Mistakes I made in my first ultramarathon

Welcome back to another post on my blog! For this midweek post I wanted to look back on my first ultramarathon, the 50km Round Reading race which I completed in August last year. Since it was my first time running that distance, I was very pleased to finish in 4:56:22, putting me 57^th out of 258 runners. However, in hindsight I made some major errors which prevented me from doing better. In this post I’ll discuss some of those errors and what I am doing differently now. Hopefully this will be helpful to those of you looking to complete your own first ultramarathon, or step up to any distance.

Training
Looking back at my training plan for the 2 months before the event it’s amazing I actually finished. At the start of 2020 I was training for my first ever marathon, which I completed on my own in April after the planned race was one of the early casualties of covid. I then had May as a recovery/maintenance month, with a lot of additional endurance cycle rides, with the idea being that I would build my mileage in June and July.

My training in the 2 months before
the race - nowhere near enough!

The theory was sound, but the execution was poor from start to finish. First of all, June was a very stressful month as I went through an unexpected change in circumstances (thanks covid). There were a couple of weeks in particular where I had very little motivation, and when I was running I couldn’t mentally get in the right space, while physically my performance seemed to have fallen off a cliff. I recognised this as symptomatic of burnout and ended up having 10 days without any running at all, and then easing back into it. By the time I was ready for training again I had just 5 weeks to go.

My main mistake during those 5 weeks was that my volume was simply too low. I was only running 3 times a week, typically completing 20-30 miles. This was enough so that I could complete the race, but I’ve no doubt that with more training I could have performed better. In contrast, for my first 100 mile race this year I’m running 4 times a week, regularly hitting 50+ miles.

Conclusion: Although it was the right decision to ease off due to burnout, in general if you’re planning on running an ultramarathon then you need to be prepared to put in some significant training miles.  

Pacing
Let’s just say that if after 15 miles of an ultramarathon you’re texting a friend saying ‘everything is going great, I might even get a marathon PB here’ then something has gone very wrong!

To put things in context, my target for this race was to finish in under 5 hours, which is a pace of 9:39/mile. And yet halfway round I was averaging 8:15/mile and felt really strong. In hindsight, this was the typical adrenaline rush that comes at the start of any race, especially since this was my first race coming out of our initial lockdown and so it was exciting just to be around other runners! It was also a perfect morning for running – roughly 15 degrees while we spent the first 10km alongside the River Thames, with little wind and no real complaints.

However. it got much warmer as the day went on, and I vividly remember a moment just after the 20 mile mark. The route left a woods and deposited us on a narrow road between two fields which seemed to be leading nowhere, with no shelter and no sign of any life at all! Suddenly I was feeling the impact of the heat reflecting off the tarmac, realised that I had 11 miles to go, and without even thinking I’d slowed to my first unplanned walk of the race.

Those last 11 miles turned into a constant balance of running and walking, with walking becoming an ever larger percentage. Whereas I’d covered the first 11 miles in 1:27:12, the last 11 miles took 2:17:11! I’ve no doubt that if I’d taken a more even pace strategy then I could have been around 20 minutes faster overall, which would have moved me from 57^th to 21^st. Still, at least I did just beat my initial 5 hour target!

Conclusion: Ignore the adrenaline rush at the start of the race, make sure you’re saving energy for the end and try to maintain as even a pace as possible. For future ultras I plan to use a 25 minute run, 5 minute walk strategy from the beginning, ensuring that I'm not setting off too fast.

You can see how I start consistently and then just get
slower and slower in the 2nd half

Hydration

Along with pacing, perhaps the biggest difference between a marathon and an ultramarathon is the approach to food and hydration. During a marathon I only consume a couple of caffeine gels and a few sweets for a bit of sugar. If it was hot then I would perhaps have some water, but so far all my marathons have been in cooler conditions. In contrast, for an ultramarathon you must make sure you’re drinking regularly or else you’re going to get dehydrated.

I was actually quite pleased with the eating strategy I came up with. For each of the 5 checkpoints along the course I planned to eat something such as a cereal bar, packet of crisps or some sweets. I’d register at each checkpoint as quickly as possible, and then spend around 3 minutes walking while I ate the planned snack, minimising the time lost.

When I finally
decided to refill!

The problem is that what I should also have been doing is taking a minute to fill up my water bottles. In the UK we’d had a wet and cool June/July, meaning that for most of my shorter training runs I didn’t need more than the litre of water I had with me. This changed heading towards the race – in fact it was 37 degrees the day before while I sat in the shade desperately trying to stay cool! Thankfully it wasn’t as bad on race day, peaking at 25, but it was also humid and together these conditions mean you need extra water. I didn’t refill my bottles until checkpoint 3, halfway through and by then it was too late. With about 2 miles to go I experienced cramps in my right calf for the first time ever, a sure sign that I was dehydrated and depleted in key electrolytes such as sodium. No doubt the dehydration also contributed to the mental suffering I was feeling, which led to me walking more than wanted. 

Conclusion: Make sure you’re drinking properly, particularly in hot and humid conditions. This is one of the priorities of my current training, as while I could get away with over 50km, if I get this wrong for my 100 mile race in June then it could have more severe consequences.

Despite the mistakes,
I got there in the end!

Thank you for reading. To make sure you don’t miss future posts, follow me on Instagram @andrewsultrablog. I’d love to hear what in hindsight you would view as the mistakes you made in your first time at a new distance – there’s always an opportunity to learn! To see more of my training towards my future ultramarathons, follow me on Strava: https://www.strava.com/athletes/5373701