad news message onto someone else slightly less deserving of this misery than you.

In a little over a month you will be history. Sorry, I mean you will be part of history. You are participating in the first race of it's kind. You really are the lucky chosen ones who have the honour of competing in this new event. You've done the HIGHEST, you've done the LONGEST, you've done the WETTEST, you've done the HOTTEST, you've done the COLDEST, you've done the HARDEST. Now you must put your wits against "THE WORLDS MOST POINTLESS ULTRAMARATHON".

I hope your training has gone well. Obviously you will not know this until after the event whether it was track sessions, park runs, half marathons or running across countries that helped the most. Be thankful that we are at least telling you that it's a running race

You may want to remember some inspirational quotes to get you through this. Might I suggest what Captain Oakes said to Captain Scott on a cold snowy day in the Antarctic. "I'm just going outside; I may be away some time".

Spartathlon 2012

I had doubts about this year, more than any other. They were almost all to do with my mental state going into the race. There was nothing that has happened that has made me less capable of finishing a race that I have already finished two times now. Though physically I had not done as much training as I’d have liked I knew it would not have stopped me from making it to the end. This summer has been pretty light on the running which is not the best preparation, but on the other hand you could say I’ve been training for this for five years now and that training has gone very well. I had no worries about my body.

My head has not been in anything recently, certainly not running. Without going into detail here I have been finding it too easy to give up on races. I have been suffering a huge amount of self-doubt which has been crippling me in races (and in real life too). Though I never realistically thought I could complete Barkley I definitely surrendered too soon. I should definitely have been capable of completing the UTSW in June. I was at one stage really looking forward to it but by the time it came I just could not get my head into the right place to finish it. I dropped about 20 miles in.

Then the 10 peaks challenge, a truly brutal scramble that would have taken 24 hours to complete except that towards the end I decided that it wasn’t worth finishing, with 1 peak left I just walked into Keswick and was done with it. Another DNF.

And so my biggest fear was that I’d fly out to Greece to the race I call my favourite having convinced a load of other Brits to come along for the experience too and then end up giving it less than my all and pulling out. Making the situation worse. I have not been running through this race in my head as much as in the previous attempts, I’ve not been dreaming of kissing that foot or of scrambling over that mountain or of seeing in a new day through some quiet olive fields in the valleys.

I really hoped that this race would be different, that somehow it would transform me into someone who cares about finishing once again, someone who doesn’t try and make excuses and justifications as to why it was a good idea to hold my hands up and surrender. I was hoping that standing beneath the Acropolis and the sun rose over it to mark the start of the race will transform my brain into something that didn’t give a fuck about anything else but winning the war I was about to start.

I think more than any other year and any other race I needed this. Right now I needed the Spartathlon.

Around 5.30 in the morning the runners gathered in the London hotel to eat breakfast, there was not much more than bread rolls and fruit, no fry up that I would like to start a two day slog with. I had been laying off the coffee for a number of days now in the hope that when I really needed it, sometime around 2 am when I am trying to scramble over a mountain and keep my eyes open I’ll be able to feel the proper benefit of the coffee bean.

I met with the other Brits who had signed up for this race, some of whom I think I may have influenced into doing this. Between us all we had done a lot of races. GUCRs, Badwaters, UTMBs, Western States 100s, Leadvilles, MDSs, Ultrabalatons, West Highland Ways, Lakeland 100s, Trans USAs, JOGLEs. There were a lot of first timers here who I think were eager to experience just how special this race is. I hope I had not oversold it.

We stepped out into the dark and onto one of the coaches that would transport 350 runners and some supporters though the sleeping streets of Athens towards it’s most historic point.

The Acropolis before dawn is an intimidating sight. There is little evidence of fear here, not on anyone’s face anyway. Perhaps it is all carefully contained inside. Or I suspect that it’s either ignorance or amnesia. Those who have not been here before don’t know what is about to happen, and those who have been here have forgotten. I still remember John Tyszkiewicz's words to me before my first Spartathlon – “Look at all these first timers, fresh faced like lambs to the slaughter". I don't know whether knowing just how much it was going to hurt actually helps, if at all.

We joked with the Americans as we saw the light start to penetrate the gaps in the brickwork and light up this magnificent ancient monument where 2500 years ago a professional runner set out to run the to warrior city of Sparti and try to raise an army. In five minutes we had the same task, minus the army raising bit. I really can’t comprehend how this run was completed by the second sunset by a lone runner with no support and having to avoid hostile city states along the way. There was little time for this kind of reflection though as almost by surprise the start horn sounded and 350 wars broke out.

The first mile is a downhill melee on cobblestones, I want e dot stick with some familiar faces but it is hard whilst trying to avoid running into others and avoiding kerbs. After it flattens out and heads through the main streets of Athens I settle into a steady pace with James Elson, happy to run with him for as long as it’s comfortable to. It’s really hard to know who is ahead and who is behind after the bumblebee dance at the start. After a few miles I believe that of the Brits, David Miles, Paul Mott are up ahead, LIzzy Hawker is way up ahead and most of the others are around me or behind. It never stays that way though, over the next few miles I will pass some and they will pass me as our individual responses to the heat, the hills, the distance and the sheer size of the task are exposed.

I enjoy a few miles running with James and Peter Johnson but I am always looking around for a place to have a shit. I try a portaloo in a park but it is locked, I eventually leave them after about 5 miles and head into some trees and do what I should have done hours ago if only I had not quit coffee. As I left the partially enclosed bushes I found another runner come in to use the same spot. I found it necessary to inform him of what I had done and where, didn’t want him slipping up early.

I didn’t manage to catch James again but rejoined the race with lots of other friends. Claire Shelley, Drew Sheffield, Allan Rumbles, Lindley Chambers, Rob Pinnington and Kevin Marshall. It was all laugh and smiles now, because we’d run about 5 miles, it was before 8am and the temperature could be described as “warm”.

The police do an outstanding job of halting rush hour in Athens to let this race unfold. The locals are less than enthusatic about it though, what is this race doing getting in the way of their day? I’m going to be late for my riot.

I pushed on ahead of the Brit pack, wanting to catch up with James as I thought he would be the best match for the pace I wanted to run, and also the company would have been great. I warned everyone time and time again though that you have to be ruthless and run your own race here, no trying to keep up with those who are too fast or waiting for those who might be falling behind. The company is great but it has to take second to running your own race.

It didn’t take long for the heat to kick in. The expectation for the first 50 miles is that you should average a sub 11 minute mile pace,  which can sound quite pedestrian expect that you have the hills, the heat and of course having to save something at the end of it for running another 103 miles. I was running an average of about 9.30 minute miles which would give me a 90 minute buffer at the first major checkpoint at Hellas Can – 50 miles. The cut off at 50 miles is 9.30 hours, in my previous two runs I have got to this point in 7.37 (and felt great but fell apart later) and 8.35 (feeling terrible but recovering and getting stronger later). I was hoping for somewhere in between this time, 8ish hours and ideally to feel great AND get stronger.

The heat cranked up like it had not done before here, I hit the marathon about 4.10, bang on 8 hour pace but feeling the strain already. One marathon down and 5 to go, that was the easy marathon done, the flat one in morning while it’s cool. Now I have a very hot marathon with some hills, followed by a warm marathon with major hills, followed by a dark marathon with hills and a mountain climb, followed by another dark marathon with leg breaking down hills and then finally one more marathon, with serious hills and serious heat.

Apparently I am good at running in the heat. It didn’t feel like that way but I survived the heatwave of the USA last year and I don’t think that helped me here in an acclimatisation sense but I felt like I knew what to do, based on some reading and talking to Serge Girards crew while in the states last year. I thought it was time to test some things.

Eating early and often. My blood normally tries to do three things, pump oxygen to the muscles, shunt heat from the organs to the skin and away and finally supply the digestive system with the blood it needs to do it’s stuff. Right now I am demanding huge amounts of the first two from my body and the third right now is superfluous. There is no need to keep my metabolism going as my body thinks that obviously I am not going to be doing this for long. In a few hours I’ll stop and then I can eat. I felt that eating was the only way to stop my digestive system from shutting down and was determined to eat something as often as possible, no matter how horrible it felt.

Cold water outside, warm water inside. This sounds like the most ridiculous thing but drinking cold water does not cool you down. In fact shoving ice cold water down is likely to increase stomach distress and result in even more eating problems and drinking problems. I filled my water bottle often and drank out of it while it was warm. There were complaints about lack of ice in the water but I reckon this was a good thing. I cooled my body by dosing myself in cold water at every checkpoint (at least when I could remember). I took electrolytes and drank lots of warm coke and isotonic drinks at the checkpoints. I made the mistake of only half filling my Elete bottle and only had enough on me for about 12 litres of water. That was silly.

Breathe through the nose. - Stops that really uncomfortable dry mouth sickly feeling and perhaps makes you go a bit slower. Warm air through the nose makes your brain warm up though.

Slow down in the shade - There is not much shade in this race at all, it's all so exposed. However there are sections where some trees cover the road and I slowed in those sections to cool down. I also ran any section that would shade even only my legs as they were getting slow roasted by the reflection of the road.

Remember how much I needed this - I didn't want to drop unless I was dead

Don’t Panic

Something I forgot was to lube my nipples. I use sudacrem as my lube of choice, it seems to work with the boys but not so well on the nipples. I felt them sting early on, within the first 10 miles and then after 20 there was blood. After 50 the blood had covered the beautiful British Spartathlon T Shirt that was made for us.

Just after the marathon point I caught up with David Miles and Paul Mott. Paul was striding up a hill with an amazing gait like I have never seen. He finished the Spartathlon last year in a great time because of this great stride and the fact that he never stopped for faffed around. David looked like the weather was getting the better of him but still looked to be moving forward at a reasonable clip. I chatted briefly to both and passed, hoping to see them again soon.

Around 50k I saw John Price standing at the side of the road, he has already been timed out at around 30k as he could not run fast enough in the heat. It was sad to see him in this way but he seemed relaxed about it and was looking forward to tracking the rest of the race.

Miles 30 – 40 can be fairly pleasant, there is a coastal road which is a joy to look at but at the same time quite tortuous for all I want to do is to dive into the water. At around 1.00 the temperature must have been 35C and with the humidity, the traffic and dust in the air it felt even worse.

The 3 or 4 miles up to Corith, the 50 mile point are hideous. An uphill slog on a busy highway when the heat is at it’s most intense. There are usually a fair few drop outs at this stage, not too many, around 50 out of the 300+ who start. Some people are spent by this point, having used everything they have to get here. Others get a little further having gone too fast and having little left, burning out in the next 10 miles. Time wise after this  point the cut offs “ease off”  little, giving anyone who has lots of energy left plenty of opportunity to make up some time on the remaining cut offs. I was looking forward to seeing Gemma for the first time since the Acropolis, she was at Corinth wating for me to arrive.

I first did this race about a month after I started seeing Gemma three years ago. I came back from that trip a broken man and swearing never to do this to myself again. I changed my mind and did it again in the following year, having a much better race and then vowing to return every year possible. I kept her away from this race until now. I wanted her to see what this means to me and what is so special about the event. I didn’t expect her to get an introduction quite like this.

I got to Hellas Can/Corinth/50 miles in 8.30 and feeling pretty rubbish. I immediately saw Lindley and Phil Smith, who I knew were behind me and hence now I knew they were out. I also saw James and Richard Webster who were just about the leave the checkpoint and continue, I was pleased that I caught them and perhaps could run with them later. I picked up some rice and sat down to eat it when Gemma came over to give me the news.

“Most of the Brits are out – Everyone, Drew, Allan, Rob, David, Lindley, Phil, Paul, Stu, Peter, Kevin, John, Bridget, Rajeev – everyone has been timed out”.

I could not believe that so many had gone, I could not believe they’d all get timed out before making it to the 50 miles. I was told of the people I knew there was only James and Richard up ahead and Claire behind me, everyone else was on the bus. I was shocked, I felt terrible, overheated and sick. I didn’t know what to say, I got up and walked out taking the rice with me and headed out to the quiet roads through the olive fields. Last time I really picked it up through here and was hopeful of a repeat.

I could see James and Richard in the distance now, they had not set out too fast which was good. I knew I would catch them at some point and right now I was trying to force this bowl of rice down me. It was not going down too easily and then a couple of miles later I walked through an area that smelled like really foul dog shit. It was enough to make me gag and spew up all the rice I had just so awkwardly consumed. I was fine though, I’d just have to remember to eat even more.

I caught James and Richard who were in great spirits despite the whitewash. We spoke about how it could have all happened and who was most likely to have suffered the most. It was a nice few miles where we started gaining some time back on the cut offs. I started to get cramp, something I have never had in a race before. I only normally get this afterwards but both my calves were cramping, causing incredible pain. I stopped many times to stretch them and took more salt. It got to a point where I had to say to the guy to leave me as I am going to have to lay down and sort this out. As I did lie down to put my feet up on a wall I wailed as both of my calves screamed. I lay down and could not move, there was no one else around to either help or at least smirk at this embarrassing situation unravelling on the floor of some dusty road. I managed to get onto my feet and plod on, knowing that I wasn’t going to be able to sit down again, which was probably a good thing.

The cramp did ease up and it took about an hour for me to catch up with James and Richard again. They were running a steady pace, walking any hills and jogging all the flat and down. It was good sticking with then and keeping the discipline of running anything that was easy to run and trying to make some time back.

I saw Gemma for the last time today at Ancient Corinth (miles away from modern polluted Corinth). It was around 90k in and I told her about my hideous cramp and general sickness. I stopped for a massage and had to explain to the lady that there was no way I way lying down, I would not get back up again. She finally understood and then massaged my calves while I stood there drinking coke.

Both Richard and James agreed that this was a race like non other. It is hard to explain what makes a dirty long hot road race the best ultra marathon in the world but I rarely find someone who has done this who does not agree. I think Richard hit the nail perfectly when describing the cut offs for this race. HE said that in other races he has done they all have had cut offs but that he has never even thought about them. “The cut offs are just not for us”.

All of the starters of the Spartathlon are seasoned ultra runners having completed other tough events before. Though they may not all be at the sharp end in races (in fact Richard often is) the big shock here is that the cut offs really are for us, they are a constant psychological menace that most of the people here have never experienced before. I’ve never been pushing the cut offs in the GUCR, Badwater or the UTMB. James was never pushing the cut offs in the Western States, Badwater or the UTMB. Richard never was in the GUCR, UTMB or in his numerous recent podium finishes.

Just as the sun started to go down I got news from Gemma that Claire Shelley had timed out. She got to 90k and was half an hour outside the cut off. The organisers in fact had let many runners through the 50 mile point after the cut off due to this extreme weather. I had never seen such a mass drop out.

The three of us resolved to finish this, that we were over the worst and nothing could stop us now. Unfortunately one thing about the heat is that once it’s got you it never leaves you alone. It was hard running those hot miles in the day but then it is equally as hard running in a warm night with burnt skin, hot blood and a mutinous digestive system. The night in the Spartathlon is long and hard.

The sun sets as the big climbs start to appear, the first after about 70 miles. We were sticking with the plan of walking anything that was uphill and running everything else, trying not to faff around at the checkpoints. My calf cramp had subsided, my legs felt better and I was really pleased to be running next to James and Richard and felt much more confident of making it to King Leonidas tomorrow.

With three of us running we all exchanged places as the person to keep us all going, it can be dangerous going too fast or too slow according to someone else’s pace but at the same time it can help to eliminate any needless walking. I was feeling great and wanting to push on, James and Richard seemed less keen on going faster so I held back a bit. I knew any spurt by me would be short lived and so it was probably a good idea to reign it back a bit. I was however worried that our current pace was not making much of a dent into the cut offs. We still only had an hour, about the same as we had at the 50 mile point. We were bearing down on the halfway point, Nemea and I was keen to keep my momentum going. I ran off from them into the second major checkpoint and sat for a while eating.

James and Richard came in about 5 minutes later. James was not stopping for long and by the time I had finished my food we were both about ready to go. Richard was on a bed getting a massage and looking very pale. I think the sun had burned him from the outside and now it was dark it was still burning him from the inside. I said I’m going to head out and James came with me but said he was going to walk until Richard caught up. I said I wanted to go ahead and we said our goodbyes and good lucks and I went on. Richard didn’t catch James again and eventually dropped out at 85 miles vomiting quite badly.

I was on my own now, as I always seem to be in this section. The race had spread out even more than usual, there are usually some people in sight or at least support cars. There is a section of gravel track where I always think I am lost as there are not many markings. Right now there are half as many people in the race as there are usually at this point and it shows, it was very lonely and dark.

I ran through some familiar sections of hills, tunnels, farms and bridges, it was like I had never left from the last time. I was running really well, feeling strong and at some point a camera van came out and spent ages following me from in front and behind with the camera trained on me. I would love to see that footage make it onto the DVD, just to see if I was actually looking as good as I felt. I hit a checkpoint in a small town which I recognised from last year as a place where a guy told me he thought I was a tourist at the start line and could not belive I was running the race dressed as I was. I was wearing a running shirt which was really cool (in a temperature sense). Just as I remembered this two guys piped up and said "Hey - you are that British guy from last time who was wearing that smart shirt". It was unreal, being recognised by the checkpoint and then chatting to these guys. As I enjoyed the conversation about how it was going it occured to me that I was very capable of a decent conversation and so was in pretty good shape. Always a good sign when you have yet to pass the "only 100k to go" point.

Around 90 miles in I caught up with a Canadian Glen Redpath and we ran together until the mountain. He was a very very fast trail runner (top 10 western states) and I felt a bit out of my league running with him but the pace was comfortable and we helped each other along quite a bit. He said he was not that great on the road but was glad to be doing this race. I know many a trail runner who dismisses this as a “road race” but I would say to all of you if you do one road race in your life do this one, no one has ever regret running this. Ever.

I chatted a lot with Glen as we headed up the all now familiar switchbacks up to Base Camp. We go down down down until we reach a sink where we can look straight up and see a highway. The highway skirts the mountain we later have to climb but first is the long slog up switchbacks. We pass a few people here, keeping up a good pace. In fact my uphill stride is faster than Glen's which suprises me. I saidto Glen just before we reached Base Camp that I was going to sit down there and have a cup of coffee, my first cup of coffee for 5 days. I had stopped drinking it to give my self a boost when I needed it and I thought there was no better time than the scramble over Sangas pass.

True to my word I slumped in a chair and asked for a cup of milky sugary coffee and Glen carried on, saying that I will catch him later but I am doubtful. He is likely to skip up and down that mountain like a mountain goat. I am more likely climb it like a lemon. I wave goodbye and start enjoying a massage whilst lying down drinking coffee. Every year I stop here for a little while, I usually have some time. I have about 2 hours on the cut offs now that I gained from running quite solidly with Glen. Every year I see at least one person slump down in the sheltered beds they have and ask to sleep. Depending on their state the numerous medics will suggest a time, 20 minutes, 40 minutes, an hour. I always stare at them as I am lying on the massage table or stood around thinking that I am not going to see this person again. I don't know how many people get back up from sleeping for an hour.

I said goodbye to the checkpoint staff, many of who are Brits and head of to the start of the best bit of the best ultra marathon.

It isn't a hard climb. It isn't a big climb. I don't think it would look significant in the Lake District, certainly not the alps. The hardest thing is that you've already run 100 miles on road and in those 100 miles on road you have tried to conserve energy by lifting your feet off the ground as little as possible, shuffling along the burning highway gaining no unessesary height or grace in the motion. Now a complete change of movement was required to get me up the mountain and keep me off my face.

I never do this well. The first year I was terrible. The second was probably just as bad but it just felt faster. This time felt slow and hard again. I felt like I still had a lot of energy but just could not get any leg lift and so was tripping all over the place. No one passed me on the climb though, in fact there were at least 5 people going the other way including the two guys I spoke to earlier about having been here a few times. There were lots of cameras up there taking evidence of my slow progress. I could only make it a few rocks at a time before having torest my hands on my knees and breathe a little. I don't know why I always make such a meal of this.

But I reached the top and saw exactly what I had been thinking about for nearly two years now, two ladies in blankets by a tent and the most spectacular panorama I have ever seen in a race. Look behind and I can see as far back as Nemea, a town I ran though nearly a marathon ago. It will be closed now as a checkpoint but still alive as Greece is this time of night. Winding out from there are lights and the closer to the mountain the easier they are to identify as head lamps. There are a number of people behind me who have still got that big climb to do. I hope that two of these lights are James and Richard and that they are not too far behind.

Look ahead and it's the same, except the lights are moving slowly away. Down the steep swithcbacks of the mountain pass and then into the small town of Sangas and then on some more. These are the people who are way ahead of me, well on their way to completing the Spartathlon having done two thirds of it. Nothing is in the bag though. If I look far enough ahead I can perhaps see the point where I'll be lapped by the sun.

I stand up to leave and hear another runner scrambling up the mountain, it's the first other runner I have seen for an hour now and I am shocked to see that it's Mike Arnstien. Last I heard he was 11th in the race. I remember seeing Oz Pearlman sleeping at a CP earlier but figured Mike would be way ahead. I started the descent and he followed, quickly passing me and heading off into the distance. I got passed another couple of times going down, I am quite bad at it but was not taking any risks. This smashed me on the first year and I was not going to repeat.

The decent into the town of Sangas seemed to take a long time and on arrival my lead on the cut offs had been cut to 1.40. I was not too concerned though, I knew that was my slowest bit. I love checkpoint 49, I always leave a fresh pair of shoes there and always get offered help to put them on. There are always some very nice people there willing to chat to anyone who comes though and while I sat down changing into a fresh pair of identical shoes and faffing around to get my timing chip from one pair to another I was happy to yak away. I didn't feel sleep at all, this was a first and a very good sign. I was in good shape, full of confidence and ready to head of for the small matter of two more marathons.

I ran close to Mike for much of the next 10 miles, down familiar winding roads and into Nestani. The sky was clear and the moon was full, there was no need for headlamps here though a Korean guy we were running close to had a fog light strapped to his head which was lighting the night sky like a nuclear explosion. There is a long straight 4k section where I am running just behind Mike and I notice someone coming bounding up from behind me at great pace. I still thought I was going fast but the light was gaining like a car. I got to the checkpoint and saw that it was Oz Pearlman flying along, I thought he was out. He looked dead last time I saw him. He had just slept for a while and was back in the game.

It was great to see him and I kept with them for a while, sometimes ahead of them and sometimes behind. I reached the exact spot in a park where the sun rose that I have been for the last 3 years. My 24 hour progress seems to land me in the same spot every year, I was pleased, I was gaining on the cut offs again, having about 2 hours again. I text Gemma to ask if she is going to come back out to see me and shes says yes she will after breakfast.

I was determined to "keep" 2 hours buffer for the marathon and then take it from there. The calculations were still ringing. I was going at about 5 miles an hour on average but still worried that if it went wrong then 3 mph would be hard, particularly for a long way. I never felt safe. Mike and Oz were talking about the cut offs too, I bet they have never done any other race where the cut off times are of any interest to them at all. Mike did at some point yell "This race is kicking our ass". That's exactly what it does. It's why we come back every year.

The heat hit pretty early the next day as I rolled though the beautiful quiet village roads and in and out of Tegea where there was another major checkpoint with around 50k to go. I spoke to Chilsholm Dupree who I met last year here and he had been out supporting the Americans through the night. It was great to see him and he was always ready to help. "I can do 50k in 9 hours" I said. I hoped so.

The beautiful quiet roads we had been running on were about to come to an end. There is a turning with about 45k to go that goes onto the main highway into Sparta, it's hideous, dangerous and starts with a huge slog uphill. The only thing good about this climb is that some point on it you pass the "only a marathon to go" mark. I now had 2.30 on the cut offs, I achieved what I wanted with a marathon to go and then some more. I was more and more confident of finishing but the sun was beating down on me again, swirling my brain. I realised it had been two hours since I texted Gemma and sent her another one "Longest breakfast ever?" She apologised and said she was just leaving nowto come out and see me.

For some reason I didn't think the sun would hurt so much on the second day, I made this mistake in Badwater. It was actually hotter on the second day, I thought it would not matter as I was running much slower at this stage but it was still imense. The gaps between the checkpoints seemed to take longer, Apart from right at the start the longest gap between two checkpoints is 4.7k, this feels like an ultra in itself now though. I've got blisters in the middle of my toes and it hurts to run downhill. I also recognise the familiar tingling of my piss. I am pissing blood again. Or as Mark Cockbain later said "just a bit of kidney rattle".

Two hours passed since I last heard from Gemma and she is still not here. I send another frustrated text message "Car break down?" I just wanted to see her, I was starting to lose my mind now. The cars drive fast and there often is no shoulder to run in and makes this part of the race a death trap. I successfully navigate the road and onto 30k to go, still with over 2 hours on the cut offs and Gemma finally appears with Jon Knox who has flown out here to see that the Spartathlon is all about.

I am still running OK but I am stopping a lot at the checkpoints now, sitting down wiping my face, drinking cokes and moaning about what hurts. Nothing is really that bad I am just exhausted and have reached the stage where I want this to be over.

I get to the half marathon to go part still with over 2 hours on the cut off - I know I am there now barring getting hit by a car which is not too far from my imagination. My despondancy is lifted briefly by a lady who says to me "hey you are that guy who writes things on the internet". It's true, give mea piece of internet and I'll write on it.

With about 10k to go and still with more than two hours I decide that I can not run anymore and walk the rest of it, it will be at least two hours of plodding but I feel like I have got what I came more. My feet feel ruined. I get passed by at least 15 people as I awkwardly stagger down a huge downhill section and moan about how far the checkpoint is, 4.7k? how are we expected to cover that kind of distance?

I see Gemma for the last time at CP73 ourside a restaurant. I sob a bit, I am spent. She says she is going to the finish to see me there. I say I will be ages, it's about 5k to go. One more checkpoint and then the finish.

I head down the highway that leads into Sparta, I am alone now, I have not seen another runner for about 15 minutes. I sob again knowing that I have jsut done what I came out here to do. I didn't surrender, I made no excuses, I got through the race and soon I was going to be heading up the finishing straight of the greatest race I have ever known. I say out loudly to myself "Well done James - remember how much you fucking needed this".

I stagger across the road to the last checkpoint, filling up my water just for something to do, I'm not going to drink it. I wave goodbye for the last time this year the wonderful checkpoint volunteers that sustain us through this race. I stare up the street and start walking, no need to run, this is about finishing only this year, I can run another year. It's a longer stretch that the checkpoint distances suggest and not long after I see the first familiar face, Andrew who is out here writing an article about the Spartathlon (and Greece). He said before the race having spoken to me a lot that he was banking on me finishing. I was glad not to disappoint. I chatted about how stupid it is to run in this temperature. It's nearly over, just a few more minutes. Then ahead I see Allan Rumbles practically wetting himself with excitement. We hug and turn the corner. I am now on the finishing straight.

The first person I see here is Bando. You may remember him from New Mexico. The first thing he did when he saw me before the start was to pat my belly and say "this year you have not trained". I had not trained as much but I got through this one on want.

I then see Gemma, she has the British flag which I drape over me and she asks if I am going to run. It's one of those loaded questions, I have no choice, she is demanding that I run.

I started to run and to my shock I can run really fast. I mean really fast, outrunning the others in suprise. Phil Smith, Rob Pinningtin, Jon Knox, Lindley are there. I look out for others. I see Claire and Drew, then Lawrence and Martin, Then James Elson who I only recently discovered had pulled out too. I see Bridget for the first time since last year. I high five everyone I can spot, holding the flag and then waiting for that moment when the trees stop obscuring the view and you can see in all his glory, King Leonidas, looking dismissive as always but I don't care. I have not thought about his foot enough this year, this moment almost came as a suprise. This was my best ever finish, the one I am most proud of, the one I needed the most. My favourite photo - Photo by Lindley Chambers

I just rest my head on the foot, burning my face as it's go hot. I then go through the wonderful motions of completing a Spartathlon, a handshake with the RD, a wreath placed on my head, being presented with the water to drink, having loads and loads of photos taken and then being apprehended by the medical staff for checks. I head into the tent, everyone else is lying down but my resurgence means I can just sit again, have my blisters lanced and head over to the bar.

3-0.

I will get beaten by this race one year. But 2012 was not that year. For that I am very grateful.

 

One of the things that I love about the Spartathlon

2500 years ago a Greek courier set out from Athens to summon help from the Spartan army. He set out from Athens at sunrise and reached Sparta by sunset the following day. He covered 153 miles in 36 hours over ancient Greek roads, through some hostile territory and without support from others. On his arrival at the magnificent city of Sparta he pleaded with the famous army to send forces to Athens and help fight off the Persians. One can only imagine how exhausted Pheidippides was as he asked the Spartans to help.

The Spartans said no.

Pheidippides returned to Athens with the news that the Spartans were not going to help.

But at Marathon the battle was already won.

As magnificent and impressive Pheidippides run was it was as far as history is concerned pointless. If it had not have happened then nothing would have changed. His run could have been forgotten since it had no impact on future events whatsoever. Justin Beibler could get a new hair cut and that would have more impact on the course of events than this.

Yet every year 350 of us head out over there to retrace these pointless steps. There is something about the futility of it that draws me and others in. It's such a pointless thing to do. It hits home even more the day after then event when you head back in a coach and it takes three hours.

SO here is to an epic waste of time.

Bring it on.

What I know about the Spartathlon -2012

This is an update of an article I wrote a while back giving last minute advice on the Spartathlon. I wrote last year's based on two finishes out of two starts. Last year I went out just to watch this amazing race and think I learned even more about how to tackle it.

There are other sources of info about slaying this beast out there and I have included some links here. Please let me know if there are any others to add.

This is more some thoughts for the race day. It’s not a “training guide”, I assume that everyone at the start line is capable of running 153 miles.

First and foremost the best ultra advice I can give comes straight from the Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy. DON'T PANIC. This is one race where those who panic fail.

This is a very simple race, it’s just a lot of miles on road. It does not claim to be the longest, hottest, hilliest, highest, coldest, wettest or deadliest out there but based on lots of reports from ultra-runners who have done all the races making these claims the Spartathlon certainly ranks up there with the hardest races in the world.

Around 40 miles inWhy? Well the obvious answer would be the cut-offs. 36 hours does not leave much room for faffing around, for taking it easy, for allowing for any mistakes. You have to run 6 back to back 6 hour marathons to get this finished. The cut-offs obviously a massive factor in what makes this race so hard but I think the actual difficulty is more subtle than that. I think what puts many people out of this race is that the cut-offs incite panic. The cut-offs are harsh for sure but I think many people end up dropping from this race because the panic over the timings causes them to run like idiots.

The cut-off for the first marathon is 4.45. Unless you are planning on winning you really should not be more than an hour inside this time at this stage. The problem is you get here and say “shit – I am only half an hour inside the cut-off, I must now run like hell to get more time for the 50 mile cut-off”. This leads to many runners just burning out in the first 50 and having not a lot left for the small matter of the last 103 miles.

The cut-off for the 50 mile stage is 9.30, which itself is quite fast and beyond many people on it’s own. If the times were divided evenly for the whole 153 then this cut-off should be something like 11.45. I think the reason is to get people off the busy roads and into the countryside before it gets too late and dark. You don’t need to be way ahead of the cut-offs at this stage, there is plenty of time in the next 50 to chip away at them.

The first year I did this I got to the 50 in 7.37, the fastest 50 miles I have ever done. Though I felt quite good at the time I was made to pay for this speed later on as my body fell apart, particularly in the last 50. The next year I did it I got there in about 8.30, nearly an hour slower but I was in so much better shape physically that I ended up finishing over 2 hours quicker.

So in summary, don’t run like an idiot.

Anyway, I laboured the above quite a bit as I believe based on being in this race twice that what I have described is the single biggest reason of DNFing, not the cut-offs themselves but the panic they create. DON’T PANIC.

One more thing. Don’t obsess about your times from checkpoint to checkpoint. All of the 75 checkpoints have displays saying when it closes and this means that you can calculate easily how far you are ahead of the cull. It also means that you will be able to rate each section in terms of how much time you have gained or lost. My advice would be not to do this as it really messes with your head. I realise this is like saying “Don’t think about polar bears”. Just don’t look at your watch every time.

SOME GENERAL RACE STUFF

Ignore the signs

Try this. imagine the number 2837. Now add three to each of these digits and say out loud the new number (when it goes to 10 it resets to 0) - so 5160. Repeat this every 3 seconds. 8493. 1726. 4059. XXXX. XXXX.

How did you get on? Well done if you managed to stick with it for a while, it is quite difficult. But did you notice what happened to your body? You were probably not wearing your heart rate monitor at the time but your heart rate lept up by a few beats per minute, your pupils dialated, you were breathing in a bit more that usual, your skin temperature rose, you perhaps started to sweat and overall you got just a little bit stressed. It wasn't really a problem because you are just sat in front of a computer wondering whether there is anything better to read on the internet.

Now, imagine you did this exercise while your heart was already pounding, while your skin was warm, your body sweating and you were already a bit stessed? Say for example you were running a 153 mile race in the heat? This mental exercise would be a stupid thing to do voluntarily. Yet this is what you'll be doing every time you stop and look at all those numbers on those checkpoint signs. You'll look at the km completed, look at your watch, try to calculate how fast you have done the last 3.7km, you'll then try to exprapolate that into an overall pace, you'll probably get it wrong, you'll panic and want to run faster because you think that you are going to get timed out, you'll find it really hard to go faster because you are wasting heart beats performing useless calculations.

Instead I would apply a simple rule. If you can still see people around you then you are still in the race. It's not watertight but simple enough to not have to think about it.

The Heat

*Warning - I have just read and become a convert to many of the ideas in Tim Noakes' book "Waterlogged" regarding hydration*

I don't have a huge amount to say about the heat except that in recent years I think I was wrong in believing that drinking water/fluid no matter how cold cools your body down. It doesn't. Throwing cold water over your skin does, soaking your clothes does but putting it inside your body does not cool it down. Don't confuse thirst with being hot and bothered. If you are thirsty then drink, if you are hot then cover yourself with water or slow down. Don't respond to being hot by guzzling fluid when you are not thirsty.

There is not much shade in the race, a few sections with trees and some bridges. If you are getting too hot then walk the shady sections and under bridges.

Be Ruthless

You might have agreed to run with someone for the entire race, this is a dangerous commitment to make. I saw last year while spectating two instances of runners pairing up and one getting sick. This is a race where you can get unlucky and become sick and that would make your life very difficult. If you are running with someone who becomes ill or slows down for whatever reason you really have to be ruthless if you want to finish the race for yourself. You need to leave them behind. It sucks but I suggest having such an agreement before you start that ideally you'd like to run with each other but in the event of someone falling behind then you are going to leave them for their own sake.

The Race

First 50

Be careful at the start. From the Acropolis it is downhill on cobbles and in a crowd. You certainly do not want to twist an ankle with 152.9 miles to go, that would hurt a lot.

The first few miles are through the busy streets of Athens but the police do a fantastic job of stopping the traffic so that the runners can pass through. Most road crossings will have the police there to stop traffic and wave you across. The first two checkpoints are pretty far apart.

Once you are out of the centre of Athens you are treated to some quite ugly industrial parks and refineries and such. As the day warms up this can get a bit suffocating. After about 40 miles you are running along the coast and this is lovely, a couple of inclines in there. The 2 miles before the first major checkpoint at Hellas is another busy grim road but after that it’s lovely.

I’d say don’t spend too long at Hellas Can though I always do. There are lots of places to sit, there are usually at least 30 runners and their supporters there hanging around eating and resting. You will find the atmosphere change immediately here, from busy roads to really quiet and windy paths through olive fields.

If you can stick with the Brazilian runners, their support teams are a very nice visual distraction : )

The second 50

From 80-115k are gently uphill so don’t worry too much about slowing down, remember that the cut-off you have just made for 50 was quite tight and now they ease up a bit. As the sun sets you’ll pass through some lovely little villages where the people really come out and support. I recommend eating the proper food they put on (rice, soup etc) the rest tends to be, dry biscuits and fruit.

There will be kids asking for autographs. Sign then it will make you feel better. Not all of them though there can be quite a lot. Maybe get a stamp or do what Wayne Rooney does and just put an “X”.

It gets dark at seven, exactly 12 hours after the start (it is this that allowed Heroditus to estimate that it took Phiddipides 36 hours to complete this, from sunrise to sunset the next day). It goes down quickly behind the mountains that will now surround you. Be ready with your lights and stuff as it gets very dark.

It can get windy and cold too (and rain is very common too). Bin Bags are very effective for keep the rain out and giving a little warmth while being disposable. Consider putting them in each of your drop bags as they were few and far between last year.

There is a section along a dirt path. If it rains this becomes quite hard but otherwise the path is very good.

Shortly before the mountain there are about 2 miles of slow slogging uphill. I find this is a perfect opportunity to walk, eat, drink coffee etc. Consider leaving some food in a drop bag in CP 46.

CP47 (MOUNTAIN BASE) is brilliant, particularly if you are British. This is run by a team of Brits who go crazy when they see a fellow countryman. There are beds where you can have a massage (or sleep but I would not recommend that).

Don't look at your watch...The Mountain

This is one of most wonderful parts of any race I have ever done. It’s up there with the left turn on the canal or the McDonalds in Lone Pine or Washington Bridge. Take your time and enjoy.

It is a scramble to get up the thing but having pounded your legs on 100 miles of road it actually can feel like a break. It is so well lit up you can’t go wrong. It gets cold at the top though but I recommend just taking a minute to look behind you at what you have done. The villages are still lit up with the action of the race.

Be careful going down. I ruined myself the first year, it really hurt. The path down is quite easy but in the dark and with 100 miles in you it’s easy to trip over. Inevitably you might find that both up and down there is a lot of overtaking, you may pass people or they may pass you. Don’t think too much about this, the mountain goats will obviously fly up the hill faster but they might be slow on the road again. I always lose positions on the mountain (first year I lost about 40, second year I think just 2).

I always put a change of shoes in the drop bag after the mountain. 100 miles of smashing one pair on a road might remove all the air from them. I don't know really but have always felt pretty good putting on a fresh pair of shoes with 50 miles to go.

The Last 50ish

After the downhill things are generally up again. It’s similar to the second 50 except towards the end the road gets very busy. Try not to sit down especially now as it’s so hard to get back up again. At this stage you may start losing time on the cut-offs but try not to think about this too much if you are sufficiently ahead.

Not much more to say other than the finish is pretty special : )

Drop Bags and Carrying stuff

Most important thing to remember here is to do your own thing. First year I did this I only intended on having 5 drop bags but saw others putting 20 or more down. On seeing this I thought “I must be wrong then” and at the last minute changed my mind and had 20 drop bags. Come the race I hardly touched most of them and got confused as to where they were. The following year I only had 5 and that worked perfectly (apart from my own error of not putting the head lights early enough).

Do your own thing and don’t change it at the last minute just because others are doing differently. DON’T PANIC

I carried a bottle belt with small storage space last year which worked well for me. Some reports say it’s unnecessary to carry such things but it is a matter of personal preference. You don’t need to carry much water as there is lots along the way but I did like having something to carry my phone, electrolytes and lube in. I’d say about half the runners there will carry something like this with them.

Try to clearly mark your drop bags. The people on the stations are generally very good at spotting you and handing you your bag. Also be prepared not to get stuff back. Again they are very good at returning stuff generally but sometimes labels come off or things fall out. Everything that is picked up in the race will go back to Athens where you collect your things and if it not marked it will be in a miscellaneous pile.

I don’t really have much to say on what to put in the bags. If you have specific food requirements (all the checkpoints have crisps, dried fruit, sweets, toast, yoghurt tea and coffee - Some of the bigger ones have great hot food which you should take advantage of) then you may need lots of drop bags. You will obviously need lights at night, also another layer for the night as it does get cold. Waterproofs depending on the forecast (or bin bags). I have put another pair of shoes in just after the mountain both years I have done it and that worked well. Socks are a good idea too especially if it will rain.  

I would consider putting a bin bag in each of your drop bags in case it rains, just in case you did not have a waterporrof or are seperated from it.

Spare hats/shades/suncream etc for the next day. I forgot a hat last year but luckily there was no sun. In the event of sun I was going to trade my head torch for a hat with some kid but it never came to that.

Though it will be dark the road is usually good quality and you will not need a super powered head torch. I'll be taking something lightweight or perhaps a hand torch instead. No need to strap 1kg of battery on your head.

This is the kit I will be running with.

The Finish

I don't need to tell you that this is the most special finish of any race I have ever done. I don't need to tell you how it feels when you stride through the streets of Sparta to cheering crowds and awestruck kids. I don't need to mention the respect gained by those who line the streets, the police who escort you to the statue as the pain of 153 miles of labour dissolves into a singularity at the foot of an ancient warrior. I don't need to tell you how much you too will feel like a warrior as you are cheered by your fellow brothers and sisters in arms and as you make your own way to the finish.

I don't need to tell you how it feels to have completed years worth of work under the respectful gaze of one of history's finest warriors and retracing the steps of one of history's finest athletes. I don't need to tell you just how good it feels to taste the metallic foot of Leonidas and celebrate your victory with the people of Sparta and the 300 athletes of this amazing race. I don't need to tell you just how awesome it makes you feel when you find the energy for one last climb and mount those steps to his feet.

I don't need to tell you just how much it means to finish this race. When you get there, you'll know.

Enjoy :)

Some race reports

Lisa Bliss

Rune Larsson "How to run the Spartathlon"

John Foden "Time spent at refreshment stations"

John Tyszkiewicz

Brits Newsletter 2010

Brits Newsletter 2009

Robin Harvie Telegraph Article

Mark Cockbain's race reports are on his website

10 peaks challenge

It has been a long time since I have been in the lake district, more than a year which is longer than I'd normally like to leave it after discovering it's magnificence a few years back. Usually I am not here for an event (unless you count the Anniversary Waltz which I managed to come last in last year). The excuse to nip up there this time was to run the 10 peaks challenge, climbing the 10 biggest peaks in the lake district. 24 hour cut off and I'd have to finish in 16 hours to make it back to Keswick for the famous Cow Pie dinner. 45miles and 5600 meters of elevation. How hard can it be? We had our feet in the clouds. That give me an idea for a book..

We started at 4am at the base of Helvelyn, 951m, one of the bigger peaks. 200 odd runners plodded single file up a steep climb up some rock steps to the summit, it took nearly an hour and by the top by which time the sun had risen and the day looked glorious. one down, a nice down hill bit of running and we were well into this.

I was doing this as Ben Cope wanted to do something epic in his 30th year and what better than smashing your legs on some of Britains finest rock. It wasn't just rock though, there were bogs everywhere. It has pissed it down in England for a month and everywhere was soaked. Luckily the weather today was perfect, glorious sunshine and no rain. In the first running of this event no one finished due to the bad weather.

I was also with Mike Wilcox who was running like a dog who had never been out for a run before, jumping over and into things and generally being stupid. Two of his friends Tim and Oli were with us too, they knew the way along with Ben and so we were determined to stick with them.

We climbed another two significant peaks before being told that those don't count in the 10 peaks they are just smaller peaks that you have to climb to get up the the main peaks. So after 4 hours of climbing up and down and up and down we were still only on one peak. That Cow Pie might not happen now.

It was really hard even on the flat grassy bits as there was water everywhere and I made a very poor choice of shoe. Much as I love these shoes they were certainly not fell shoes and not good for kicking rocks which I was doing a lot. I lost my shoe once and spent much of the time on my arse, at some point sliding down a hill faster than I could ever hope to run down.

Finally we managed to get to the second peak Bowfell, 902m tall. It was frustrating that we had to climb up and down three others to get there.

The terrain here is brutal. It brought back wonderful memories of the Barkley race in April as to just how difficult it is to get any momentumn on here at all. There was some running down Helwelyn but from then on we were just hiking. Going down was hard, we were staggering around like Bambi. I don't think any of us were any good at it. I thought the Bob Graham Round might be doable by me but now I am certain it's not as I can't go down anything at any pace.

I thought about how this compares to Barkley. The climbs are as severe. The distance and total elevation is about a third of the Barkley so the time limit of 24 hours is quite tight. The only difference is that where there are rocks here in Tennesse there are dead trees. On the beautiful clear day you could see all around and it reminded me of Frozen Head Park. This is definitely good training.

We did the next few peaks in quick succession which was great. Great End, 910 m, Ill Crag, 935 m, Broad Crag, 934 m and Scafell Pike, 978 m all seemed to fall away quickly. I had never been up Englands highest mountain before and so getting up Scafell Pike was a novelty. There were a lot of tourists up there. We then headed straight off to climb Scarfel which was a bit lower but a harder climb and one with two options. One involved a rake and another a fox and a tarn. We took the foxes tarn and regretted it as it took a lot longer climbing up a waterfall and up a load of scree. It took ages to get up there. There was an option of not doing this climb and incuring a 1 hour penalty. We did this then had to go up scafell pike again to get back onto the course, taking about 2 and a half hours. At this point we lost Oli and Tim who had gone up the rake.

So, 7 peaks done in about 9 hours, seemed like we were doing well but we were hardly into it yet. The next peak was bloody miles away.

Great Gable, 899 m, was some climb. We could see it in the distance for ages before climbing it. It was here when the estimated finish time went from "guaranteed cow pie" to "no way are we going to get this done before midnight". That made me grumpy. I wanted a cow pie.

Going up Great Gable was hard enough, coming off it was stupid. There was a long line of us scrambling down the scree, trying to stay on our feet but slipping all over the place and kicking rocks down the hill. I though if enough people did this all the rocks would end up on the bottom which would make this a lot easier. I yelled at a rock and told it to fuck off, something I have not done since the Marathon Des Sables a few years back. I had a proper sense of humour failure coming down that hill, we were told at the top that the next checkpoint was only 1k away and it was downhill. Still took us half an hour and at the bottom we were told that after 8 peaks we were still only about half way through the race. Bugger.

The next stop was an epic journey to Pillar, I think the smallest of the peaks but by far the longest hike to get to. We could see it in the distance but it was still over a load of rocks. On the way here we saw Carla Denneny coming the other way who had already down Pillar. I thought she was just ahead but I was not quite prepared for just how far we had to go. We were warned about false peaks on this and we sure did get some of those.

After a load of walking on the flat but still tripping over rocks we headed for the peak in the distance. It drew near and up we went, I commented that at least we were half way up so didn't have to go up a whole peak. It did not seem to make it any easier though and later on their way down we saw Tim and Oli coming off the peak and they told us it's about another half an our to the top. I did not quite believe them as I was pretty sure we were near the top and sure enough about 5 minutes later we were at the top. Of a different peak. Scafel Waterfall

Pillar was way ahead, which meant going down and then back up again. FFS. I was quite grumpy now and my feet were sore from kicking rocks. Itdid indeed take another half an hour to get to the top of the other peak and then back down, back up then back down into the swamp and rocks. They really should have tarmaced this place for some sort of ultra skateboarding event in the Olympics. I think at some point I was resigned to not having anything to eat whenever I crawled back into Keswick later so I texted Gemma to tell her to get me lots of milkshake for the finish. On coming back from Pillar we had a nice section heading to Honiston Pass where we'd get some hot food which we were all looking forward to. Mike had already deicded to drop and I was tempted but the promise of a "nice flat run to Keswick and then only Skidaw left" seemed to keep me in the race.

We got the checkpoint and had a jacket potato and chilli which went down very nice except that we too were getting eaten by the midges. Ben and I waited for about 20 minutes but did not see him come in. He got lost apparently in a dehydrated daze. Ben and I pushed on, and what better way to start the nice flat run into Keswick than with a bloody great big muddy hill.

I think it was a combination of slipping and kicking a rock, really hurting my foot and getting a bounceback from the text message about the milkshake that made me quit. I was done. I fell in love with the idea of getting back to the B&B before midnight and having a normal nights sleep. I felt sorry for Ben who wanted to keep going and I was going to bail on him but I just could not be arsed with this anymore and justified it to myself by saying that I might injure myself on those rocks in the dark and that would make Spartathlon training hard. I really quit because I have become a quitter of late.

So I urged Ben to catch up with a couple of guys in front while I took the road to Keswick. I got back around 11pm and had a cold cow pie waiting for me. I didn't really deserve it but I ate it anyway. The shingle down Great Gable

Ben finished in 23.30, half an hour inside the cut-off having had a miserable time descending Skiddaw with blistered feet. Tim, Oli and Carla finished sometime before. It truely was an apic and difficult event and with perfect weather still a challenge completing inside the cut off. I need to cure my quitters disease before going back but I certainly recommend it.