From 0 to 50 miles

My introduction to running was a bit of a coincidence. It all started back in May 2018, when I changed jobs. I went from working as a personal trainer, spending all day in the gym with the freedom to train before, in between, or after clients, to working in marketing full-time.

Sadly, perhaps fortunately, the gym I went to back then did not open early enough for me to squeeze in a session before work and heading there after work would see me home past 9pm. So, I went for a run. You can run anytime and anywhere, and that worked with my new job.

Covering 5 km took me 32 minutes. It was bloody hard. I was not a fan, but I am very stubborn by nature, so I kept the momentum going. 32 minutes soon became 24 minutes and I set myself a goal: I wanted to be able to run 5 km in under 20 minutes.

It was highly ambitious and I never quite got there. I managed to get it down to 22 minutes & 37 seconds before I shifted focus. To this day that PB still stands. I had enjoyed the distances above 5 km far more and wanted to see how I would get on with a half marathon.

The addiction had begun

To keep myself accountable, I swiftly signed up for the Richmond Half Marathon in November and spent a couple of months training for this. I did a bunch of brutal speed sessions and the weekly long runs got longer and longer, but somehow I thrived with the pain and discomfort.

I was excited to race.

Race Day arrived and off I went. Annoyingly I had been suffering from food poisoning the week leading up to it and had not managed to get a lot of calories in. Not ideal. I had also never gone this distance before and had no idea what to expect.

I did not carry any water and did not have anything on me but a gel. Rookie mistake. It never occurred to me that you needed to fuel yourself during a run, albeit in hindsight, that is relatively logical. Some 5 km before the end, I bonked. I hit a wall so hard I could barely move.

We were zigzagging around this field to make up the distance, and being so close to the end, yet so far, was absolute torture. I soldiered on and wobbled across the finish line in a time of 1 hour, 50 minutes and 44 seconds. Not a bad result taking everything into consideration!

04 . 11 . 2018

Roads became trails

Following my half marathon debut, I found myself seeking trails over roads. I enjoyed running on undulating terrain and preferred this over tarmac. Come May I signed up for my 1st trail race: the Maverick X Series in Snowdonia! I went with the middle distance which was 24 kilometres and roughly 1350 meters of elevation. Perhaps a little ambitious, but that seems to be the theme here. And I had plenty of time to train!

September approached and off I went to Llanberis. My boyfriend came along and we stayed in a little shepherds hut on wheels. It was the perfect setting for an adventurous weekend away.

Saturday was sunny, Sunday was quite the opposite! Luckily we raced on the day with better weather, but it was still very tough. The race saw us take on the Llanberis path to the top of Snowdon before descending down a pretty technical single track. It took me 90 minutes to get up there, 8 km covered; 16 km to go.

Being relatively new to the world of trail running, little did I know that salts should be replenished throughout such a course. Two-thirds in, my quads started cramping. It was so painful I could not move. I had to lie down on the trail in order to try to stretch them to get some sort of relief. A lad passed me shortly after and offered me a salt tablet and fortunately, that sorted me out. Forever in your debt!

21 . 09 . 2019

It took me 4 hours to complete the course and I never looked back.

Enter Coronavirus

2020 was the year when I wholeheartedly fell in love with endurance running. It was also the year that reshaped our lives as we knew them. We had to adapt to things like keeping our distance from each other, even our closest friends and family, working from home, and numerous lockdowns with shops being closed; which has led to a saddening number of unemployed souls. Not to mention the terrible loss of many lives — may they rest in peace.

It was a year of challenges and uncertainty, and whilst the focus of this post is not the pandemic, I still wanted to acknowledge it. I was extremely fortunate to not lose my job but be furloughed instead. All of a sudden I had all the time in the world.

I had slowly, but surely, been building up my mileage over the last six months. On Good Friday, April 10th 2020, I set out to run a marathon. Some six weeks later, I ran another. Going this far on my own was an incredible experience. I was suddenly going further than I ever had before, yet I wanted to go farther, dig deeper, and hurt more.

Fast forward four weeks and I was off to run a spontaneous, unsupported ultramarathon with my friend Alex. We had plotted a route starting and ending in Eastbourne, taking us onto the beautiful trails of the South Downs Way, coming back over the Seven Sisters.

Our initial plan was to run 50 km, but having both recently gone the distance of a marathon, we thought the extra 8 km would not be a big enough challenge. Instead, we went with 60 km. We ran 38 km together before Alex decided to have a break. I was keen to carry on, so I did. I ran the remaining 22 km on my own.

The following months saw me take on a virtual 100 km race over 4 days, a trail marathon in the Peak District and 55 km along the Jurassic Coast — all with the amazing event organisers that are Maverick Race.

Somewhere in between those races, I had registered my name in the ballot for the Golden Trail Championships. A four-day stage race that takes place in the beautiful Portuguese archipelago, the Azores. To my surprise, my name was drawn! If you fancy reading about how that went, check this out.

Towards the end of November, Centurion Running hosted a virtual race called One Community. You could choose between distances ranging from 5 km all the way up to 100 miles and you had one week to complete them; either in one go or accumulated. I signed up for 100 miles.

December appeared and so did my 30th birthday. I wanted to run 30 miles to celebrate entering what I believe are my best years yet, so on the morning of December 11th, I went up to Wendover to run a pre-plotted 52 km loop with my friend Yvette. It is going to be interesting turning 60!

North Downs Way 50

In just 6 days I will be running my furthest distance yet. 50 miles. 81 kilometres. I have spent the last 20 weeks training for this and have managed to log a decent number of kilometres. Just over 1550, to be exact. It seems silly to cover more than the length of Britain in order to, somewhat comfortably, run 81:

January — 307 km

February — 326 km

March — 342 km

April — 376 km

May — 189 km so far...

It has been an incredible journey, a mix of building endurance and resilience, cutting back and recovering and testing out new gear, nutrition and hydration techniques. I feel ready, but I think I might have maranoia. Or double-maranoia if you like. It is almost two marathons I am setting out for next week after all.

I have been an absolute mess the last couple of days. I go from being SUPER nervous to being SILLY excited; one minute I am all calm and collected, and can almost visualise running across the finish line, and the next I am very emotional — to the point where I feel sick, but elevated at the same time. It is hard to explain!

T minus 6 days. 144 hours. 518400 seconds.