Thames Path Ultra

There's no question that Saturday was the most crazy and demanding (in a good way) race I have ever taken part in so far!

As if a 50 mile ultra marathon isn't tough enough, trying to run through waist deep, River Thames water really was a good test for all the runners! Below is a clip from Rory Coleman, the guy who organised the event and I think he sums up what we went through really well!



We started at the same location aslast year (Kings Meadow, Reading) at 09:00 and headed off on what was going to be a long day. Within a few hundred metres we were heading through knee deep freezing water and we weren't even on the towpath at this point! Once we reached the towpath it became clear that even finishing the event might be optimistic. The towpath was ankle deep under water at best heading towards Sonning, so this instantly slowed the pack down to a run/walk on certain stretches. On arriving at Sonning bridge it became apparent that we could not continue along the towpath as we would be swimming rather than running and we just hadn't trained for that!

So, along with most runners we headed up the road and took a right turn to cut a corner by a few hundred metres, unfortunately this was a bad move as we quickly started to get immersed in water waist deep. As we battled through the water I realised that completing the race in a good time was probably going to be as much about which route we decided on, as much about our speed. With that lesson learnt, we headed to Henley on tarmac, as the towpath was in passable.

We reached Checkpoint 1 with no real problems in 1hr 40, just a bit wet! Probably the toughest section and most flooded was between CP1 and CP2. The first obstacle we came up against was a farmers wife who looked red in the face with anger...it appears a number (she claimed hundred's!) of runners had used her private road as a means to escape the flooded Thames Path. So we staggered back into the freezing water to join the towpath, which we couldn't see under all the water! It was on this particular section that Ben took the plunge! Already we had used Ben's walking poles, feeling for the depth of the water but we thought we had cleared the worst of it, when suddenly Ben sank into the Thames! A small hidden tributary had fooled us and Ben was up to his neck in water. The picture below taken at Cookham Dean, shows some of the shallower water!

We arrived at CP3 with a large group of runners, we suspected that this was the point in the race where the the people who'd taken the road option were now joining the Thames Path! We picked up our 500ml allocation of water and headed off within 2 mins of arriving at the CP, so as not to get caught behind the 'road runners' : )

From last year we knew that the next leg was the longest and sure enough it was the toughest again this year. With a couple of miles to go before the checkpoint we donned the head torches for the final push.

We reached CP4 feeling strong but unfortunately our running for the day had dried up. My left knee was starting to ache pretty badly, so we took the decision not to push anything too hard and just finish the event in a respectable time. We arrived at the Holiday Inn, Shepperton at 20:15, so it had taken 11hrs 15mins. We were really happy with that time as we knew that we were of only a handful of runners that had run nearly all the Thames Path.

I ran with my new Raidlight backpack with approx 6.5 kg's of weight at the start. It felt really good, with no rubbing and I completely forgot I was wearing it at points. BUT.....unfortunately when I got home and unpacked my bag I found a couple of small gashes on the back panel, so I've had to send it back for a replacement, whick Likeys are very happy to do. Fingers crossed it's back by the end of week for the Lake District trip!

The Thames Path Ultra was a brilliant event to take part in and the complete opposite to how the MdS will be in 9 weeks in many respects. With that said it was a really good test of our stamina levels and perhaps more importantly how strong we are mentally. I still don't know why we were happy to spend at least half a day knee deep in river water but we did!!!

I will post our actual route soon.