Running

Well that was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, maybe a 40 mile Ultra as a first would have been the more sensible option.

I went into it not having run for almost a fortnight with really bad achilles pain, from the start I didn't feel great but by 20 miles my achilles pain had miraculously vanished and didn't bother me for the rest of the race.

I was out on my feet by the halfway checkpoint and if there had been an easy pull out option I would have taken it, after a bit of food and a coffee I had a half decent 10 mile section to 40 miles but that's where the wheels really fell off.

I sat down for a little while and could barely stand or walk afterwards, 40 to 50 miles was dreadful. I couldn't eat or drink as my guts were in bits and it coincided with the worst part of the course along an 'A' road, so it just went on and on and on.

Then something weird happened, I sat down at the last pit stop with 11.2 km to go had some lovely lemon tart and a coffee and stood up a new man.

Stormed the last 10k which was dark by now, up on my toes for the first time in the race following the glow sticks into Avebury for a well deserved pint.

I wanted sub 12 hours but knew that wasn't on from very early on, in the end I finished 100km in 14 hours 21 minutes. I was disappointed at first but on reflection I'm pretty happy considering the build up and state I was in at points.

Only disappointing aspect was that my wife refused to leave me to die in a ditch so sacrificed her race to drag me along to the finish, I think on her own she would have smashed 12 hours.