Hi everyone, it’s been a long time since I’ve done a race report so I’m gonna give it a go here. Apologies, this may be a long one.
Around eight weeks ago. I looked at my year’s running and thought “I want to do something bigger this year“ I originally had some bigger plans, but they fell through with my parent’s illnesses, but now they are both settled into a new nursing home and fairly stable so this seemed like a nice window to try something. I’ve been doing comfortable 20K Sundays for the last few years, so my thinking was “I just need to ramp up from 20 to 50”, which is more or less what I did with some cut back weeks in between, and for the most part it worked. There were a couple of snags along the way. One where I got attacked by a dog on my 35K effort 🙄 and then my 40K effort was very much a slog in the heat that I prepped poorly for and more or less crawled around the last 10k. So I had no great expectations about what the 50k would hold. One thing I learned last year training for Berlin was the importance of sodium. so I made sure I factored it into my training and my race, and as a result, I didn’t cramp up like I did last year at the end. It was incredibly tiring - the last three laps especially - and it’s a bit disheartening when you pass 42k and you have to keep going and then for this race you actually pass 50k and you still have to keep going 3.5k or so because the loop is a little bit beyond 5k. Those last 3k feel like an eternity. Having said this, the tone of this particular race was positive, with aid stations at both ends of the loop with happy, supportive volunteers, and lots of good food. So you could hear them hooting and whistling as you approached, and you immediately felt more hopeful. The scenery was just beautiful, our trees are just starting to turn now with lots of yellows and oranges and fire reds. Plus much of the run was along the edge of the lake, and on bridges over the calm water which was lovely. The weather was absolutely perfect. The temperatures were cool but not cold, which is exactly what you want as a runner. There are however, several patches of exposed sections versus shaded wooded sections, and the temp difference from the sunny spots to the wooded spots was actually quite dramatic so I never could take all my layers off because I would get quite cool in the woods. There were a few hills too and I was able to run the shorter ones for most of the laps. There were a couple of long steeper hills that everyone walked which almost seemed insurmountable by the last lap but everyone was in the same boat, so we were all facing the same thing. Had some lovely conversations with some nice people along the way too.
Today I am quite sore but in a good way and nothing feels broken or torn, which is nice. I came in 22nd out of 75 and third in my age group and managed a PR for my 50K which I was happy with because at the time it did not feel like it 🙂. Going to take some downtime now and think about what’s next. Happy running everyone.
I think that photo was taken early on. There are a few at the end where I look horrible 😂. 
Heckington 10miler race report - what a scorcher!! 🥵🥵
Brighton HM 2019 race report 
The Globe Trot Race Report
