Race Report – Arc 50 2023

The short version, the back of the book blurb if you will, is it went more or less to plan, no lasting damage was done, I finished and in a pretty good time too. Stick around for the full story!

Arc of Attrition, organised by Mudcrew, is now a very well established fixture in the UK endurance race calendar. Just over 100 miles, in winter, on wonderfully scenic but rather punishing coastal path, it’s a very challenging event with something like a 60% drop out rate in a bad year. Luckily for me and nearly 300 other folks, it also has a shorter friend, the Arc 50, the course for which is the second half of the full track.

Arc 50 starts at Minack Theatre just a few miles south east of Land’s End. As start locations go, it’s pretty impressive! An amphitheatre carved out of the cliff, the stage backs on to the sea. We had plenty of time to enjoy it as we arrived over an hour before the start. Fortunately for us all, the weather conditions were as good as you can reasonably expect them to be at this time of year. No wind to speak of, dry, not too cold. Perfect really. I did find myself wondering if I was being short-changed – I’d invested good money in weather-capable gear and it would all stay in my pack, un-used. On balance, I think I prefer it that way around!

Mudcrew strongly recommend crew support at these races – checkpoints are few and far between, in fact there is only one on the 50 mile race at 28 miles. I’d never been crewed at an ultra before, usually relying on frequent aid stations and drop bags for supplies. I tentatively asked the Twitter hive mind if anyone fancied traipsing round Cornwall for the day in poor weather (I really sold it!) and Rach, who I barely knew at the time said “hell yeah, sign me up”, or words to that effect. Formulating a crew plan was a new thing, an added dimension that I really enjoyed nerding out on. Figuring out locations and timings appeals to the planner in me. I used What3Words to pinpoint exactly where I wanted to see crew. Rach, Garry & Josh were exactly where I wanted them, when I wanted them, with the things I wanted. It was a well oiled machine.

This is the pace plan I went into the race with, which if followed exactly would result in a finish time of 12h30. I managed to get down to Cornwall just before Christmas to recce a couple of sections, using timings from those to inform what I hoped would be a realistic rate of progress on race day.

Starting at 08:30, bang on time, accompanied by a lot of noise and smoke, our first task was to climb back up the steps to the top of the cliffs. With close to 300 people doing the same thing, it got a bit congested. This continued for a couple of miles as it was very narrow single track at first – a little bit frustrating, but in all honesty it was probably a good thing, slowing me down nicely, giving me an opportunity to warm up a bit. The first section through to Land’s End (7.5km, 1h01) was pretty good running for the most part, the biggest drama being a broken hair band (not mine, clearly!) which Rach was able to resolve. I arrived just a few minutes behind the plan and the required flask swap was done in short order then on we go, less than a minute, in-and-out.

Being behind plan right off the bat wasn’t great but there was still a lot of running ahead of me. Like, really a lot. Plenty of time to make good. Besides, I hadn’t recced the first section so the pace plan there was a bit of a guess. I reached Cape Cornwall (17.5km, 2h29) in good shape, now 11 minutes ahead of plan. One challenge with hot-swapping flasks for full ones at each crew point is that it wasn’t easy to keep track of how much fluid I was taking on. I have developed an unfortunate habit of under-hydrating on these things so in hindsight it would have been good to keep a record of cumulative consumption. At this point though, everything was fine and dandy, although I was overheating a bit. I dropped a layer off here, and swapped a woolly hat for a buff. Much better! I couldn’t get over the weather and the condition of the trail, both of which were a huge relief. This race is tough enough without adding side-ways hail and relentless mud. I did hear a few regulars muttering that this wasn’t a “proper” Arc because it was “too easy”. Well, fuck them!

By this stage I was well into territory I’d recced. I’m so glad I got down to check out the course, and not just because it informed the pace plan. The section from Pendeen Watch round to St Ives is renowned for being very gnarly, with not a lot of running and a lot of clambering and careful foot placement. It seemed to go on FOREVER when I did it by myself, and I remember being worried I might not finish the race within the allotted time. I think I would have found that disheartening if I’d encountered it for the first time on race-day. Fortunately for all of us, it is the worst part by some measure, the majority of the course is less tricky. Based on the recce, I thought that whole Pendeen to St Ives section could easily take me 4hrs and I wasn’t far off.

I next saw the crew dream team at Trevean Cliff (27.5km, 3h42), just a quick pitstop for flask change and some nosh. I opted for a lemon scotch pancake here, which was my first sign I might not have been drinking enough – it took me ages to get it down, my mouth was too dry. On the plus side, I was now 25 minutes ahead of plan. Might I be able to sneak in under the 12h mark? On I go, stepping carefully down into coves and climbing out again, clambering over boulders, negotiating the occasional wet and boggy section. More and more of the same, just relentless. I ploughed on, knowing that slow progress here was expected and sensible, all part of the master plan.

I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be gaining more time on my plan between Trevean and St Ives and so it proved. I hit the next crew point at the top of Zennor Steps (34km, 5h02) in exactly the 80 minutes I thought it might take, so I’m still 25 minutes ahead. Love it when a plan comes together! Around this time I started to feel a bit off. Not unwell, or suffering unduly, but just a touch nauseous coupled with a bit of light gut-ache. I had quite the selection of food available to me, but none of it appealed. In fact I was still carrying much of what I’d collected from crew at the previous stops. After a disappointing flap-jack (might as well have been made of cardboard) I switched to gels. I hardly ever use them in races these days, but luckily I had included a bunch in the crew stash. Those went down well so I stuck with Tailwind and gels for most of the remainder of the race. More flippin rocks and steps, but I was looking forward to the final km down into Porthmeor Beach (43km, 7h00) which was not only downhill, but on beautifully smooth tarmac. Man it felt good! I had a proper stop here, a 10 minute sit down to change socks and shoes, clean and sort feet and get around the outside of a cup-a-soup. That went down very well indeed, I think I could have done three or four of those, no bother.

I hadn’t recced the next section and in my head it was all flat, all tarmac. Well, I was half right, it is all tarmac, but it certainly wasn’t flat, not at first. Once through St Ives it was fairly up and down and I regretted leaving my poles with my crew. I also had a bit of an energy dip here, probably a result of under-fuelling while my guts were playing up a bit. I had allowed 88 minutes to complete about 10k of tarmac. That should be loads of time, I thought. My head went a little bit here, I decided I wouldn’t run it all, doing some bodged together run-walk tactics. I was actually moving OK, and I’m sure I could have run if I’d wanted to. But I didn’t, so ner. Despite losing the plot a little bit here, I still managed to reach Harvey Towans (54km, 8h25) a few minutes in credit, so I’m now 31 minutes up on plan, just inside 12hr territory. Hmmmmm, interesting!

It was getting dark by this point, and cooler with it. I added a mid-layer and a fresh buff for head covering. I was plenty warm enough in that, but my poor crew were freezing their tits off waiting around in the middle of nowhere for me to turn up. I headed off into the gloom, ready to tackle the Dunes of Doom. It has a bit of a bad rep, but in reality the DoD is just a couple of km of sandy paths with restricted visibility – not especially doom laden. The coastal path is well signposted and the gpx was bang on so it wasn’t too hard to stay on track.

Dunes safely negotiated, I headed upwards onto the cliffs at Godrevy. I was looking forward to the North Cliffs, remembering from my recce that the going was good, with well groomed paths and not much in the way of elevation change. Annoyingly, that section didn’t happen when I thought it would, and it was a lot shorter than I recalled too. Grumpy face. I burnt a bit of my time buffer on this section, going more slowly than I predicted. I think I forgot to plan for the fact that I would have 40-odd miles in my legs by this point. I was still 11 minutes in credit by the time I got to the specified crew point on the North Cliffs (66km, 10h11), but I began to doubt I could breach the 12h mark. But what’s this, 14km left, says Rach, crew queen. But my watch says 12.6km left, and that was based on the official race gpx. Nearly a whole mile less than my pace plan said and a bunch of time back in the credit column as a result. Game on! I was moving better now too. My coach popped up to say hello which was another nice boost, one “looking strong” from her being worth 10 from random people out on the course. I could almost smell the finish.

Around this point I started regularly overtaking people. Awesome! Go me! Until I realised these runners were mostly trail warriors still out on the 100 mile course which started at lunchtime THE PREVIOUS DAY. If they were moving slowly at this point, 32ish hours deep into a very hard race, it was no surprise. Certainly they were getting their money’s worth. I trundled on, occasionally reeling in a fellow 50-mile racer and blowing past them by, er, moving almost imperceptibly less slowly. Before I could get to the next crew point I had to negotiate The Bitches. I’m not sure how many of the remaining 4 steep coves constitute The Bitches, and that is not their official title. Certainly by this stage of the race, whether 100 or 50 mile versions, they are most unwelcome. Steep steps down, uneven distances apart, bloody rocks everywhere, then similar steps back up again. I suppose the mercy of it is that it was least full dark then, I could really only see the few metres that my headtorch lit ahead of me.

Two of these buggers (or Bitches) came before the next crew point just outside Portreath (74km, 11h05) which was at the top of a bloody great hill. I do love a big hill (genuinely!) if it’s the right gradient for me to march up, poles click clacking. I didn’t dilly dally here, scoffed half a banana and dashed off, 17 minutes in credit with at least 13 minutes to claw back to sneak in under 12h. Quite a tall order on a short 6.5km section. Two more Bitches, or their moody close friends, to be dealt with then I could peg it down the steep hill into Porthtowan and the finish. Ummm nope, sadly not. It used to be the finish, but the race got too big for the original location so the finish was moved a couple of years back, another mile up the road at the top of another big hill, actually the biggest climb of the race. How nice of them! Extra distance and extra vert! I was hauling ass here, but the long-ish drag out of Porthtowan was just a little bit too uphill for me to run up by this stage, so a fast hike was all I could manage. Then just that final hill to negotiate, a long steep climb. The finish is in Mount Pleasant Eco Park, but the signage is a little confusing, and like several other people I ended up running through the car park instead of the nice field, only realising this when I could see the finish chute through the hedge. Approaching the finish perpendicular to the intended direction of travel, I was greeted by a crowd including crew and other friends, cheered across the line in 12h05, well under my 13h goal, well ahead of the pace plan, and within sniffing distance of 12h.

What a day! Smashed my goal for the race, a solid crew and pace plan was executed flawlessly, smiley running friends at the finish, and nothing new hurts. Result. I came 46th of 138 finishers in the men’s race, 5th of 35 in the men’s V50 category.

Would I do it again? Maybe not, I don’t think I’d risk hitting shitty weather and having a slower race. Would I do the 100? Hmmm, maybe I would, that’s a different challenge altogether.

Finally, a huge thank you to Rach, Garry and Josh for helping me have such a great day. Very much appreciated.