After doing this race as my first ultra last year, I was keen to give it another go – especially as Geth wanted to do it too this time. As such, I signed up during the early bird period just after last year’s event.

What I didn’t realise when planning out my 2024 and 2025 seasons – and this is very much one of those ‘you live and learn’ things – was that doing so many marathon/ultra training blocks in a row, some of them truncated due to the races being so close together, would lead to a massive amount of cumulative fatigue towards the end of the process.

Last summer was the last break I had from long distance training – between Manchester Marathon and the start of training for Yorkshire Marathon I had about ten weeks off, during which I focused on 10k races and counted down the days until I was marathon training again because I missed it so much. I had really, really enjoyed the Manchester training block. I was already a little anxious about spring 2025 at that point, because I knew Edinburgh Half Marathon would be my A-race for the spring and I thought I would have massive FOMO about not doing a spring marathon in 2025.

One of the things I learnt last year was that I don’t really like doing too many B-races during a training block, because it gets in the way of my plan and means I have to move runs around. As such, knowing that in the early stages of 2025 we had both the Walt Disney World Dopey Challenge (a long-delayed bucket list trip for Geth) and the Bridges to Boundaries Ultra, I planned out two truncated marathon/ultra training blocks following Yorkshire Marathon: a twelve-week block for Disney and a nine-week block for B2B.

These shortened blocks meant that I didn’t really have time to recover from the last big race and build back up – after a week or two, it was straight back into the super long runs. I had overtrained a bit for Yorkshire, leading to disappointment on the day despite a PB; by the time we were into peak training for Disney, I was finding it necessary to cut a lot of the long runs short, and I found the longer Disney races to be harder work than I would have liked. I was generally happier with the B2B block as a whole than with the Disney block, as we did some good recces and I was able to sort out some longstanding issues.

However, I was becoming very aware that I barely even remember what it feels like to have fresh legs. I have been pretty much solidly marathon/ultra training for over a year now, and while I was feeling invincible for most of 2024 – the result of finally being able to run and train properly due to being effectively medicated for my ankylosing spondylitis after over a decade of suffering with it – this is most definitely no longer the case. The fatigue is real.

As such, going into the Tyne Bridges to Boundaries Ultra this last weekend – while I wanted to enjoy it as a day out with Geth as much as possible, and I did feel unexpectedly calm in the week leading up to it – I was really quite looking forward to it being over so that I could enjoy five months of NOT doing super long runs. I most definitely do not need to worry about spring marathon FOMO anymore. I will cheer my friends on at spring marathons over the next couple of months with no envy in my heart whatsoever. I am absolutely delighted that Edinburgh half will be my spring A-race, and I can’t wait to get stuck into some proper speed training for it once I’m properly recovered.

But this last Saturday morning, I still had one last very long run to do. And, despite all the fatigue, I still hoped that I could do it a tiny bit faster than last year.

As expected, I didn’t sleep well the night before due to anticipating the 4am alarm. I was waking up every hour on the hour and gave up attempting sleep at 2:30am. Geth was similar and so we had no problems being ready for the 6am drive to the race HQ at the Cycle Hub. (Registration closes at 7:45am for an 8:15am start but it’s a little harder to get a parking space if you arrive after 6:45am, and I prefer not to have any stress about getting parked!).

We gradually got registered, had a second breakfast, met up with fellow Benchies Clare and Ed and got our packs and numbers on. It was a much colder start than last year and so we made good use of the warmth inside the café! We made sure to stay towards the back of the pack on the start line so that there would be no temptation to go off too fast.

Geth and I ran together as planned and kept a steady pace for the first eleven miles to the Wylam checkpoint. I had a few wobbles during this section, first because there was a route change I hadn’t anticipated (the ‘updated’ GPX file I had downloaded from the website the day before the race had not in fact been updated from the 2024 route) and secondly because the fatigue was kicking in already and I was genuinely worried I wouldn’t be able to finish. However, as we approached Wylam, I felt much better, as our first planned extended walk break was coming up.

Ed overtook us at this point – we had a banana with him at Wylam and never saw him again!

The next six-mile section from Wylam to Stocksfield is a mixture of fields/trails and tarmac, so we walked the former and ran the latter. The last two miles to Stocksfield is all road – and is a really depressing endless-feeling bit so we planned to run it all to get it over and done with! – but I did need a couple of walk breaks on that part as well as I was getting very tired. We had a good reset at the halfway checkpoint at Stocksfield Cricket Club, at which point Clare caught up with us.

I felt a bit stiff setting off from Stocksfield but the fields provided a good excuse to walk for a bit. The path through Prudhoe was a bit more runnable and by that point I had decided on quarter mile on-off intervals for my run-walk strategy, as quarter miles felt manageable for running and I knew that if I continued with ‘see how you feel’ walk breaks I would just end up walking the whole way back! Back at Wylam for checkpoint 3 we filled up on bananas and cola and geared up to count down the last eleven miles. I wasn’t sure at this point if my walk-run strategy would hold, but we continued onwards.

The final stretch actually proved to be my favourite part of the day. We were back and forth the whole time with Clare (who was doing a great powerwalking pace) and various others, so it was a lovely chatty experience, and I felt strong enough to keep my quarter miles going for the whole stretch. We had heard at checkpoint 3 that we’d be taken back over the Swing Bridge rather than the Millennium Bridge for the final half mile along the Quayside – which I was delighted about, as there was an event going on at the Baltic (south end of the Millennium Bridge) that apparently involved people chucking paint about, and I did not want to be anywhere near that! For the final (34th) mile, I suggested to Geth that we could run the last half mile and a bit to get to the finish, and my watch happened to tick over 33 and a half miles just as we came off the steps down from the Swing Bridge. It was a lovely final stretch of running along the Quayside, with the Cycle Hub getting closer and closer.

We finished in roughly eight and a quarter hours, which is a quarter hour slower than I did it last year. I wanted to be faster, but it’s okay. I felt much stronger than expected during the final stages, and I’m really proud that I kept my strategy going rather than fading to a deathmarch. We collected our medals and celebrated with Clare as she came into the finish area – it was a first ultra for both her and Geth.

A few lessons learnt on this one, besides the much larger overriding issue of doing too many marathons and ultras in a row. I spent a little too long in the checkpoints this year – ten minutes longer than last year in total, according to my moving time logs (so my moving time was only five minutes slower, not 15!). I need to plan my run-walk strategies beforehand, as I felt so much stronger and happier when doing specific intervals rather than ‘see how you feel’. A positive lesson was that I finish stronger when I fuel more frequently, so that might be something I take on board for fast marathons as well.

A larger lesson that has encompassed both the Disney and B2B training periods is that Geth and I are not really suited to doing long run training together. I am not hugely slower than him in terms of our standard distance race performances, but my natural easy training pace is much slower than his and so it’s not really been possible to find a pace that’s comfortable for both of us. This has been frustrating and upsetting at times and I think we’re both looking forward to doing separate training again for our next couple of A-races.

Geth is keen to do Bridges to Boundaries again in a couple of years’ time to try and get a faster result, but I think I’m done with this one. I suspect I’ll return to ultras again one day, but at the moment I feel it’ll be many years in the future.

Edinburgh Half Marathon next, then. I’ll be attempting a considerable PB and hopefully continuing the long process of putting the horror of 2022 to bed. For this process, I’ll be following a training plan much more closely than usual, which will involve basically halving the usual weekly mileage I’ve been doing for the last year or so. This will be a real shock to the system, but I welcome it. My body needs a break from the long distances, and I need some time to myself to partake in occasional other hobbies that aren’t running.

Really quite excited to get into the short stuff again!