That was pretty hard to say the least - for me it was the pain you get towards the end of a marathon but for another 25miles. So hard.
I made a couple of poor eating choices early on (ate too much) and my stomach just turned and from 25 miles on I could barely eat anything. I've never had this happen to me before. I use to always say, 'How can people not eat after running etc....Just put food in your mouth and swollow, full stop'. What an idiot I was as yesterday for the first time I couldn't stomach a thing for the second half. My thinking or guess work as I hadn't run the distance before was maybe after about 20miles why not eat the equal of a big meal then maybe it would be like starting again after that. I tried this, within the first 20miles i ate 2 cliff bars, a 9bar, 2 cliff shots and a whole malt loaf. I thought I'd be fine doing this, I was so wrong and ended going a little bit sick at mile 28 and this ment I hit a really bad patch till about mile 33. I went from 2nd down to 6th in the space of a mile or two, had lost loads of motivation, felt a little ill and was already in pain so all sorts of negative thoughts were happening.
33/34 miles something changed, not much, I still couldn't stomach food and I still felt tired but I sort of found some sort of rythum and ended up running or shuffling all the way to the end. Walking just stopped the rythum so I just kept running no way was I stopping, I was afraid of hitting another proper low. I ended up just breaking it up to 10milers where the checkpoints were, which was still a killer.
About 3-4 miles from the end I recognised Llandaf, this gave me a bit of a boost as all of a sudden I knew where I was so I just plodded to the end where I'd never been so relieved to get to the end.
My stomach was tender all the way and even at the end I couldnt stomach food which I was shocked at. I couldn't eat after running 50 miles!!! Didn't make sense. I ended up not eating until I got home, then I got a chinese takeaway but more just because I needed calories more than wanted. Weird! Probably now next few days I might be pretty hungry.
If I ever did another, I'd change the eating to little and often and I'd probably start a bit slower. The guy who won was an Irish International and I was running pretty much with him for the first half which didn't make sense really. There we are, it was hard to say because the pace at the start was easy and felt so comfortable. The only difference was the winner kept it up mostly all the way whilst the rest of us faded a bit more.
I got to the end and said 'I don't think I could do another ultra marathon', this morning I'm on 'maybe I'd do another' woooops!
With the ultra done, im going to continue to update the blog covering all things running aswell as other aspects fitness and nutrition whilst I decide what challenge takes my fancy :)
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