Written by Steve Sworder
‘Twas a beautiful day, hardly a cloud in the sky, the sun shone brightly reflecting off the river, the ducks and geese played on the water and I had a brain scrambled by the thought of the 100 miles ahead of me. Holy crap.
At the third attempt I’d made it to the start line of a 100 mile race. I was undertrained but on the start line rather than well trained but injured as before. After all the sacrifices made by me and my family I was determined to make it to the end. Whether that was possible I really didn’t know as I’d read and heard so many times before that a 100 mile race was sooo much more than just 2 x 50 mile races. Everyone kept saying the race didn’t start until the second half, or 70 miles or 80 miles…I just wanted to get there to find out.
The excitement built up as we were called to the start by the river we’d follow for most of the next day. The countdown began and then we were off on our glorious adventure. And I was nearly sick. After 100 yards. A hard swallow luckily meant that I didn’t ruin someone’s trainers. Hopefully this wasn’t a sign of things to come and was it only nerves, but the nerves just got worse. Not the best start.
Loads of people seem to be catching up with friends or making new ones, having a chat as they ran. I was my usual sociable self, head down, averting eye contact. I so wanted to talk to other runners, but didn’t want to hear anything that would make my own doubts and fears worse, that they’d done twice the training or reminders of how hard it was meant to get. God I’m a grumpy sod, but I had to keep my fears in check.
So after an hour or so a nice guy called Andy started to talk to me. Obviously I couldn’t run away, so we had a good chat. Turns out my worry about being forced to face my fears through being sociable was unfounded. It was good to talk. At which point Andy decided he was going to walk for a bit. Obviously I wasn’t as sociable as I thought. Or maybe he just thought 100 miles is tough enough without having to work hard to extract words of more than one syllable from me.
The first part of the race is a bit of a blur to be honest (if you get through the rest of this you’ll realise the second half wasn’t much better). I do remember being pelted with hail for a few minutes, which wasn’t too bad. And at Cookham or Hurley we had a massive downpour, so I put my jacket on at the aid station and set off. Not long after it stopped. And back in the rucksack went the jacket. Doesn’t sound that bad, but at that stage I was still counting every second so having to slow to take off my rucksack etc badly annoyed me.
My main recollections of the first half were the feeling of blisters bubbling away after 20 miles, and after 25 miles the constant sun beating down began to make my head feel like it was throbbing. This was not good.
I had aimed to go through all the aid stations as quickly as possible, just fill up my bottles, grab some food and eat and walk for a short while. This worked for the first half, with an added squirt of water to the head to try to cool down. But the benefit of the head wetting didn’t last long as the hot day evaporated the water so quickly.
The volunteers at the early aid stations were amazing coping with hordes of runners needing bottles filling up and feeding. Which they all did incredibly efficiently and happily.
After 40 odd miles I began to flag a little with the heat and I remember seeing some runners around me looking to be struggling already as well, some with red faces and blowing badly. Everyone had been warned about the cold to come at night time, but the sun seemed to be beating some. Me included.
I got to Henley at mile 51 in 9:41, about on schedule, so I was really happy. Although my head was still throbbing. I was offered some pasta which went down really well. I loaded up from my drop bag with my fleece, extra gloves (thank god I took those, I wouldn’t have made it through the night without them) and my hat. And I changed my base layer.
One guy was going to change more than his base layer, and asked one of the female volunteers if she minded. She just pointed out that she’d already seen bare arses that day. They really do have to endure a lot do the volunteers.
A bit of walking was beginning to interrupt the running, but only intermittently. But I was slowing. And I’d lost my appetite, for the rest of the run I didn’t eat much. Maybe because I’d eaten half my body weight in sausage rolls, crisps, watermelon and mini eggs etc in the first half. But I think it was the result of a bit of sunstroke*.
The Whitchurch aid station at mile 67 was where I started to walk a lot more. It was about midnight and I’m been going for around 14 hours. Things were getting a lot tougher, the cold was beginning to kick in. I had full kit on, hat, base layer, fleece, waterproof and 2 pairs of gloves. I was warm enough, just.
After about 70 miles I no longer felt the blisters. Was it that they’d disappeared (unlikely), that there were worse things to worry about (definitely) or that it was cold and the swelling had gone a little (possible).
Between Streatley at mile 71 and Wallingford at mile 77 I got lost for the first time. I’m not sure how I missed the turning, but suddenly there was me and a couple of guys on our own. But that wasn’t unusual at that time of night. So we plodded on. I did ask one of them if he thought we’d gone too far, he replied how do we know we hadn’t gone far enough? Which made sense at the time, even though we hadn’t seen any course markers for a while. The mind really will make sense of anything at that time of night.
Eventually we stopped and one of the guys tried to find our location on his phone, but it was so cold the battery died and it wouldn’t work. Thankfully I’d taken maps with me, I love a map. And they aren’t affected by the cold, so we found our way back eventually.
And arriving at Wallingford I got lost again. I wandered up the street to a crossroads and couldn’t see any markings so turned round to go back but someone was coming up the road so I thought it must just have been me that had gone blind. But he couldn’t see any markings either, so we both turned back. But then someone else came along and he was convinced it was the right way, so we followed him. It still wasn’t the right way, but this time we found our way back without anyone else playing the pied piper to my rat.
The next section of the race was beautiful but brutal. A massive shooting star low in the sky seemed to lead the way but seemed to be going a bit faster than me, so I let it go.
By this stage I was down by the Thames, wandering across meadows, and it was cold and getting colder. I was just walking by this stage pretty much with bursts of shuffling. I couldn’t walk properly coming out of the most of the aid stations in the second half as everything stiffened up, but a quick shuffle often meant that I could settle down to a decent walking pace.
The path later on narrowed at places right by the side of the river. And it was sometimes muddy and I was in road shoes. So you can guess what happened next, I slipped and nearly took at bath. I pretty much threw myself to the ground to prevent myself ending up as duck food. And least it got the adrenaline running.
As it got to about 3 in the morning I was trudging through the most incredible scenery, with low mists building before the dawn I was desperate to see. And it was sooo cold, have I mentioned that?
I was seriously struggling; I was shivering, finding it difficult to concentrate to keep the pace up which I desperately needed to do to hit my 24 hour target, but more importantly to stay warm. But I couldn’t keep the pace up.
Slowly dawn arrived, first the birds woke up and bit by bit it got brighter to reveal stunning scenery by the river. Although I could hardly lift my head to enjoy it.
I got to the Clifford Hampden aid station at mile 85 and my race was done. I couldn’t carry on. I wasn’t going to make the 24 hour target I’d set myself, my feet were mashed, I could hardly walk. And I was cold.
The guys at the aid station weren’t going to let me settle. ‘It’s only 15 miles’ they said. I worked out that was at least 5 hours to go, maybe 6. I gave in to the chair. But they kept harassing me. ‘It’s only 15 miles, you’re nearly there’. ‘You can do this’. ‘Don’t give in now’. I fell asleep.
After half an hour I woke up. I felt amazing, refreshed, and ready for battle. Then I tried to stand up. I felt crap still after all and could hardly stand. The guys at the aid station kicked me out the door anyway and I gingerly left. Without Dan, and I think it was Clare, I would have given up when I arrived and handed in my number. But they weren’t giving up on me when I was ready to. Thank you. Thank you so much.
I hobbled away and reset my mind, I could do this, but I had to give up on the 24 hour dream and resign myself to a 5 hour+ slog into Oxford.
Whilst the start of the race had been crowded, there was now only solitude. And I was driving myself mad with my own thoughts. And coming into Oxford there was a genuine bottom lip quiver and tear in my eye. Partly because of what I hadn’t achieved, but also finally because of what I had achieved. I couldn’t think beyond it being a glorious failure.
I had worked so hard to get to this stage, suffered a bit of sunstroke*, mild hypothermia* nearly given up, but others had supported me and not let me give up. The volunteers, in particular those at Clifford Hampden, but they’d all played their parts. But most importantly my family, without them none of this would have been possible.
I finished in 25:10. A glorious failure.
*Dr Google was used for this self justification/diagnosis.