Well I have completed an ultra. 100km done, that is the furthest I have run since this time last year. I knew I was woefully unfit and heavy, so a decent time was never on the cards. The only target I set myself was to finish. and finish I did in 12:25...bloody slow, but a finish is finish.
The
WHEW100 is a very nice course. Pretty much all asphalt all the way. It drops for the first forty km to the Ruhr, then you do twenty odd kms along the river, then a climb to ninety five and a slope to the finish.
The organization is second to to none. Race director Guido Gullenkamp and the team put in a very good race with 12 well stocked well run refreshment points.
I did my usual prepared labeled 75ml bottles with a scoop of Tailwind and two gels fixed on with a rubber band. Not sure if that is actually enough. Two gels is around 50g of carbs and the scoop of Tailwind is another 10-15. Given my weight at around 78kg that's at least 10grams short, if I was taking only an hour between refreshment points. Although these were on average eight kms apart there was no way I was going that fast.
The first sixty km I did at an average of 6:30mins a km then I had a toilet break and dropped to an average of 8:00mins a km only increasing slightly as the last ten kms came into sight. After 60kms I was alone on the course and bored. Extremely bored. Five hours of very slow running. Only my new JBL Endurance Dive headphones pre loaded with Patti Smith, Sisters of Mercy, Gang of Four, GoldFrapp and many others stopped me going out of my mind. I didn't try and calculate finishing times or worry about any of that shite. I just adopted a routine of RFM and overtook loads of walking people in the last 20kms. I really don't see the point of walking when you can run with a little more effort.
It was worth it, I got a nice medal. A nice t shirt, which I will wear at next weeks Obernhain 10km. But most of all a lovely text from Chrissy saying how proud she was that I stuck it out despite being so slow.
