I was up bright and early, shortly before five o'clock to make sure that my support crew aka chauffeur aka future spouse was fully awake and fit to drive to get me there for seven-ish. I downed my usual, tried and tested breakfast of eggs and toast with Lotus spread (gingerbread biscuits, hey, it works for me!). We were warned that the day would be busy as that Sunday happened to be the date when the last two airworthy Lancasters flew over Derwent reservoir where the Dambuster raid was rehearsed. They weren't joking about the place getting busy as it was already getting crowded at quarter past seven when we got there. We quickly located the race HQ where registration was taking place, I was very happy to discover that the visitor loos were already open and my partner in crime was equally happy to locate a kiosk selling coffee. I picked up my number, dropped off my provisions by the organisers' tent (food for later laps, can of Coke and electrolyte tablets) and suddenly we were left with minutes to go before the race would begin. The race briefing was short and sweet, with the race director explaining the route and reminding us to look out for one another and then the 50 (or 50.9) mile runners were off! 

Short lap - Miles 0-5

The first lap took us round the Ladybower reservoir back to the aid station, the markings were fairly straightforward and we were informed that the only difference between the first short lap and the three longer laps would be that for the longer lap we’d be turning right rather than left at a strategically placed fork in the road, fortunately the turning point was marshalled and very well signposted! This was great relief to me after a couple of rather stressful Long Distance Walkers Associations where I would be given a briefing sheet with up to four pages of notes which to me could just as well be in Chinese. My legs still display the after-effects of Malvern Midsummer Marathon when myself and a group of runners got lost and decided to charge up the hill past brambles and stinging nettles to try and see how badly lost we were… so the no navigation aspect of Ladybower50 was quite appealing when I was trying to decide on my first fifty miler, although whoever described the course as fairly fast and flat had a very, very twisted sense of humour. Undulating and challenging would be my preferred description. The first lap passed rather quickly, I chatted to a couple of people - Anne-Marie whom I recognised from last year's "Project Ultra" in Women's Running; Andy who turned out to be a fellow parkrunner, funnily enough we hadn’t spotted one another previously but I'll definitely be watching out for him at the Walsall Arboretum now and Mo who ran the race the previous year and was hoping to get a PB, I hope he did! On that first lap I popped my first gel, Gu's double espresso one as the planned strategy was to start early and often and given the early morning wake-up, caffeine was very welcome. On running into the race HQ I spotted my partner who was hanging out in the area and encouraged her to shout out to people "only 45 miles left to go!". Just what you need at that point, isn't it?

First long lap - Miles 6-20

I really enjoyed the lap and managed to find myself in the excellent company of one of the "fun runners" (it's only an ultramarathon race director that can get away with calling the 20 mile distance a fun run"), Colin who was covering twenty miles in preparation for a marathon in two weeks' time. Over the course of next couple of hours that it took us to complete the lap we chatted about marathons in different countries as he turned out to be quite a well-travelled gut who last year completed a challenge of completing four marathons on four continents in four weeks. He also managed to run a marathon in Gdansk, something which is still on my bucket list as very ironically, being Polish myself, I've never run a race in Poland. The conversation flew brilliantly and I ran pretty much all of the time, even on the steeper inclines which in retrospect wasn’t perhaps the brightest idea. It wasn’t perhaps terribly bright to catch on to somebody doing the twenty mile event and for obvious reasons their comfortable pace would be slightly faster than what my comfortable pace should have been and I am guessing this is what accounted for me slowing down afterwards but at the same time, I still met my time goal and had a lovely time so I'm not sure I would have done it differently - my aim for the day was to finish in one piece, and have a good time if possible. I did have my dream goal in the back of my head which was sub-nine finish but I knew that I would be entering uncharted territory as the longest I've run before was 42-ish miles at Run to the Castle event in August where my approach was somewhat more relaxed as I knew I needed to be able to carry on training for Ladybower. The longer lap took in the Howden and Derwent reservoirs and offered some stunning views as well as a fair few climbs, with a mixture of trail, path and tarmac. Once again, the route was very straightforward and as long as you kept the reservoir on your left, you were doing OK! Nutrition wise, I had three bourbon biscuits as I discovered during previous events they make for great race fuel and another two gels and started nibbling on a 9bar, keeping to the strategy of nibbling on something every 15-20 minutes and drinking (water with High5 tabs) whenever I was thirsty. 

Second long lap - Miles 21-35(ish)

The marshals at the HQ were amazing and helped me with refilling the hydration vest and kept asking if there was anything else I needed, the aid station was also very well stocked with jelly babies, cakes and other nibbles. I located my own bag and had half a can of Coke which tasted delicious and replenished the snacking supplies which included a peanut butter sandwich and some more gels I had planned for the next lap. I left feeling really good and set off to run around the Ladybower reservoir once again and to cover the remainder of the large loop. This lap felt quite different from the first one, mostly because the "fun runners" were mostly gone and the field was much more spread out and I was on my own for most of the time which gave me the chance to take on the scenery a bit more - in a weird way, it felt like a completely different course as on the first lap I wasn’t paying that much attention to what was around. Once I hit the fork in the road where you had to turn right to complete the larger loop I kept saying to myself, OK, this is probably around halfway through and I am still feeling OK, still (mostly) running, eating and drinking, so things are good. While I ran pretty much all of the first twenty miles, I now started walking up the inclines as it felt like there was still quite a long way to go and I was probably paying a bit for the faster start. I did have a bit of a wobble at around one o'clock when I'd realised I'd been running for about five hours and in the best case scenario had at least four more hours to go but managed to pull through by repeating to myself "this is what you have trained for" and giving myself a pep talk. As in, nobody said this would be easy! It was a relief though to see the Howden dam as I knew this meant I was only a couple of miles away from the Derwent dam and the race HQ.

Third long lap - Miles 36-50(ish)

The marshals once again helped me fill the hydration vest and it was really nice to be asked by the race director if I was doing OK - he concluded I must be, as I was still smiling! I finished off the other half of my Coke, picked up snacks for the last lap and set off with marshals wishing me a good lap. It was indeed good but very challenging, too. As I started off on the last lap, I had a small glimmer of hope that I could indeed finish this thing and told myself my job for the next couple of hours was to finish the flapjack I carried with me and keep running and walking until I did indeed finish. As on the previous lap, there weren't too many runners around but some stretches were fairly crowded with members of the public who were getting themselves ready for the flyover of the planes. I bumped into a fellow runner who happily announced it was less than a half marathon to go which sounded good enough although not as good as "only a parkrun to go" which is my usual mantra. I kept plodding ahead, trying to get somewhat Zen about the fact that at that stage I was in quite a lot of pain, not injured, but just fatigued from the repetitive motion and the pounding. I was alternating running with walking and was very happy to catch up with a woman (didn’t catch her name) and tag along for half an hour or so, just chatting about most random things to distract myself and keep moving forward. After that half hour I found myself struggling to stick to her pace so dropped behind but carried, now trying to mentally break the distance and get to the turning point and then to the Howden dam. Some humour helped too, there was a diversion in place shortly before the Howden dam and when I saw the 5 mile speed limit I thought to myself that at that point I was definitely in no danger of exceeding that…Finally, the Howden dam appeared in the distance and I started feeling better as the end was in sight. I spotted Jill and Mo once again, Mo was visibly struggling, stopping and starting but still pushing strong, Jill was going really strong and definitely had some energy in the tank for a great finish. I just wanted to finish, full stop - although when I reached the Derwent dam and knew that I was very, very close I managed to pick up the pace and kept telling myself - remember this, this is how it feels to finish the first fifty miler! I saw my partner right towards the end and had to literally push up the hill past the people on the footpath, trying to resist the urge to shout: "would you mind stepping aside, I am trying to finish a race here"! and then finally, the race HQ was there and I could get my T-shirt and be done with the race, 8 hours and 54 minutes later. I hang around at the checkpoint briefly but my legs started turning into jelly and I knew that if I didn’t start walking soon, I’d be in trouble. The walk to the car felt almost as a difficult as the entire race - I seemed to no longer be able to properly lift my legs and could only manage very short and slow steps. A couple of people were staring, and my partner would happily explain this is what you look like at the end of a fifty miler. Getting into the car was fun, too, as I had to ask my partner to lift my legs one by one as my muscles refused to co-operate, fortunately this only lasted for a couple of days after the race. All in all, a wonderfully organised event but I am glad to be dropping down in distance for the next couple of months and switching to shorter events. But there are quite a few ultras on the bucket list so this definitely won’t be the last 50 miler I'm planning to run, there may even be a 100k and 100mile events on the horizon for next summer…