Ultra_Tales_Issue_4_v2

EVENT REPORTLONDON TO BRIGHTONdo but get on with it so at just before 6am, so I andabout 200 other foolhardy souls toed the start lineand set off on our own little adventure through theEnglish countryside.I’d planned on a pace of roughly 6:30 – 7:00 mins/km for the first part of the race, which gave me a bitof wriggle room for the latter stages and would stillbring me in just under the 13 hour cut-off.Hopefully. Now what I needed to do was not gotearing off at the start and burn myself out tooearly. Unfortunately as a large part of my race waspredicated on sticking with people who knew theway I couldn’t really stick to my own pace, so Idecided I’d rather be tired and knowing where Iwas/going than (slightly) fresher and completelylost. I made a concerted effort to stay with the mainbunch, at least while still in London, which was agood call on my part as the route, even then, wasquite convoluted. The pace was a lot brisker than Iimagined, getting up to low 5 mins/km at points,but it felt great (at that point anyway) so I just wentwith it."I really enjoyed therunning at that point,through the still darkstreets of London with acouple of hundredlunatics"I really enjoyed the running at that point, throughthe still dark streets of London with a couple ofhundred lunatics. I always enjoy the early part ofmarathons, lots of people out running a route thatthey wouldn’t normally be able to and hours andhours of running ahead, and this was no different.I’m not normally a chatty person, and definitely notwith people I don’t know, but part of the wholeexperience of running an ultra is meeting the otherpeople taking part and sharing the peaks andtroughs of the journey with them. I was going to beout on the course for approaching thirteen hours soI might as well get to know the people I’d be outthere with, plus I was in a large part going to bedependent on the kindness of others so the least Icould do was make with the chat.For a couple of miles of the early going I waschatting with a guy named Paul, who was takingpart in his first trail ultra, but who had runComrades four times. Comrades is a race that’sdefinitely on my list to do so it was great getting totalk to someone who’d experienced it firsthand.After only about five or six miles the entire group ofabout thirty or forty all came to a halt at a junctionand we had our first navigational issue. After aquick conference the route was decided and off wewent again. I was still following my “make like asheep” policy so all I really had to concern myselfwith was finding lanes or alleyways for my all toofrequent pit stops.I was beginning to wonder if we’d ever get out ofLondon but eventually we reached the veryoutskirts and though we hadn’t quite hit any trailsyet we were definitely heading in that direction.Just before we did though we reached checkpoint 1at about the 19km mark.Rolling in to the first checkpoint I felt fantastic. We’dcovered the first 18.5 km in under two hours andeverything was going swimmingly. Much like thefirst half of a marathon, or the ones I’d done at least,the first stage felt almost effortless, just goodrunning and enjoying the atmosphere. I’d broughtmy mp3 player with me and had it well stocked forthe day but after a few minutes running at the startI made a decision not to use it. In a regularmarathon it’s fine as the route is marked andeveryone is doing their own thing but out here,with all the navigation required and the muchsmaller group taking part it felt like everyone waspart of the same experience and for once I didn’twant to isolate myself from that.Normally I’m not much of a one for striking upconversations with people but shortly after startingthe race this morning I decided to make aconcerted effort to chat with some of my fellowrunners, and funnily enough every single personwas not only extremely pleasant to talk to but weall had plenty in common and no end of things to49 ULTRA TALES | JANUARY 2013Sponsored by thehttp://