2017 Thames Path 100 Race Report

Not really quite sure why I came to enter this race but I do remember where. It was whilst sat on a rocky outcrop, clinging onto a 3G signal, about 200m above Torside reservoir whilst taking a break from one of my regular weekend running routes. It was the first day that entries opened, and I didn't want to miss out on a place. Simple as that. Bit of an impulse purchase in fact. 

With no great plan or ambition, I felt quite comfortable completely forgetting about it until a month or two before which I duly did. I would almost certainly be ill, under trained or lacking in mojo in some combination or other in the lead up to the race anyway, so put off worrying about it for as long as possible.

As I live in Glossop but work in Birmingham personal logistics are always a bit of a challenge, and I knew that getting down to Richmond ready to go on Saturday would need planning. As I enjoy planning much more than running I spent all of Sunday on the previous weekend getting all my kit ready so I could just up and go on the Friday. By which I mean I would be able to leave plenty of time to completely unpack and repack all of my kit based on the weather forecast and how hungry I was feeling.

Got the train around noon on Friday and all was all going fine until I got to Euston and took a call from the hotel that I had booked via Expedia back in January. Rough paraphrase "Oh hi, Swan Hotel here, just checked our bookings today to see that you are booked in for tonight. Unfortunately we haven't got a room for you because we booked the whole hotel out to a lady a year ago. Sorry" FFS

This didn't, as they say, land well with me. I considered throwing a bit of a tanty, but instead simply rang the alternative hotel that they suggested and booked in there. It was a £12 cab ride away and cost me another £25 but in one brief call Expedia graciously refunded my additional expenses on the spot and I ended up in a perfectly decent hotel a little bit closer to the start than the original one. The hotel was full of fat necked men in polyester sportswear but I believe there was some rugby thing happening nearby so I guess that was inevitable. I should say I hate all sports, and I reserve a particular loathing for running.

I would like to say that Friday night was spent enjoying a quinoa and chicken salad, some sparkling water and then some light stretching before going over my race plan, nutrition strategy and retiring to bed at 21.00. It wasn't of course. It was spent drinking fine craft beers and scoffing a triple pork burger and chips in an underground bar while the denizens of Richmond hooted and brayed with Friday night bonhomie all around me. I was slightly drunk when I emerged, and instead of going to find the start venue as I planned I went back to the hotel to find some chocolate instead. Sweet has to follow savoury. Them's the rules.

This is going rather well

Despite the beers I managed to tape my feet up without sticking them to the floor, and needless to say I drifted off to sleep OK. Sleep was slightly interrupted by a weird interlude from the room next door where the occupant was aggressively chastising a hapless hotel employee summoned to her door about the quality of the wifi. He (hotel man) was respectfully (of me I like to think) speaking sotto voce whereas she (obnoxious room neighbour woman) had clearly just learned the expressions "fit for purpose" and "buffering" and was insistent on yelling them at every opportunity. I discovered, through the wall, that watching streaming TV was evidently "part of my job!" for the woman and she "needed it FIXED NOW!" Jeez. It's iffy wifi for chrissakes, not the end of days. Amazing what you learn: who knew that Entitled Gobby TV Watching Fucktard was actually a real job.

 

 

 Sleep tight you beauties

The fat necked polyester men were in full force in the hotel restaurant the next morning, coagulating round the sausage and bacon buffet, and I was very happy to join them, having now gone nearly 12 hours without pork products. Amongst the sea of replica rugby kits was a lone figure sat on his own wearing running kit and a buff on his head. I took a punt that he wasn't actually a rugby fan just trying something new in his wardrobe, and went to say hi. Turns out this was Mikko who had come from Finland specially for the race. We had a good chat while he tried not to fixate on my huge fry up covered with two pancakes and drowning in maple syrup. And he was the one who had stomach problems in the race :)

International Relations: with Mikko at the start

Check in at race HQ was handled with impeccable efficiency and good humour from the Centurion team who really know how to put on a good race from entry to finish line. Drop bags dropped, a few old friends met in the sunshine, precautionary poop failed and it was down to the Thames itself for race brief. And at 10 o clock we were off.

Some feet, ready to get tired

Unbelievably I did actually have a plan. I mean a real one with times on, laminated and everything, and attached to my pack, like proper people have. To be honest though, I could simply have written “Henley 11hrs, Finish 23.30 hrs” on my arm in biro instead. That pretty much summed it up. Now this was a fairly ridiculous plan for various reasons:

• I haven’t really been training properly, aside from a 50 miler (Liverpool to Manchester) two weeks before the event.
• My 100 mile PB is 23.39 and that was when I was 3 years younger, better prepared and fully motivated
• I’m old and lazy
• I don’t like flat courses
• I don’t like running
• I don’t like swans

I immediately knuckled down to ignoring my plan and set off at a solid bimble, regardless of what pace I should actually have been running at. Pace, schmace. It’s just one foot in front of the other innit.

I saw my mate Marcus spectating after a couple of miles and then spent the next hour or two chatting with another mate Phil which passed the time nicely. Shortly after the first aid station at Walton on Thames Phil headed off while I was still munching my aid station goodies during my first walk break. The sun wasn’t out yet but it was warming up so it was arm sleeves off and crack on.

I think it was here that I started my run walk strategy. I say strategy, I mean happy walking and then guilt fuelled jogging in steadily less favourable ratios as the race progressed. I kicked it off with 9:1 run/walk and that seemed to go OK up to the next aid station at Wraysbury which I clocked at about 3.50. Early days, but going OK.

Pretty soon I got my aid station routine nailed:

• Identify banners / aid station in the distance.

• Extract empty flask and drop in electrolyte tab ready for refill

• Identify exact position at which I would be in full view of aid station crew /supporters: point X

• Just ahead of point X stop walking and start running in a confident and unruffled manner, casually decelerating into the aid station

• Scarf down 2-3 cups of Pepsi

• Suppress belch/other toxic event. 

• Fill empty cup with goodies, sweet course in the bottom (chocolate, fruit, jelly babies) and savoury on top (sausages, sausage rolls, other pork based products)

• Grab second handful of whatever “specialite de maison” was on offer at that particular aid station (cheese scone, jacket potato, melon etc)

• Exit aid station at a brisk march until out of view

• Decelerate and eat

• Continue walking for at least 5 minutes after eating  “just so that I can digest it properly”

• Continue walking for another 5 minutes “because I’m worth it and I deserve some me time”

• Continue walking until just around the next corner “in case there is a duck on the footpath”

• Reluctantly flop back into a jog, cursing localised duck migration.

 

The bonus extra handful

And so it went on.

To be honest I’m struggling to really remember what happened for most of the first half of the race (and the second actually) but in that weird way that it does, 50 miles seemed to come round quite quickly, whereas if it had been a 50 mile race it would have seemed to take forever. What I do recall is that I felt pretty relaxed, chatted to some good folks (hello Chris from the Lake District) and generally felt pretty tickety-boo. 

I knew that my mate Martin was meeting me at Streatley to pace/cajole/bully me home so I took the decision to put some music on now rather than later on as I would normally: it would have been a bit rude to get someone to meet you at 1 in the morning and then put your headphones on for the next 9 hours…. Appropriately enough I fired up “T184 mix” on the phone, a playlist I had curated for the last time I ran along the Thames (the whole length that time) when competing in….you guessed it…T184. Some good tunes ensued: Manics, Clash, Hold Steady, Weezer etc. and it was about this time I changed up my run walk to “walk 100 strides of a new song then run to the end” which worked quite well. This strategy is quite favourable with a playlist of 3 minute pop nuggets, not so good with anything longer. More conclusive proof that prog rock is shit in every way.

I got into Henley at mile 52 in 10.20 which was comfortably inside my 11 hour target, something that I had been anticipating for the past 20 or so miles. I grabbed my drop bag and sat down on the nearest bench for a reset. Although I had spare socks my feet were feeling OK so I decided not to disturb them. Good call. Tights on over the shorts (bad call – my legs were hot in the night) fresh long sleeve merino top on (mmm….I’m hoping to soon live in a world made entirely of merino), buff on head, Petzl on head, Reeces Pieces out of drop bag and into pack, graze across the buffet, top up bottles and off we go again.

Henley: all getting a bit blurry

Crossing the bridges about half a mile from the checkpoint I got a call from Carole, my wife who I wasn’t expecting to see until the finish. She had, as a surprise, come to Henley to see me, unfortunately I had already gone. After some negotiation (her opening position being that I should run back to the checkpoint to say hello) we agreed that I would stay where I was while she jogged out to meet me, along with Martin’s wife Dawn and our respective kids. My version of staying where I was actually involved edging very slowly onwards down the trail but a brief but very welcome encounter duly ensued, they all headed off for a Chinese and I continued on for a wee in a bush. Everyone wins.

I was quite enjoying the gloaming and held off putting on my head torch for as long as I could but eventually lit up. The miles between Henley and Streatley are pretty much a blank in my mind, but I think somewhere in this bit the woollen bridge at Whitchurch happened which perked me up for all its randomness. I stopped to take a snap, reflecting on the suitability of wool for major civil engineering projects until I realised it was actually a proper bridge wearing a big sock, not a bridge made of wool.

Getting my ducks in a row

 During this section I was still going OK, eating well, and with no major body issues aside from some chemical warfare strength guffs. System probably low on pork products. Somewhere around here I bumped into my friend Lex looking very relaxed but we lost each other somewhere and I eventually walked into Streatley alone, to find Martin looking chipper and ready for some hot pacing action (ie a long tedious trudge with a grumpy old man). Phil was there too, looking a bit fatigued but clearly up for cracking on.

I swapped head torch from my second drop box and reloaded with Reeces Pieces while Martin procured me jacket potato and a tea which went down very well. I didn’t need to do any kit faffing so aside from necking 4 pro plus, one salt tablet and a couple of co-codamol (just for insurance)  I was good to go.

I have run with Martin a good few times so I knew he would look after me and the banter would be good. I was actually feeling pretty awake (the pro plus were more recreational really) and we headed off for the last 30 miles or so in pretty good spirits. Time wise I explained that we now had a hopelessly optimistic A target of sub 23, a solidly achievable B target of sub 24 and a C target of sub 28. I let Martin know that I might be a bit incommunicado for a bit and we settled into  a good routine with Martin keeping the pace up on the walking bits and dropping behind on the increasingly shorter running bits, allowing me to make the pace.

Martin Pace Meister

It was from about this point on that I started to notice / get annoyed by the terrain a lot more. It stayed ridiculously flat of course (apart from the comedy roller coaster up and down wherever that was) but some of the narrower hard tracks got really tedious. In short, wide open field bits good, nasty narrow track bits bad. Thankfully this was all Martin's home turf so he was able to give frequent and accurate updates about what was coming up, while I was able to get more and more primal donna like, demanding to know exactly how long the next section was, how hard the ground would be, and how long the grass would be.

I now started to really hate the dried narrow paths and (comparatively speaking) love the wide open field bits. I was now grumbling along, getting a bit chippy and looking at the cracked muddy earth beneath me with growing resentment. The future has been fucking rubbish: I distinctly remember being promised hover shoes.
And after staring at the cracked earth for so long I finally realised what it reminded me of: Marvel's The Thing. Only flatter.

It's what the Thames Path is made of. When it's dry.

I had a fairly crap patch for a few miles but a good feed at wherever the next aid station was sorted that out, and pretty soon it was light and we were into the last 10 or 15 miles. Martin was doing a great job on the pace management, making sure that every mile was in the 13-14 minute range and they only slipped out of that if I started arsing about. Which I did obvioulsly, just to wind him up. He had also been pretty much taking care of aid station duties, grabbing food for me while I simply dibbed in and carried on. He did good work on the gate opening too: a kind of do-it-all ultra butler.

I think my sub 23 aspirations disappeared around mile 90 but some where within a few miles of the finish I realised that I could actually go for a new goal of A minus, which would be to beat my 100 mile PB of 23.39. Thankfully this didn't really involve speeding up and a sustained bimble would see that goal nailed. The last mile or two dragged as they do, and particularly because whenever I asked Martin how far was left, I would keep asking the same question again and again if I didn't like his first answer ;-)

A mile or so from the finish Phil caught us up out of nowhere, Carole and Dawn came out to meet us, we turned the corner into the field and boom, job done. 23.31, 105th place, a PB by 8 minutes, and 1 minute behind my pace plan. Which I didn't look at all day.

Despite the tedium of the flat course (flat isn't easy) I actually quite enjoyed myself, and thanks to Martin managed an OK result. Centurion certainly put on a great race wherever it is and the support of the volunteers at every aid station is fantastic. Thank You.

Next stop, Spine Fusion. Better find some hills. And a compass...

Arrr me hearties: got me a dubloon!

Kit note:

I did the whole race in Hoka Challenger 3s which I didn't take off at all. Socks were Injinji liners with Drymax on top. Amazingly I have had no blisters at all and no lost nails. A first.

Shorts Ron Hill twin skin type, Ron Hill merino top for second half.

Beard by Captain Birdseye, cantankerous mutterings model's own.