This last weekend saw the inaugural running of this event by Centurion Running, a very well established organiser. A (sort of) figure of eight route, the start and finish were in the centre, at Stonor Deer Park which is just a few miles north of Henley-on-Thames. I consider this to be my local patch. It is a 20 minute drive from my house and the area has the best hills nearby. I’m often up and around this area so I was looking forward to this race. In fact, I was running in the area just the previous Sunday, partly to gauge the underfoot conditions, making my shoe choice for the race. It was dry underfoot for the most part, I therefore loudly pronounced to anyone foolish enough to listen, that mud-capable luggy shoes were overkill and that regular summer trail shoes would do the job nicely. Hmmmm, let’s see, shall we?

As you’d expect from one of the best race organisers in the business, the pre-race arrangements were super slick – I was registered and tracker-ed up in no time. It was dry but overcast, with some threatening looking sky off to the west. Good thing it’s so dry underfoot! What’s that you say? Rain? In the preceding couple of days? Yes, sure, it rained. But not that much and it has been so dry, the ground will have just soaked it up, right? Right? Not doubting my shoe choice for a second at this point.

After a bit of pre-race chit-chat, at 9am sharp we were off. Having recced the route a couple of times, I knew the first few km were gently uphill so I obviously took it easy went out too hard, with several splits in the sub-5hr range (I was aiming for 6hrs). It quickly became apparent that there was a lot of mud and standing water around. Never mind, I’m sure it’ll be fine once we get into the trees? It was about then that it started to rain, lightly at first but then in more organised fashion and stayed like that for a good 2 or 3 hours. Already wet and muddy paths became treacherous slippy-slidy challenges to anyone in the, er, wrong shoes….

….like me! I was wearing my Inov8 Trailfly G300s, an excellent shoe for dry trails, but bloody hopeless in the mud. I spent almost the whole race wishing I was in my X-Talons which were created for these very conditions. To be honest, even they would have struggled a bit to maintain traction in places, but they’d have been a darn sight better than the G300s. Sigh. Well, as the saying goes, you gotta dance with the one that brung ya. I was grateful for my poles, as much for the extra stability they provided as for the assistance going up hills. On more than one occasion the poles saved me from a slide into the undergrowth at a bend in the path, or where I was losing control a bit going downhill.

I got to Ibstone (10.7km, 1h04, jelly babies) in good time. I didn’t stop for long, just a brief water top up and some hurriedly grabbed jelly babies and I was off again, definitely still seriously thinking I could get closer to 5hrs than 6. Why am I such an idiot when I pin a race number on? The red mist descends and I start writing cheques my legs can’t cash. [this is an increasingly irrelevant turn of phrase isn’t it!?]. I just can’t afford to do that on the 100s this year. The later aid stations on a 100 are littered with the broken bodies of runners who gave it too much welly in the first 30 miles and I really don’t want to be keeping their company. In my defence, I didn’t have a pace plan for this race other than the quickly discarded notion of 6hrs being a reasonable time for someone just up for a nice day out in the hills. For the 100s, I will have a pace plan that I’ll endeavour to stick to. Honest guv.

With the course getting slicker and muddier with each passing hour, some of the descents were really sketchy. One in particular, I don’t recall exactly where now, was ridiculous. It came after a quite runnable section, so I was moving well and thus over-committed at the top. My feet tried to convey “Caution! Frictionless!” messages to my brain as I hit the downward slope, but not fast enough, and I careered on, basically skiing down with little in the way of control in the soupy slick layer of chalky mud. If I usually struggle for quick turnover, I certainly found it on that downhill, my feet were going like the clappers trying to find some purchase. It’s a minor miracle that I stayed upright and avoided taking out any other runners. Exciting!

I got to the Skirmett aid station (17.2km, 1h53, jam sarnies) in even better time than the first, very close to 5hr pace. Muppet. I stopped here for long enough to re-fill my Tailwind to my preferred double-strength, scoff a sarnie and head on out – two minutes total, not bad.

The defining features of the next section are a couple of big uphill hikes, one sketchy steep descent and one long very runnable downhill through the Stonor estate into the half-way point. I’d run this downhill just the previous Sunday, it was great! Some tree roots to dodge, but good time can be made over the 2km stretch and it’s just fun. We was robbed! Instead of the dry trail, we were greeted with someone’s nightmare vision of an impossible to run on slippery mess. Imagine the highly polished surface of the lanes at the bowling, with added butter and chuck in some Fairy liquid while you’re at it, then tip that up to a nice 10% gradient and oh, add a bit of a slant, an adverse camber, just for kicks. Horror story! I had to laugh out loud as I did my best to maintain any sort of pace down here. I did manage to stay upright, so I should be grateful for small mercies, many did not – the splat of a toppling runner was a common sound on that section, apparently. I got to Stonor (25km, 2h34, banana) but didn’t hang around for long, less than a minute.

If I was able to replicate my pace from the first half, I might squeeze under 5h10 which would be a good half hour under my 50k pb. While my legs did feel quite sprightly still, I was being gradually worn down by the extra effort required to run with much less than the usual amount of traction, and to stay upright! It is just tiring. The mud sucks at your feet, you’re using unfamiliar muscles to balance, and your head is working harder too, just thinking more about foot placement. The next section round to Hambleden (31.2km, 3h25, cheese sarnies) was just one hill after another, making it tough to establish any kind of rhythm, so with a bit more hiking on tired legs, my pace began to suffer, heading toward 5h30 overall. I re-upped my Tailwind for the final time at Hambleden, planning to skip the Bix aid station entirely and push on to the finish. It was in this final 10 miles or so that I finally had a sense of humour failure about the mud. It was relentless! There was some respite in the form of a longish section of road around Fawley – this was bliss, and I put down a couple of decent splits here, at least by mid-ultra standards. Sadly, it was not to last, and I was soon back in the sloppy mud, sliding about the place. Further respite was had on a long climb up toward Bix under the cover of an immense double hedge of big fir trees. No rain was getting down there, and there was a lovely carpet of needles. Nice.

I did pop into Bix (41.3km, 4h38) to top up fluids as the sun was out by this point and I didn’t want to be underhydrated in the final 9km. I was in and out though, less than a minute. A bit of jogging then hiking up a long drag, followed by yet another super muddy section, where I was overtaken by a few people while I cursed (again) my poor shoe choice and generally had a bit of a sulk. The last miles seemed to tick over very slowly, but tick over they did, and I eventually reached the final descent down into race HQ and the finish.

I managed to complete the race without falling over, something of an achievement for me in the best of conditions, and an absolute result in that gloop. In the end I was not far off 6hrs with 5h51 on the clock, 51st of 311 finishers in the men’s race, somewhat better than my normal mid-pack positioning. I’ll take that!

It was a fun race, and I think in drier conditions (or perhaps just with the correct shoes!) it might have been a 50k pb track. I’ll definitely be up for this one again.

I’ll be back in a couple of weeks with an update on March’s training for the increasingly imminent 100 milers.