There may be some contradictions in this account of what was, in its latter stages, a mentally tumultuous exercise. But I think it reflects how I felt at the time.
Foot and mouth strikes. Most off-road races are cancelled so I do a few track meets. They are actually rather fun (variety is the spice of life) but just don't go the distance. I need a long run. Hmm, the National 100K should be long enough. It's flat, on tarmac and multiple loops (an old airfield, now the Fire Services College) but what the hell?
Having never done anything quite like this before, I spend many happy hours analysing times and distances from the nearest equivalent runs I have done in order to estimate my time. My aim is to beat 8½ hours, I'll be disappointed not to break nine and ecstatic to break eight. My plan is to run at about 7:30 miling and walk a hundred yards or so at the end of each 4K lap, giving me the opportunity to eat and drink regularly. I will avoid the three-hour bonk on this one. Marie will tend to my every need (almost). These advantages are not forthcoming in my usual races.
A couple of friends are also doing it which will help. Barry has won many off-road ultras, including the South Downs 80 three times. Mike has won the Grizzly three times and gets selected for the English Team in the Anglo-Celtic Plate which will be part of the race. Barry should arguably have been selected, too. I will be in impressive company.
Race day dawns (and remains) bright and sunny. Too hot perhaps?
I'm feeling good as I start with Barry. I follow my walking/eating/drinking routine right from the start so we part company at the end of the first lap. People pass me as I walk but I catch them within half a mile or so. Is this right, running faster but then walking? I think so as the running feels easy without being uncomfortably slow (I do find it hard to run slower than my steady lope) and I'm certainly well hydrated if the feeling in my bladder is anything to go by!
46 minutes for the first 10K.
Now I really need a pee but am loath to stop. So I don't. For the next couple of miles every left footfall squelches. I pass a runner who started faster than me and soon after lap the slowest. "You're looking good," a marshall tells me. I'm feeling good too, I realise. "Thanks!"
I lap a lady who comments, "At least it's flatter than the Grizzly!" as I pass. (I'm wearing my club vest.) "Actually, I could do with a hill right now," is my reply.
I'm holding my distance behind Barry, despite the walking. (I can spot him passing a particular point on the dogleg each lap.) Am I going too fast? (He's aiming for just under eight hours and definitely knows how to pace himself.) And then I see him standing beside the road. "We know what you're doing!" comes to mind and he joins me, unsquelchy, as I pass. We run the rest of the lap together, chatting occasionally.
45 minutes for the second 10K.
Now I pass a guy in a Road Runners Club t-shirt. "At least you didn't cancel it," he says. (The power of the vest, once more.) And I am myself lapped by the leaders including Mike in about third place. He looks good and we exchange encouragement.
Lap after lap passes, each section with its own character. The few turns at the beginning are followed by a slight climb over a hundred yards or so. Then the long half-mile straight, ever so slightly downhill, past the wreckage of various road vehicles plus a couple of trains and planes. As the race referee put it, "This isn't a race track, it's a bomb site."
At the end of the straight is the 2K mark with water on offer followed by by some long, sweeping bends (with more burnt-out wrecks) before the finish heaves into sight. But that is straight ahead and the course hangs left before a sharp dogleg finally heads directly to the line. The detour does have its advantages, though, as Marie can spot me coming with a couple of minutes to tear herself away from her book!
And finally there's the satisfaction of having completed another lap, followed by some refreshment and a quick chat with Marie before starting all over again.
45 minutes for the third 10K.
The easy pace allows many runners to give encouragement as they pass or are themselves passed. It's a good atmosphere out there and surprisingly enjoyable apart from my legs finding the unrelenting flatness rather monotonous. I've fallen into the ultrarunners' shuffle - no energy wasted in lifting my feet any higher than necessary. But it's a two-edged sword and my leg muscles begin to feel tight as they are not flexed beyond a limited range of movement.
I've tired a bit by the time I pass the Grizzly girl again. "Well done! You're looking really good," she says. I think she really means it and I perk up.
I'm losing ground to Barry. He's going strongly and probably consistently so dropping behind ten to fifteen seconds each lap worries me at this early stage.
47 minutes for the fourth 10K and the first marathon in 3:13.
And now I am hurting. It isn't the pain of over-doing the pace I get in a normal endurance race; nor the "this is fast but I can handle it" feeling when I'm right on the edge; nor even the draining of all energy from my legs. I've been there, done that. This is new. I want to lift my knees high, bring them right up to my chest. My calves, quads and hams want to flex fully. I try breaking the shuffle and running with a higher knee lift but it is too energetic to sustain comfortably and that is the way to failure in ultra running.
Barry's standing at the finish when I arrive. His achilles isn't going to hold for much longer so he reluctantly pulls out. I press on but a little bit of me leaves the race with him.
By the end of the twelfth lap I'm ready to call it a day. It has all happened so fast. From "the luxurious ache of tired but not weary limbs" [Michael Fairless, The Roadmender] to their apparent inability to continue functioning much longer in just a couple of laps, a mere five miles. But I will not stop half a lap before 50K. So I go on. And then I've done it.
53 minutes for the fifth 10K and the first 50K in 3:56.
After I grab some water from the 2K point I walk outside the finish area for the first time. I walk a bit, jog a bit and eventually cross the line nearly ten minutes slower than the previous lap. I collapse into a deckchair, the first time I've lifted the weight off my legs since starting.
I'm not shattered (or am I just kidding myself?). I still want to complete the 100K (or am I just kidding myself?). But the apparent futility of the exercise - 20 minutes (and more) of shuffling to get back to where I started, again and again and again - is overbearing. The logical thing is to stop, sparing my legs any more damage.
Then there's the prospect of getting home at 10:30 that night. Not only do I need to get up at four o'clock in the morning to fly to Amsterdam and be fit to do a day's work at a client site but I won't see the children until Thursday. It somewhat reduces my resolve to continue.
"That's it," I tell Marie. "Are you sure?" she asks. "Yes." She offers to tell the timekeepers but I feel that I ought to do so myself. (That is one of the most valuable lessons I've ever learnt in running, from a pacer on my Bob Graham Round.)
I haul myself out of the chair, tears beginning to form in the corners of my eyes. "Oh shit!" I say to no one in particular. (And I suspect no one hears.) I just couldn't do it. "I'm going on," I tell Marie who looks quizzically at me (or perhaps she doesn't; I'm really in no fit state to tell right now) and shuffle off down the road.
It's a slow, painful start after eight minutes of inactivity but I get back into a half-decent jog after a few hundred yards.
I speak with Mike as he passes me again, holding his position. Not the same words as before, though. "How are you feeling?" he asks. "My legs are shot," I reply. "Mine too. I can't believe I've still got more than a marathon to go." He looks bad, a far cry from his form the last time he lapped me, in a 5K at Exeter Arena. I feel sorry for him and mutter some words of encouragement but don't really know what to say. ("Looking good" he ain't.)
I pass the 2K point and alternate walking with jogging. At the finish I once more collapse into the chair. I've never felt like this before. I am weary, yes, but not out of energy. My strategy of walking, eating and drinking at the end of each lap is working well (squelchy footfalls from time to time prove it!) and I'm not even sick of the same view over and over. But my legs are dead and a little voice keeps asking me "Why? What's the point? Of course you can finish but what would that achieve? You're not going anywhere - you keep ending up back where you started. You're damaging your legs. It won't be a particularly good time (over nine hours). Why punish your body any more?"
But something in me wants to continue. I've looked for excuses to stop in many races. And found them, too; some good, others bad. But now I'm looking for an excuse to continue in the face of reason; cold logic which is so overwhelmingly, so over-bearingly trying to tell me that a DNF is the only sensible thing to do.
And then, after four minutes in the chair, I find myself shuffling off again. It seems such a pointless exercise, running around in ever-slower circles. But, then again, stopping seems almost as pointless in a funny sort of way. ("I'm here so I might as well do what I came for.")
At times I'm remarkably upbeat. Then downcast. But never, not once, do I think "What am I doing here?" In a race of more than a couple of hours that is unheard of for me. And strangely enough, having been a runner for more than twenty years, in conditions ranging from beautiful countryside with blue skies and puffy white clouds to isolated mountainsides in apalling weather, from floating along the uninhibited, uninhabited path in a dream to hitting very nightmares of despondency, a road race, of all things, has become the deepest voyage of discovery I've ever made. It is so bizarre.
I stop for a pee just after the 2K mark. Stop for the first time out on the course. Then I'm off again and catch a kindred spirit, a fell runner also sampling the joys of road-racing-with-attitude, albeit at a walk by now. I persuade him to start jogging with me but he stops very soon and I leave him behind to complete the lap at a slow jog.
78 minutes (my half marathon time!) for the sixth 10K and 60K in 5:13.
I collapse into the chair. I've got to get up in the morning and be mentally alert. The further I go the more I will damage my legs. I am not particularly enjoying this. And I have only finished fifteen laps with another ten still to go. It is just too much to contemplate and yet ...
"That's it ... I think ... Oh hell! ... Yes, that's it." I feel a bit sorry for Marie as she doesn't know whether to console me or to kick my sorry carcase out of the chair and back into action. "It's up to you," she tells me. Hell, I can't make that decision in my state. It's not fair. Someone should decide for me. But no one can. It really is entirely up to me.
I walk over to the timekeepers and hand in my number.
My legs felt surprisingly good for the three days I was in The Netherlands. An easy three-miler on Thursday felt OK so I ran a hilly eight-miler the next day and felt my normal self apart from my quads aching a bit on a long, steady descent after half way. But I struggled a bit on a very hilly 12-miler the following Sunday.
I certainly underestimated the effect of actually racing an ultra road race. Long fell races I know about. Flat ultra runs (as opposed to races) too. But the continuous pounding on tarmac with no significant breaks was new to me and took its toll.
My immediate reaction to the race was to abandon the idea of doing the 54-mile London to Brighton road race in October. Having thought about it since, however, and knowing a few other people who are considering it (including both Mike and Barry), leaves me in two minds. Maybe ...
Here is Marie's view of the proceedings.