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My first ultra. I have come up with the following sentiment to describe the event quickly when asked. “I really enjoyed 43 kilometres of it, the other seven did not feel very good, but I still enjoyed them”. My target was to be close to 4 hours and 30 minutes and I surprised myself by being 5 minutes under than that. I even managed to do negative splits until the last few kms. It was sunny, I was eating an apple by the canal and running, I could not think of anything better than that.

Some funny bits. Right at the start a man was frantically on the phone (while running) because he forgot to put a parking ticket in his car at the start location, he sorted it. Around km 13 or so, a Kenyan man, or a man who could have been Kenyan and was wearing the most brightly coloured Kenya-flag long-shorts overtook me, I thought bye-bye sir have a great one. I realized something about ultra-distance races when, several hours later, I said bye-bye to him again. Towards the end, maybe 9km out, a boat was moving very slowly in the canal next to us, its name, Hakuna Matata. I am a fan, so in my very lucid, not at all affected by 4 hours running in the sun I tried to think of which lyric of the song I should shout at the boat crew to show my appreciation. My very lucid brain settled on “IT’S PROBLEM FREE”, which is not easy to say by itself under normal circumstances, try to say it quickly, “its”, “pr”, “br” and “fr” so many consonants in quick succession. But in any case, these were also my first out-loud words in several hours, after mainly eating gel-like food. What came out of my mouth sounded more like “TSPWOBLoMFROUW” which I got over quite quickly, I’m pretty sure they understood. Also, it’s not exactly the song lyric, that is “It’s a problem free(eeeeee)/ philosophy(eeeee)/ Hakuna Matata!”. If I could re-do it I would go for ” It means no worries” and I would rehearse it to myself and clear my throat before sharing.

Okay that’s all, wait no. Last thing, I was very lucky to have some friends waiting for me at the finish line. One arrived in time, as I had told them I would be finishing at 13:30 due to the 4:30 target time. I had agreed with them I would text them when I was 5km out, which I did I said “5k” then “Sorry I am a bit early”. It took me forty seconds at most to write this, nonetheless, ALL and my ONLY official race pictures show my salt covered-self texting while running, completely missing the photographer sitting right in the undergrowth by Markfield Park. No regrets, very amusing. 10/10 Would do it all over again.

The above nutrition was delivered for 4 hourse 25 minutes via: water, some kind of Precision hydration mix they had at the aid stations, 2.5 normal Kendal Mint Cakes and 2 chocolate covered Kendal Mint Cakes, 2 small apples, 2 Precision 30g gels and the rest was KMC gels which have both maltodextrin carbs and electrolytes.

Analysis:

The carbohydrate intake approached the upper absorption limit. This was much more than I had trained on, usually having 50g carbs/hr. Fluid volume intake was low (491ml/hr), creating a dense 19.4% carb concentration, isotonic sports drinks are around 8%. This high ratio is generally not easily tolerated but (1) the apples possibly helped settle the stomach by providing something solid plus fiber and (2) my gut “engine” so to speak may be naturally good at this (processing highly concentrated sugars while under physical stress), that’s lucky. Sodium intake was moderate to low (306mg/hr); and since I sweat very very salty apparently I should bump this up to 700mg–1000mg/hr next time. How can one tell? Well, it seems that not everyone finishes the race with a not-so-thin layer of salt on their skin.

My accidental aggressive and high-energy nutrition strategy was well tolerated and haleped me have a good time. In future, I should keep in mind the potential risk factor of carbs relative to fluid, which will cause issues in hotter conditions, that and more salt.

(18-03-2026) Long time no blog, race is very soon. I am very excited and looking forward. I have done many long runs, the mild injuries have gone away or subsided into what seems to be now a permanent non-painful issue I have to monitor and stretch specifically for. Training has gone well. And I believe I have not been too annoying (about my hobby) to the people around me.

(03-01-2026) I am thinking what made my hip flexor go. I wonder if it was the general volume plus the tendency to do back to back fast 5k for parkrun and then a very long run 30k was perhaps too aggressive. THe other day in the tempo run I had my first almost big toe blister, at least I now know where it will happen.

(02-01-2026) While the hip flexor is not fully tightness-free I can run again without any increased tightness the next day which according to everyone is a very good sign. So I went for a Zone 3 run today and broke my 10k and 15k PBs… I have also decided to claim ownership (metahorical as Strava Local Legend) over a few Strava segments in my surroundings. Mine, My own, My Segmentssss.

(06-12-2025 to 01-01-2026) Mild TFL tendinopathy happened right after the rest week. My hypotheses are: rest week was too aggressive, meaning, I did too little, followed by quite an aggressive restart which included a fast tempo run such as I had never done before. Followed by a fast hilly parkrun and a slow return home during which my hip flexor was already hurting!!! What a silly move. I massively reduced volume and intensity. And slowly the pain turned into tightness and the tighness very … very slowly is becoming less.

(05-12-2025) Two weeks ago I went on a 30k run and it was very good. Since then I have had a rest week and icnreased my mid runs to 75 minutes which right now gives me 14km. I am sleeping more but not feeling any major effects of this. I did feel the effects of the deload week. My long-run during the de-load week was fun, I run throuhg both pedestrian tunnels in east London and ended at the Tate & Lyle factory. I now have bought 4 new shorts since starting training… I am also switching to merino everything.

(08-11-2025) Ran a PB at parkrun in Hackney Marshes. There was an important mental element. The first kilometre was incredibly silly at 3:38 min/km pace. This is too fast and I am pleasantly surprised it did not have a worse impact than it did. I slowed down and then tried to keep the last 2km as close to 4 as possible. It worked and I even had energy for a kick at the end, 30 metres or so. Looking forward to the long one tomorrow.

(19-10-2025) The visualisations have reached their final form. I had two gels in the last long run, it does make a big difference. The training is working. It will be interesting to run at elevation next week. The new plots show the weekly mileage/time with hover to see individual runs, not as pretty as waterfall but more compact. The other tab shows physiological adaptation I hope. With lower HR for same pace runs as training Phases advance. I cannot figure out how to get perfect tick and axis labels.

(08-10-2025) Training is going well, I am running 3 to 4 times a week with no pain in either leg or foot. I am still cycling to work sometimes, I have even tried running to work, this is probably the most tryhard thing I have done in a long time. It is nice in the early morning it is not nice at rush-hour in the evening. I made some initial purchases for this new hobby, a small running backpack for the aforementioned runs to work even though the Osprey Nebula works surprisingly well it is too big. I got shorts with large mesh pockets to carry a flask and food, and a selection of different types of foods from Kendal Mint Company, surprisingly okay with their very minty cakes, have not tried the gels yet. I made an entire self contained app to visualise runs, heart rate stuff and sleep but I won’t integrate it here yet.

(27-09-2025) Added some waterfall plots to visualize weekly mileage and time spend running, also a not very useful average and sum by weekday.

(25/09/2025) I have signed up to the Lea Valley ultra-marathon. Ultra-marathon covers any distance over 42.195, meaning that most people that have run a marathon, have in fact run an ultra-marathon, well done guys. Call yourselves ultra-marathon finishers, its cooler. Anyway, The Lea Valley Ultra is a 50 km (31 miles) race from from Welwyn Garden City in Hertfordshire to Hackney Wick in East London.

I am not sure what this page will contain, probably visualisations, some descriptive statistics on my training. Maybe ideas about strength training, gear and nutrition (something I have never had to worry about, the longest I’ve ever run in one go is 22km). Right now I am thinking how to best organise the data for myself.