The Ridgeway Chase

When entries for Runaway Racing's Ridgeway races opened, my first instinct was to enter the full distance. 86 miles along one of Britain's oldest roads, tracing the spine of the Ridgeway through rolling hills, ancient woodland and open countryside.

It sounded glorious.

But it also sounded slightly ambitious.

The race fell at an awkward point in the year. While training had been going well, I knew I was not quite where I needed to be to do the full distance justice. So, for perhaps the first time in my ultra-running career, I made the sensible decision and entered the inaugural 60 km version instead: the Ridgeway Chase.

Off to a flying start. Quite literally. Because the race starts downhill...

I arrived at the start line without any real expectations. If everything aligned, perhaps I could sneak in somewhere towards the 7 to 7.5 hour mark. Mostly though, I wanted a good day out on the trails and an opportunity to explore some of my favourite parts of the Ridgeway.

Then race week arrived and England decided to become Spain.

Temperatures climbed rapidly, peaking at around 33 degrees in the days leading up to the race. I did what I could: Sauna sessions coupled with cold lake dips, and midday runs deliberately scheduled during the hottest part of the day.

But heat adaptation takes time, and time was the one thing I did not have. By Saturday morning, the forecast had settled somewhere around 28 degrees. As somebody who struggles in warm conditions at the best of times, I knew this race was going to ask different questions than the ones I had prepared for. For the first 22-ish miles, however, everything felt exactly as planned.

The Ridgeway was stunning. Long stretches of shaded trail wound through woodland, occasionally opening onto sweeping views across the Buckinghamshire countryside. The terrain was deceptively runnable in that particular ultra-running way, where the miles accumulate almost unnoticed until suddenly they do not.

My legs felt good. My pace felt comfortable. Nutrition was going in. I was moving well. I even remember thinking that perhaps the heat would not be quite as bad as expected.

Reader, this was an error.

Running along the top of Coombe Hill.

Of course, heat rarely announces itself dramatically. It arrives slowly but surely. You notice that you are a little thirstier than usual. You empty a bottle slightly sooner than expected. Food becomes marginally less appealing. And the pace requires a little more concentration to maintain.

Then, before you know it, the race you thought you were running has quietly disappeared and been replaced by an entirely different one.

Somewhere around the 25-mile mark, my digestive system staged a small but decisive protest. There was an emergency detour into a conveniently located bush, after which I emerged feeling surprisingly human again. For a while, at least.

The brief resurgence was enough to convince me that perhaps I had solved the problem. That perhaps all I needed was a quick reset before getting back to work. The heat, however, had other ideas.

As the temperature continued to climb, fuelling became increasingly difficult. Drinking became harder too, despite being desperately thirsty. It felt as though my body could not quite decide what it wanted from me.

Around me, other runners were fighting their own battles. The occasional sight of somebody bent over at the side of the trail. Faces that looked increasingly pale beneath sun hats and sunglasses.

There is something strangely reassuring about collective suffering.

Not because you want others to struggle, but because it reminds you that the conditions are genuinely tough. Sometimes it is not that you are weak. Sometimes the day is simply hard.

By 31 miles, the race had become an exercise in problem-solving. The legs went first. Not gradually. Not politely. One moment, they were functioning reasonably well, and the next, it felt as though somebody had removed the batteries.

I knew I needed salt. I knew I needed fluids. I knew I needed calories. The challenge was persuading my body to accept any of them.

Can you tell I am deep in the pain cave here? No, me neither.

At that point, finishing became less about racing and more about management. Managing effort. Managing discomfort. Managing expectations. Managing the growing temptation to feel sorry for myself.

Thankfully, I had help.

One of the greatest luxuries in ultra-running is having somebody willing to spend their entire day standing in random fields waiting for you to appear, looking increasingly feral.

Simon crewed me throughout the race, meeting me roughly every ten kilometres. By that stage, seeing him felt like spotting an oasis in the desert. Problems would be solved before I had fully explained them.

And, in what was undoubtedly one of the more popular innovations of the day, he had brought along our portable jet wash and spent the afternoon spraying exhausted runners with gloriously cold water. Including me. Particularly me.

Ultra-running can sometimes appear to be an individual sport. It is not. I am fairly certain he improved the mood of every overheated runner who passed through those car parks.

Every finish line rests on an invisible network of support. Partners, friends, volunteers, race organisers and strangers giving up their time so somebody else can spend a day running through the countryside.

I crossed the finish line in 8 hours and 15 minutes. Almost an hour slower than the optimistic version of the day I had imagined beforehand. Completely empty. But 9th female.

Not the dramatic kind of empty though. Not injured. Not broken. Simply depleted. The kind of tiredness that settles somewhere deeper than muscle fatigue.

What has surprised me most is not how hard the race felt at the time. It is how much I have thought about it since. Parts of the race felt harder than the 200-miler. The rational part of me knows that it cannot possibly be true. The version of me climbing out of Swyncombe in 30-degree heat would disagree.

Suffering has a funny way of shrinking your perspective. When things become difficult enough, the past disappears. The future disappears too. All that exists is the next climb, the next aid station or the next patch of shade. Perspective returns later. Usually, after a shower and some carbohydrates.

Yet this race seems to have left behind something more than the usual collection of sore muscles and questionable tan lines.

For years, I have trained myself to ignore discomfort. Ultra-running rewards that ability. You learn that fatigue is not an emergency. That low moments pass. That the body is capable of more than it initially suggests.

Most of the time, this is useful. Occasionally, however, it becomes difficult to distinguish between discomfort that should be ignored and discomfort that deserves attention.

Lately, I have found myself questioning sensations I would once have dismissed without a second thought. Is this normal fatigue? Residual fatigue from bigger past adventures? Heat stress? Overthinking? Age? Experience? Wisdom?

I genuinely do not know.

18 months have passed since the 200-miler, which feels like more than enough time to recover physically. Yet I sometimes wonder whether events like that leave traces that are harder to measure. Not damage. Just awareness.

Once you have spent long enough exploring the edges of your own limitations, perhaps you become more conscious of where those edges might be. Or perhaps I am simply getting older. That remains a possibility too.

Either way, I suspect that is why Ridgeway Chase continues to occupy my thoughts. Not because everything went perfectly. It did not. Not because I achieved the result I hoped for. I did not. But because races like this have a way of holding up a mirror.

They reveal weaknesses, expose assumptions and remind you how much there still is to learn. And despite struggling moving forward from somewhere around mile 31, I think that is exactly why I keep coming back.