Tag: Races

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!

After I did the Valentine Half Marathon last year, Geth was keen to do the couples’ relay, which is part of the same event. It’s a 10k relay so each partner runs 5k. We are absolutely not in 5k PB shape at the moment due to too many marathon and ultra training blocks back to back (plus, you know, winter), but were excited to give it a go.

It’s a Run Nation event, and Run Nation events are always a bit chaotic. It was very unclear from the pre-race and on-the-day communication whether the first leg relay runners (me in our case) were supposed to start with the main 10k wave or not (we finally had confirmation that we were about 10 seconds before the race started). During the whole of my leg, I had no idea whether I was supposed to run into the finish funnel at the end or back up to the start line. It turned out to be the latter, but it wasn’t clear what to do there either; Geth and I both ran over it sort-of-together in order to ‘pass the baton’, and I went over to the finish to grab my medal and goodies and then to wait by the funnel, counting relay numbers.

We both did well for our current running fitness – I did about 24 minutes, which I hadn’t expected to be close to, and Geth about 22:30 – so we were really happy. The results have been a bit bumpy, error-prone and delayed since Sunday, but at the moment it looks like we finished in 46:41 overall, 11th place out of 19. It was a fairly fast field so I’m pleased with that! Looking forward to finding out my individual split, hopefully later today.

It was a lovely morning out, with lots of other Benchies running in the event or supporting, and it was really nice to do something different and get a faster race done in the middle of all this slower long-distance stuff. Excited for my shorter races in the spring post-ultra now!

It’s the fourth and final day of the Dopey Challenge… and while we always planned to take the pace easy today, a marathon is a marathon and it’s always hard, especially when it’s the fourth day of racing in a row!

It was cold again this morning and it got colder during the first few miles. We were taking a walk break once per mile but I found this section the worst, as the cold was making me lightheaded and it was just long boring road again.

Once we got into Magic Kingdom at about 10 miles and the sun started to rise, I began to feel better. The fatigue was really kicking in and so I now needed two walk breaks per mile, but I was able to keep this pattern going for the rest of the race (which surprised me, as after yesterday I thought I’d be solidly walking from 20 miles if not before).

We did visit a few of the parks, but again most of the route was road in the middle of nowhere. Disney is big! I found this quite hard, as the parks were good for distraction and the road bits very definitely were not.

We worked hard for a sub-7 finish, which is my second slowest marathon ever. This challenge has been so tough and I’m really proud that we’ve got through it.

From the start, I treated this challenge like a multiday ultra. What I have learnt from it is that I won’t be doing any multiday ultras in the future! It was an incredible experience and I do want to come back to Disney for other race weekends before too long, but my Dopey is most definitely one and done.

Onto training for the next race now. But I do need a week or two of recovery to start with…

Day three of the Dopey Challenge, and now the hard work begins! While 5k and 10k are comfortable daily distances that we do all the time, a half marathon and a full marathon on back-to-back days constitute the real challenge of this event.

It was much warmer this morning (16ish degrees Celsius, which is normal for Florida nights in January) but it rained heavily while we were waiting to start, so we felt just as cold as the last two mornings! Should have worn a plastic covering – a bit of rain never normally bothers us at that temperature but it hits differently here for some reason.

We took the half marathon very easy, but I am starting to feel extremely fatigued from the cumulative race days. It’s not just the mileage but all the rigmarole around it (runners who do races will be very familiar with this). I am a bit anxious about the marathon as a result, but we’ll take it as easy as we need to, with lots of walk breaks.

It’s the final day of the challenge tomorrow… but in terms of mileage, we’re not even halfway there yet!

Day two of the Dopey Challenge saw us running the 10k!

Knowing the logistics made it easier, and we were a bit more prepared for the cold conditions this morning. The race itself went by fairly quickly again – once you get into Epcot there’s a lot going on to distract you – but I don’t really feel in race shape despite the training. Christmas has left me feeling sluggish and overfull and I felt a bit ill for the first couple of miles today. Hopefully I’ll feel better for the big two races over the weekend, especially as we’re planning a more restful day today.

For day three tomorrow, it starts to get a bit harder, as we press on to the half marathon…

Here we are in Disney World, Florida, for the first day of a race weekend that’s been years in the planning!

Geth first started talking about doing the Disney races in 2019, when I did my first London Marathon and he spotted the RunDisney stall at the London expo. At first, he wanted to do the Star Wars Stormtrooper Challenge (a 10k one day followed by a half marathon the next), as he didn’t believe at that point that he would ever run a full marathon. He was going to be turning forty in 2020, and he thought it would be the perfect way to celebrate his milestone birthday. Then 2020 arrived, and the pandemic happened… and plans just slowed down for a while. During that time, those plans morphed into the full Dopey Challenge (four back-to-back days of races: a 5k, 10k, half marathon and full marathon) as we became more confident in our running.

It took a long time to get here. But here we are now! For Geth’s 40th birthday trip… in my 40th birthday month.

(He’ll be forty-five this year. We’d better start thinking about his 50th birthday trip now in case we get derailed again!)

We arrived in Florida two days ago as we needed to go to the expo yesterday to pick up our numbers and t-shirts (which was a fun experience in itself!). This morning was the first race morning, and I was glad that the 5k acted as a bit of a trial run for the next few days, as it meant we could see how all the logistics worked without needing to worry about the distance. We’re now set for tomorrow onwards and know what we’re doing.

It was very cold (not what we expected from Florida) and we were shivering at the start – it took us most of the race to warm up. After we were done it was fine though as the queues for the drop bags and buses moved nice and quickly. It just felt like the race itself was gone in a flash and over too soon! I doubt we’ll have that issue as the distances increase…

We continue tomorrow with the 10k for day two!

This was the second marathon of the year – something that would have been inconceivable just a couple of years ago, as my body simply couldn’t have handled it.

Following my 4:21 at Manchester I wondered if I was capable of a sub-4 this year. It was a big jump, but I had just taken more than two hours off my previous marathon time and was used to big jumps in terms of PBs at the time. I decided to train with the aim of sub-4 and see where it got me.

Training was pretty intense and I didn’t miss a session, but I did find myself struggling on the long runs – this was the first time I’d attempted to do marathon goal pace blocks during long runs rather than just taking them as easy as I liked, and I found it incredibly hard to manage the pace. This is very much a mental thing as I can manage much faster than marathon goal pace on shorter runs, but on long runs I always feel fatigued from early on and it seems impossible. Due to this frustration, I have also become more aware that my true easy pace (i.e. what I fall into when not focusing) is still very slow compared to other people I know who do similar race paces to me – and this has given me a bit of impostor syndrome in recent months, as it makes me feel that deep down I’m still a naturally slow runner and always will be.

I only did one B race (the Great North Run) during the training block, which was great as it meant things didn’t feel as disrupted as they did during the Manchester block. Going forward I’m going to be splitting training into slightly shorter blocks and mostly focusing on one race at a time.

I did a 15-week plan with a three-week taper as I had done for Manchester, but I found that I didn’t even begin to feel rested from the taper until a few days before the race. This should have been a bit of a warning sign.

Geth and I planned from about halfway through the training block to run the race together. He’d originally been aiming for a 3:45 but his training was significantly hampered by his Achilles injury, so he hoped he’d be able to pace me to the sub-4 instead.

I spent the last few days before the race really worried about the weather conditions, as Storm Ashley was forecast for the weekend. The wind didn’t end up being too bad on the day – it was the rain that was more miserable – but I really felt that because of the weather forecast, the race just wasn’t in my control anymore.

It was lovely to spend the weekend in York with some of the Benchies, as there were quite a few of us down for the marathon – and the out-and-backs on the course meant there were always people to look out for!

Setting off on the day, I was glad I had Geth with me as it meant I didn’t have to worry about pacing myself – I could just stick with him. I was able to manage the pace but I knew from the first few miles that it didn’t feel as easy as it should. There was an energy missing in me. We had done a faster pace together at the Great North Run – also in the rain – and that had felt easier.

At halfway, we were still on pace, but I really felt deep down that I wouldn’t be able to keep it up for another 13 miles. I tried hard, but by about 17 or 18 miles I couldn’t stay at the pace anymore and Geth had to slow down to stay with me. The aim became a PB.

This was what kept me going for the last six miles, because the last six miles were hell. I wanted to stop and walk SO badly – probably more badly than I had done in Manchester. But, just like in Manchester, I knew that if I took even one walk break, that would be it – I would have given myself permission to walk, and I would keep doing it, and I wouldn’t get my PB. So I kept running as fast as I could, even though ‘as fast as I could’ was definitely not fast anymore.

The miles ticked by so slowly at this point, and there was so much mental maths. But finally we got to the last mile, and I was surprised to find that the notorious hill at the end – the one I’d found such a struggle when I did the Yorkshire 10 Mile back in 2017 and 2018 – didn’t feel like much of a hill at all these days. Geth encouraged me on, and I managed a weak semi-sprint over the line. It was a relief to finish, but I didn’t feel elated like I had at Manchester. There was quite a bit of disappointment there.

4:16:30. Very nearly a five-minute PB – 4 minutes and 58 seconds off my Manchester time. It was a difficult race and I’m proud I kept running when it got hard – that’s two nonstop marathons run now.

I won’t be attempting a fast marathon again until autumn 2025 (my next marathon is part of a multiday challenge, then I’m doing an ultra, then a fast half as my spring A race), which is partly why I was disappointed – I won’t get the chance to improve on my marathon PB for a year. But it does give me the time I need to improve and think about what I can do differently next time.

I will definitely be factoring in a longer taper. Back in my super-slow days, the happiest I ever was after a marathon was when I’d done a five-week taper. For next autumn’s marathon training block, I am going to try four weeks. I think, due to the spondylitis – which does still cause a lot of fatigue even though I’m very well medicated for it now – my body perhaps just needs a bit longer to recover after the peak training period.

I think I also need to find some way of speeding up my easy pace. This is more complicated, as I really feel that easy pace should just be what feels natural (and should speed up naturally as you become a faster runner in general – though unfortunately mine doesn’t really seem to be doing that!). However, I do have some initial ideas about things to try. I’ll change a few things around next year and see what works.

This is a very late race recap. It’s been a mad few months and I’ve not had much time for blogging! But I’d like to get caught up before the end of the year, so expect a few more posts than usual over the next few weeks.

In September, as ever, I ran the Great North Run. It wasn’t an A race, as it was part of my training for the Yorkshire Marathon. However, I still thought I was probably capable of a PB, as I hadn’t run a half since February’s Valentine Half Marathon. In the weeks leading up to the race, I reckoned I could probably do 1:50ish. I was in the orange wave for the first time and I felt I was capable of it.

However, on the start line, I was having doubts. The weather was not kind (it would start to rain as we crossed the start line and would continue until we were nearly at the end), I didn’t really feel like running at max effort, and most of all I thought I would prefer to run with Geth, who was aiming for just under 2 hours following recovery from his Achilles injury. I decided that I would just set out and see how I felt.

A couple of miles in, Geth was still with me, so we decided we would run together at a steady pace to try and finish in 1:55ish, which would still be a big PB for me. It felt comfortable, and the miles ticked by really quickly despite the rain. I’ve done so many slow GNRs that felt like they took all day and this was so different.

No Red Arrows this year, but the finish straight was as wild and atmospheric as ever. I was conservative in my sprint finish because Geth couldn’t go too fast with his Achilles and I wanted us to finish together, but we still made it across the line in 1:55:22 – a 4 minute 9 second PB for me, and it felt so easy. I have high hopes for this distance next year.

Another bonus this year was no freak flash floods! So we were able to get the bus back to Newcastle really straightforwardly and were home by 3:20pm (also a PB).

I am currently in my tenth year living in Newcastle and so it was my tenth Great North Weekend, having started with my very first race at the Great North 5k in 2015. I got all my T-shirts out to celebrate.

Looking forward to many more! (Especially if they fix the start area process, which was complete and utter chaos this year.)

It felt like it took a while, but on 7th July I got to the final 10k race of my summer speed training block!

I wasn’t expecting or trying for a PB. I was already delighted with my 48:57 at Sunderland in May – I’d never expected to get sub-49 this year – and so I felt like I’d achieved everything I wanted to at this distance for 2024. Besides, the GN10k is a difficult course these days – a downhill start to the river (the same downhill start as the GNR) that of course needs to come back up as we travel through town and return to the Town Moor. Then of course there’s the horrible gravel section at the end that slows everyone right down. It’s not the best race and I expect I’ll be taking a break from it for a couple of years (though I may still make use of the very convenient running shoe recycling point that they provided in the race village on the Moor).

Nevertheless, I was hoping for consistency, as I’ve been doing around 50 minutes for all my 10k races this year. I was delighted to be in the orange wave at a Great Run event for the first time in my life (the fast laddies’ wave, as I used to think of it when I was stuck at the back in pink) and I wanted to enjoy it. Once upon a time (2016) I came last in this race out of thousands of people. It’s been a long journey.

It was a long walk down Claremont Road from the race village to the start – much longer than expected – and so it was a bit of a tight thing to get into the pen before the race started! That was probably a good thing, though, as I hate all the hanging around and the mass warmup. We were off before I knew it.

I decided not to stick with the 50 pacer on the downhill to the Tyne, as it’s really a race where you have to use the hills. I knew he’d catch up with me at some point. I was impressed that we had enough room on the Tyne Bridge for the out-and-back, as they’ve been doing long-term works on the bridge – a tentatively good sign for the main event in September, I hope.

The many twists and turns on the route meant that I often saw friends going in the other direction, which was a nice distraction! It started to get really tough in the second half with all the deceptive hidden uphills and then the gravel paths on the Moor. The 50 pacer caught me with about a mile and a half to go and there was no way I could stick with him, so I knew even before I finished it was going to be a season’s worst. 51:17 was the result. Still relatively consistent and over 10 minutes faster than my course PB from last year, so I’ll take it.

A bit of a party atmosphere at the end, and it did really feel like the end of a season!

I won’t do as many 10ks next year – probably just one or two. I was starting to get race fatigue this year, and I’d like to come back refreshed to some of these races in a few years’ time. Hopefully by 2025 I’ll be excited to take on the distance again!

In the meantime, though, I’m back to marathon training (for Yorkshire in October), which really is my happy place at the moment. Looking forward to getting some peaceful long runs in.

On 9th June, I was back at this atmospheric race for another year!

Bit of a stressful start due to the unreliability of the Tyne and Wear Metro – two cancelled trains and one delayed one meant that it was a sprint from Central Station to the Gateshead end of the Millennium Bridge to make the bag drop on time. A warmup, certainly… but far from an ideal one!

This was followed by a good hour of hanging about before the race start, but there were lots of friends to chat to and the time passed quite smoothly. We were away not too long after the scheduled start (I’ve seen much worse delays at Blaydon) and it was time to focus on keeping pace. My aim was to take a full 10 minutes off my time from the previous year, which was feasible based on recent performances.

I didn’t feel as sharp as I would have liked during the race – I think this is partly that I’m just not an evening runner and always find it a bit of a struggle that late in the day. I really did feel like I was flagging towards the end and didn’t have any energy left to speed up. Sadly, I just missed out on my ‘full 10 minutes off’ goal by 12 seconds 🙁 but 9 minutes and 48 seconds off is still pretty good!

I think it’ll be my last Blaydon for a while (unless the FOMO gets to be too much around entry time next year) as I’d like to come back to it in a few years with (hopefully) renewed appreciation.

Onto the last race of the summer speed training block next…