"Something is happening". Said James as he started to run pretty fast as if from nowhere. I've known this something before. It can just creep up with no warning or explanation. You have to ride it when it pops up. You never quite know why or how it appears, but experience has shown me you must just grab on and go with it. But here I am, not grabbing onto my own something; I'm trying to hang on to someone else's. I have even less idea about how big it is or where it is going.

Oh god, No. I'm making this sound weird.

OK, let's try again.

It was Star Wars Day, May 4th. A franchise about a magical band of intergalactic space hobos who use something called "the force" in order to bend the world according to their will. Some of them for good, some for evil. It's kind of like that, except the space hobos seem to have a deliberate handle on the force; they know what they are dealing with. In the case of the ultra runner, this mystical force is more indeterminate. You can try and summon it, but more likely, it summons you if it can be arsed. Ride it; you may start running through trails at breakneck speed at night. Having already run three marathons on the spin, ride it other times, and you may just shit yourself and start crying. The choice is not up to you, unfortunately.

Yeah, that makes way more sense.

I am an old man with a fancy watch that tells him when it's time to go to bed. This happens at 9.30. My phone goes on black-and-white mode, my TV tells me to stop watching yet more re-runs of The Office, and within half an hour, I should be tucked up in my duvet, ready to dream about interest rates going down. But tonight was going to be different. First of all, I was in Reading.

I was here to pace a friend of mine on his first 100-miler. He would have already run about 60 miles before getting to me, so I was envisaging a long walk in the night. I've only ever paced anyone once before. That was Drew Sheffield on the Grand Union Canal Race about 15 years ago, and the only thing I remember about that was nearly getting eaten by a pack of hungry geese in Berkhamstead at dawn.

That would be a successful night if I could avoid getting us eaten by geese.

I arrived hours before he was due because if you go all the way to a place like Reading, it makes sense to make a bit of a holiday of it. It was lovely chatting with the checkpoint people. I was there before any of the runners showed up. I managed not to eat any of the food. Can you imagine it? Being pulled up at 50 miles and hearing, "Sorry, you've been disqualified because your pacer 10 miles upstream has just pilfered 27 sausage rolls in Reading".

The tracking on this race gives you the runner's location within inches. It's great watching it all on the web. You can tell "he's just gone off track slightly for a piss, she's just stepped off the trail a bit to buy a callippo from the cafe, he's also gone off for a piss at the same place as that guy who's been there for a few mins now so he's likely to trip over someone squatting down having a shit. This amazing detail wasn't available to use years ago.

James arrived around 10 p.m. He was slightly behind his optimistic pace but looked really well. Hopefully, the urge to get the hell out of Reading would keep him running, and it did! After a little walk, while he ate some food and drank coke (and avoided the PB and marmite sandwiches that were on offer), we broke into a run.

Now, I was hoping there would be some running; after all, he was in a race, but I wasn't expecting to have trouble keeping up! My brain was in bed, and I wanted my body to follow because I struggled during the first 12 miles. There were several points where I thought I'd have to drop out on him. I was already counting down the hours that this would all be done for me! 2 hours into a run where I'm pacing someone who has been on his feet for 14 and likely to be on them for 10 more. At the Goring Checkpoint, at about 12 miles, I took some paracetamol and inhaler, straightening me out a bit.

12 miles!

So, how was James getting on?

Fine. I think. We were well into the night. He had some blisters, which made running painful, though he changed his shoes at Goring, which improved the situation. I offered my help as a medic to pop anything he had on his feet, so long as someone could lend me a hammer and a chisel, but he passed on the kind offer. The most striking thing was he seemed really cheerful and lucid, which often is not the case for anyone in these races. We spent much of the night shuffling back and forth with a few runners. There were other pacers around, and it was not easy to tell in the dark, so there were enthusiastic grunts (I feel like there needs to be a word for that; there must be one in German, let's just say gruntations). Anyway, given my woes in the first few hours of this run, I was taking any engruntation offered.

But shortly after Goring, 73 miles for him, he started on his something; I suggested that he should always throw bits of running in, even if most of it will be walking just to keep the legs turning over. Still, he was running several miles at a time and must have overtaken 15+ runners without being passed himself; it was amazing to see; I'd never really sat back and watched this so closely from another person. I've only ever done my own races or stood at checkpoints where you just see people for a few moments.

It was great to watch, and I'm not sure what help I was; I was mainly running behind, so I didn't open many gates and had no idea where we were going. Fortunately, James had the GPS on his watch. I had to stop for a piss every 20 minutes because of all the coffee I drank in Reading. He must have thought this was an extended dog walk. All that there was for me to do was to blather on for hours to take his mind off his blisters and the pointlessness of it all. I am generally good at that.

You may have heard that Bedford is getting a big Disneyland. There's this local politician who sends flyers of the park but with his big face in the way as if he did everything when all he did was let them get on with it and not trip them up. That's all I did here: let James get on with it and not trip him up.

Oh fuck I DID nearly trip him up! Forgot about that.

It was a beautiful, clear, starry night, and the paths opened into meadows. It's nice not having to watch your footing too much. One of the most beautiful things about this sort of running is the feeling you get when the sun rises. You've been running all through the night, and a new day is starting; it's pretty magical.

The Sunrise was amazing and certainly lifted me. James was still putting in several running stints and still mostly passing people. The only runners who escaped us were Olivia and her pacer Lorrie, whom I'd spoken to a lot in Reading while we were waiting. They had put a spurt on to get sub-24, which seemed back on again for James.

Sunrise is refreshing. This is the first time I've run Sunrise in about seven years, and I think it was the first time for James. It's amazing; it's one of those things you remember wherever you end up going with this distance running malarkey.

I was nearing the end of my run. I had done about 34 miles and handed him over to his Dad with 9 miles to go. James had slowed a bit in the last few miles. I didn't know whether to try to whip him into a faster pace to keep the 24 going or just let him be.

Amazing idea; a friend used this in Badwater to write a contract for the rules of engagement. Agree beforehand on what you are allowed to say and not say. If I had it written down somewhere that I could kick him up the arse through these meadows, I might have done. But now it was his Dad's turn to make those calls. It was lovely to see them, and his Dad made sure he shared the story of how, during his own Bob Graham Round a few years back, a very young James came for the final couple of miles. Still, he could not walk any further, so his Dad completed his BGR with his boy on his shoulders.

So I was very keen to get to the finish line in time to see him piggy-backing his Dad over the line.

Alas, it wasn't to be that way. James finished in a shade over 24 hours, but of course, he would have dipped under if the race were, ahem, 100 miles and not 104. But unless you're doing laps of a park, you can't make these things 100 per cent spot on, not with all the diversions this year.

It was wonderful to be back at another Centurion Event and to watch my friend smash his first 100 and not completely rule out doing another. But for now, I need to go and check on all the flyers I put out for my new business venture. It looks like it's about to take off.

RunningandStuff