Running My First Ultramarathon & The Lessons I Learnt

Reading the title of this blog, most people will probably want to know what an ultra marathon is and then once I explain, they will wonder what on earth possessed me to even want to try undertaking one. When they find out that I did this completely on my own accord, with a route and method completely designed myself and not part of an organised event, where you usually are fully supported, they’ll think I’m extra nuts. Oh, and add in the fact that I was barefoot!

What Is An Ultra?

By definition, an ultra marathon is a footrace that is longer than the traditional marathon distance of 26.2 miles or 42.2km. Technically a run that is 26.3 miles is an ultra marathon however the typical distance that events start at 50km or 31.25 miles.

Why?

A question I often get asked is “Just why?” and is typically phrased that way too. The answer to that stems from getting into a YouTube hole of running videos and coming across a few channels, such as Billy Yang, Vo2maxproductions (Sage Canaday), Rich Roll (mainly his story) and Run Steep Get High (Jamil Coury). Featuring documentaries about Hard Rock, Barkley Marathon and Western State, amongst others, not only did these runs feature some seriously amazing scenery that I wanted to go out and explore, the physical and mental test that one of these events brings about attracted me. I was especially intrigued about the emotional rollercoaster that some of the runners go through as they do them, going from euphoria to unexplained anger and/or tears and everything else in-between.

The Route I Took

As previously mentioned, this run was completely done on my own accord and wasn’t an organised event so everything that is usually organised for you, such as the course, aid stations and specific checkpoints were all down to me. To make sure that I stayed motivated and had a set place to run to mark the route, I picked three large parks near me to make sure I had some scenery to enjoy rather than the city streets, conveniently working out as roughly 10-15 mile loops each, starting and finishing at my home to allow me to use it as an aid station. If you check out the picture below, you’ll be able to ›see in full the route that I took.

It seemed like a solid route with each section getting progressively shorter but I didn’t account for the elevation change, which bit me at the end when my shortest route was also the hilliest… Real smooth of me!

Nutrition Used During

Nutrition is probably the most important thing for you to consider to make sure that keep yourself fuelled, hydrated and moving forwards. Let this slip and you’ll very quickly come unravelled through dehydration and what some call “bonking”, which is just running out of usable energy. When conducting one of these events, there are two things you need to think about when it comes to nutrition. Firstly, there’s what you’re going to carry with you so that you can take it in on the move. As you can imagine, whilst on the move, these need to be easy to chew and digest items or else you’re going to very quickly get an upset stomach and you’d be surprised how something as little as chewing can irritate you when deep into the run.

Wanting to make sure that I was hitting roughly the figures of 200-300 kcal per hour, I tired to make sure that I was eating a bar or gel every 15-20 minutes as I ran. My go to set up of food to carry for the run was as follow:

2 litres of water in a hydration pack
Naked bars – A soft fruit and nut based bar that come in a range of tasty flavours and roughly 140 calories per bar, depending on the flavour
SIS gels – A mixture of the flavoured gels with an added caffeine for that extra pick me up as I ran, containing roughly 90 calories per gel, depending on the flavour.

Secondly, there’s what I was going to consume when I got back to my “aid station”. The first thing I needed to do was take in the lost electrolytes and salts that I was losing through sweat. My method for doing this was by using SIS hydration tabs in a drink, as instructed and drank it while I restocked my hydration pack with food and gels. As for the food that I was consuming whilst here, I continued to keep it all light, eating just fruit that I would have found awkward to carry on me. I had planned to try and replace the protein lost with a light plant based shake but when I got back the first time, I couldn’t stand the thought of it.

Disclaimer: I realise that I’m by no means a sports nutritionalist and all the assumptions used were based on tips and suggestions I’d seen from other and ultimately, was an experiment on what I did and didn’t agree with. This is something that everyone should do as we are all different in our make up and what works for me, may not work for you.

How Do It Go?

Leg One – Distance: 14.2 miles Landmark: Wollation Hall

And I was off! My bag was packed, watch set to run and I waved goodbye to home for the first leg. How did I feel about the day ahead? I must admit calm and excited to see what the day would bring, the time I could achieve and what I would learn about myself along the way as I embarked on this adventure of self discovery.

The route to Wollaton Hall wasn’t particular exciting, I must admit. The first section of the route followed a four lane main road past one of the city’s hospitals and the sporting grounds of one of the private schools. The story didn’t change really until I hit the grounds of Wollaton Hall, passing smaller parks, residential areas, busy junctions and some more sporting grounds and school.

With the size of Wollaton Hall’s estate, I was about to get a few miles in amongst the green and wooded grounds, running around the accessible edge of it. As you follow the eastern edge, you handrail the golf course, heading south and coming up behind the hall itself before continuing down one of the long paths, hitting the wooded area. This gave some much needed shelter from the sunshine as I followed the route through the woods, popping out at the southern tip of the large lake, which reaches out in front of you up to the hall. I continued my route north along the western limits before I was back at the gate I started at. This left the length of the road I’d used to get here to head back home and to my first stop. But first, it was time to grand a photo!

As I returned back to “aid station”, I was feeling good, I was well over a third of the way into things and I was ready to refuel. I feel this is where I made my first mistake. Eager to get back out on the road and knowing that nature was calling, I rushed my nutrition. One of the mistakes made here was downing my pint of water with the hydration tab in. Initially, this didn’t feel like too much of an issue but you’ll see later on that I turned into one.

Leg Two – Distance: 9.3 miles Landmark: Bestwood Country Park

Leg two commenced and all seemed pretty good until I got around 1.5-2 miles into it. This is when I had my first spell of nausea. I think I can put this down to the hydration tab drink that I downed and then decided to head out running straight away with in my stomach. With this came the first slowing of the pace, as whenever I tried to push, the nausea would come back so this limited my speed but I proceeded to keep moving forward.

Typically just my luck, as I got to the midpoint of this leg and the furthest point from home, was when my left quad decided it was time to seize up. This significantly slowed the pace and brought about a spell of walking/running, breaking down the route into smaller milestones until I was home to make it manageable. As to that brought on this seizure and discomfort, I feel there are two possible explanations: either bad nutrition or my conditioning wasn’t in the right place, or maybe even a mixture of the two.

Don’t worry, as I was struggling through things, I made sure to try and appreciate the locations that I was in. Bestwood Country Park is a great place for a weekend walk or a run, giving long winding trails, that weave through the woods, branching off in various directions. On a sunny day, this looks even better with the rays of sunlight piercing the tree tops above. Then you emerge out into fields towards the west, where you can go to the high point, giving views that stretch out over Nottinghamshire , or head down towards the lake to the north west.

With plenty of wildlife scattered across the lake, this was a lovely place for a picnic or a stroll around the trails, that many were doing in the afternoon sunshine, as I was plodding on to get my task complete. I decided to go for my photo opportunity at the northern tip of the lake, which has a pleasant and relaxing stream running into it and was a place for me to just recompose myself before I was back to it, taking on the winding trails again as it went back uphill, getting ever closer to my next stop.

As I walked it back into my “aid station’, there were some serious doubts about my ability to finish this and some apprehension of having one leg left to do. Physically, I was in some discomfort and this started to grind down on my mental resilience. The cheerful chap that was excitedly running through the streets of Nottingham was well and truly gone!

Leg Three – Distance: 7.8 miles Landmark: Gedling Country Park

This leg was a gruelling one. Thought it was the shortest of the three legs, which you’d think is a good thing, it was also the hilliest of the three. Some great planning on my part but at the same time, I wasn’t expecting to feel like this when I drew up the route. Another thing with this part of the route, though the country park was my aim, I knew that this part of the route was designed to purely add miles in so the want to take shortcuts to get it done didn’t help at all.

As I left, gingerly, I glanced back at my family waving me off, voicing my concerns but got back to it, with the comfort that this was the final leg and then it would all be over. The beginning of this route was straight down hill to only then take a gradual incline back up before hitting a flat section towards the park, all within the local residential area. Hitting the park, this was a little more scenic but was up and down, up and down and… up and down. Though a more pleasant place to be than the streets of residential areas, the hills were killing me and my left quad was screaming out. My biomechanics, in the sense of stride length, was being affected and I was overcompensating elsewhere. Slow and steady wins the race right? I feel the picture here perfectly encapsulates how I felt at the time.

I took the route that I’d taken here back, grinding out each mile bit by bit. It was whilst doing this, checking the watch and weighing up how much longer it would take to hit the 35 mile target, that I had to make a serious decision about the finish of this “race”.

Finish

At the end of the run, based on the pain that I had in my left quad and right achilles, I decided to cut the run short. Though I could have finished the nominated distance that I’d given myself of 35 miles, the amount of time that it would have taken me would have meant that the rest of my evening with family would have been ruined so I made the decision to cut the run down to 50km, which I deemed to be a sufficient distance in the ultra realm.

So my final time when I crossed the finish line: 5 hours 22 minutes 35 seconds, at a pace of 10:17 per mile. I was somewhat disappointed to have finished in such a manner and to have dropped off so much. However, I was proud of myself to actually finish an ultramarathon and glad to have learnt all the lessons I had to take forward into the future for my next one.

Lessons Learnt

With any big event, there were a lot of lessons to be learnt, which I’m glad to have picked up during an amateur event like this rather than on the big stage of an organised one, with a relatively large safety net on hand.

Nutrition Management

There were two lessons to be learnt here from what I went through. Initially I started quite disciplined on this front, making sure that I was eating every 15-20 minutes whilst I was running without fail. As I got more and more tired, my discipline on this front dropped and I wasn’t keeping it up, which must have had an effect on my energy levels, mentally and physically. The other lesson that I learnt was not to rush it, as I found out during my first stop. Rushing that drink really caused me issues once into the flow of the second leg and this loss of momentum I feel had a detrimental effect, signalling the very slight beginning of the end.

Getting My Pacing Wrong

Looking back, I was too confident and full of adrenaline that I got carried away and had to keep reminding myself to slow down with the pace. Though I did slow down to what I felt was a pace I could maintain, that was for a run a third of the length of this one and I didn’t take into account that I would need to hone it down that touch more than usual for the distance. Next time, I will have to ensure that the pace discipline is kept to so that I don’t go off to quickly, leave some left in the tank for later on and ultimately, make the third in this case simply gruelling.

Requirement of Better Training

The tale of two levels of performance during the run to me highlighted my training and where it was lacking. The first 15-16 miles were strong and the pace during was good, knowing that this was within the realm of distances I’d comfortably covered. Moving into the second half of proceedings, I was into the territory of the unknown and it showed. My pace dropped off considerably. Moving forward, I will make sure that my training covers some longer distances, giving myself experience at them, knowledge on how to control the pace better and more experience of the nutrition require, building the disciple to actually take it in!

Poor Body Condition

Doing something so strenuous and repetitive as run a distance like 50km tends to highlight the issues and imbalances you never released that you truly had. It was a tough and frustrating lesson to learn as I felt things seizure up, get sore and me start of overcompensate with my biomechanics. By the end, I was able to consciously note where and what was wrong with me, giving me areas to address.

Barefoot Running Is Amazing

One thing you’re probably wondering about this run is how did my feet hold up to the long mileage when using barefoot shoes. The answer? They were in exactly the same condition as they were at the start! Often you see people finish long runs, wearing conventional shoes, and their feet a battered, bruised, blistered and not in a great way at all. My feet on the other hand with the barefoot shoes were in grand condition, and I feel the rest of my body was thanking me for running this way.

The shoes that I have used for the past 18 months and absolutely love are those made by Vivobarefoot. Personally, these have completely changed my running, and that was thanks to the help of their awesome running coach, Ben. I can’t recommend these enough to someone! Interested in then? Then head to one of the links below to check them and get yourself a pair!

I hope that you enjoyed reading about my experiences of my first ultra marathon and were able to learn something from it, allowing you to use this advice for your own running event or similar endurance sports that you take part in. Whilst you’re here, be sure to check out the other tabs at the top of the page to see what else I’ve written about. Then be sure to check out my social media pages below, make sure you follow them and you can be one of the first to hear about when a new blog post is released!