COLUMN
The track and cross-country star’s only regret about making the switch to mountain running is that she didn’t do it sooner…
Since I decided to swap the track for the trails this year, I’ve been slowly trying to edge up the distance of my races. The jumps between distances are so big, so I’ve done a few 20km races this year but the next one up is 50km. I ran the world trials in Scotland recently, and qualified for that so by the time you read this I’ll have been racing that event in Thailand.
In fact, the only time I’ve been on the track recently is to get some specific training in for the worlds. That race starts and finishes with a mile on the flat, so I’ve been running a mile on the track, running straight to the inclined treadmill, then when I’ve done that, I finish with another mile on the track. I’m lucky here in Loughborough because the treadmill at the training centre is really good – you can whack the incline up to 25%. I don’t miss racing on the track, which surprised me. I’m actually really surprised with how much I’ve enjoyed the change. I’m not missing a single thing about track, and my only regret is not changing to trail racing earlier.
The trail community are just such nice people. The guys and girls that I’ve come across have been so supportive of me as a relative newbie. In the Up and Down world champs trial race just gone, it was a kind of out and back to the summit, and as the leading men were absolutely hurtling down the descent at us, they were cheering us ladies on. In what other elite races would you find this crazy behaviour?!
I’ve never finished a race before and felt like I’ve deserved that medal as much as I do with trail races. When I finished the European championship and they put this big medal around my neck, I thought, ‘Yes! I deserve this!’ They’re different. It’s a different kind of hurt. Some of my friends who race on the track and cross country have said to me that they like the idea of racing trails as a mental break from their normal routine, but to them I’ve said, ‘not to burst your bubble, but I’ve never been to the dark places that I’ve been to in these mountain races!’
I made my UTMB debut this year, too, in the 15km/1300m ETC race. I don’t even know what happened to my body that day, though. I’m used to going deep… You push yourself, you get fatigued and your body hurts, but my body was physically shaking – Icould barely put one foot in front of the other. People were screaming at me, and the support was amazing. I don’t even know how I got to the finish line – how the f**k I still finished sixth I don’t know! I was veering so much on the descent that I probably ran an extra kilometre!
