This is going to be a long one, apologies in advance...
So, the GUCR....
Simple rules, start in central Birmingham and end in west London, via the Grand Union Canal. 145.4m, the time limit is generous but anyone falling behind the clock or stopping for more than 40min at a time is DSQ. The are some amazing athletes at the front but for the rest of the pack it's essentially 5 1/2 very slow marathons back-to-back. Conditions weren't great with early rain which meant being quite wet from the off. There was an irritating and tiring headwind which seemed to last for hours on end. But I made decent progress and was ahead of PB pace and in control. Reached 53m in 9.25, changes of shoes etc at 70m, and still doing OK at 85m in 16.38.
There's a split between runners in this race - half have their own crew, half run unsupported and rely on the heroic volunteers at checkpoints for support and especially food. Checkpoints are about 15-22m apart which is a long time at that pace so they are vital. For some reason there seemed to be a lack of hot ballast-type food at crucial times, but that's no excuse for what happened.
It all went wrong somewhere over 90m; must have been 0200, I was in open countryside in pitch dark with no shelter when the rain got much worse. Trying to do 145 m unsupported means a temptation to gamble/compromise on weight and I didn't really have enough heavy duty clothing; that plus general fatigue & windchill meant that core body temperature suddenly plummeted, and there's really no way back from that. It was a couple of hours to the next (100m) checkpoint somewhere near Tring so it was a case of plodding along with an increasing likelihood of calling it a day. I got to 100m in 20hrs50 for a PB, still in 13th place but the writing was on the wall with shivers and shakes. No amount of hot food was going to make a difference so I decided to quit while ahead and limit the damage. The next checkpoint was a mammoth 22m away and although I have do doubt I could have made it and finished there was also a risk of subsiding into a hypothermic heap and worst of all having to be found and rescued which isn't fair on anyone else.
So, very unhappy about not finishing but happy that it was the right decision. It's been said that this race is actually harder the second time around, and oddly this true. Having finished it before I simply didn't have the same need to prove what I can do and other factors took priority.....quicker recovery, a nice summer of gentle bimbling, time to prepare for a few autumn maras. Bonus brownie points from MrsP too.
What I learned:
1 DNF really sucks
2 too many problems and compromises during training may have contributed - first the stupid norovirus which was a setback. I also got the race calendar wrong - normally recovering from two maras in a week would be fine but the fiery furnace of Boston then doing VLM with another virus/bug thing 6 days later was maybe a bit much.
3 the average person can't be their best at mara AND ultra distance - they're different challenges and if you compromise between them, its to the detriment of both.
4 that feels like a soft PB....I quite fancy a stand-alone 100 miler sometime (mustn't tell MrsP!)
Funniest sight of the race: a bloke piloting a narrow boat while dressed as a 6ft tall chicken......must remember never to go to a stag party.
Edited: 04/06/2012 at 08:47
