Warts ’n’ Hall
I did something disgusting. It was regrettable, I felt out of my depth and I mostly hated it. Yep. I did a short race.
My A races tend to be in the 100- to 200-mile region, my B races 50K to 100K. But recently, I ran the Bath Hilly Half.
Ultramarathons may go on a bit, but they’re essentially massive picnics. We hike the merest inclines and we go so slow that if a snail catches us up, we ask ourselves if we’re going too fast and slow down. Ultramarathons are easy.
Okay, that may not hold up to full scrutiny. But ultras are certainly run at an easy pace. Get into those lactate threshold areas or let your heart rate get much above 150 and you’ll pay for it. The most sensible among us tend not to. Short races do those two horrible things the whole time.
I’ve done short races, of course. That’s where it all started. But after a year with two 200s and two 100s, the phrase ‘shock to the system’ springs to mind.
Okay, it was nice not to have to carry 5kg of mostly unnecessary mandatory kit. But it was windy and rainy and I had no gloves or kagool to cower in. More distressingly still, where the heck was I meant to put my hummus sandwiches?
Straight from the off, everyone ran fast! Though going below eight-minute miles is normally anathema to me, I joined in. It was a stampede. There was aggressive panting all around me, a machine gun of feet thumping f loor, brown stuff splashing up our legs. My lungs were going, ‘Whatthefeckwhatthefeck...’. An alien was trying to get out of my chest. My legs were full of lead. My mouth tasted of two-pence pieces. My nose spread snot across my face. This is totally unnecessary and thoroughly unpleasant, I yelled. In my head. And anyway, what was the rush? Were folk worried the aid stations would run out of biscuits? After15 minutes of agony, we reached some volunteers standing by a table. But instead of the buffet and beds I’m used to, there was water and jelly babies. And no one stopped (so I didn’t either).
I very much wanted to be a coward for a bit. You can do that in an ultra – for hours, to be honest – and no one knows. It’s great. But we were sent back up the hill we’d just come down. My pride wouldn’t allow any cheeky hiking breaks (curse you, pride).
I was permanently
