The St Peter’s Way is a 45 mile footpath meandering through the countryside of Essex, from Chipping Ongar to the ancient chapel of St Peter-on-the-Wall at Bradwell on Sea.
A last minute plea on Twitter for volunteers at the St Peters Way ultra led to me signing up to help. I like Challenge Running, and thought it would be a welcome change to be the other side of the checkpoint table.
However, what started out as a mission to help others complete an ultra would turn into an unintentional ultra of my own.
I had planned to drive up to Ongar in Essex in the morning; but two days before the race, my car started to make goat noises. I dropped it off at the garage and researched the train journey instead. I quickly found that trains to Ongar wouldn't get me to the race on time, so I did what any proper ultra runner wouldn't do: opted to cycle the 30 miles from London up to the race in the morning, and cycle home later in the evening after the race.
I don't own a GPS watch, and at 4am on the morning of the race, I realised I didn't even have a road map for that part of the country. I decided to use Google Maps GPS on my phone, and set off in the darkness.
Despite the promise of no rain by the weather forecast, the rain started almost immediately. Not even a mile out of Camden Town, my hands were already numb and I was soaked through. As I slowly rolled through a deserted East London at 5am on Sunday, the spoken GPS instructions echoed around the empty streets and gradually guided me on my way.
After navigating a few scary roundabouts on the edge of London, the rain lifted and the sun started to come up over some colourful fields to my right. It wasn't long before I had coasted the remaining hour of the journey in time for the 7am marshal's brief.
After navigating a few scary roundabouts on the edge of London, the rain lifted and the sun started to come up over some colourful fields to my right. It wasn't long before I had coasted the remaining hour of the journey in time for the 7am marshal's brief.
I arrived with 10 minutes to spare. While race director Lindley Chambers's was slightly confused to see me arrive on a bike, I was happy to have arrived at all.
I opened my bag to grab some food - and though I had very carefully packed spare inner tubes, tyre levers, and bike oil, I realised I'd accidentally left all of my day's food in the fridge at home. Spending a full day at check points without food leads to one thing: eating children's party food all day. The thought of 8 hours of crisps and cake did not appeal to me, so I made a sneaky dash to the local petrol station to stock up on some real food.
Armed with a large Tesco Metro bag full of fruit and nuts, I returned to the start line of the race for the marshal's brief. A summary of our instructions was, "Make sure runners are wearing water proofs towards the end, and please don't put any wet crisps out for runners." I considered suggesting that we ensure the crisps were wearing water proofs, but didn't want to be fired from my new lofty position as check point assistant. I had half been expecting instructions about how to put up aid station tents and a brief first aid tutorial, but it was good to know that the worst we could expect was some soggy crisps.
We were then paired off into check point teams. Here, I met the legendary Karen Weber. She is the "check point God" of the UK ultra running scene, as one fellow marshal told me. Karen greeted me by saying, "Oh you must be Kris. My new check point bitch!". Not 20 minutes into my role as check point assistant, and I had been promoted to check point bitch. I knew already that it would be a good day.
I quickly found out that Karen runs a tight ship at her check points. If any runners were going to be rude to the marshals, they'd be best of not being rude to her - I got the impression that she would take off her shoe and spank any naughty runners on the bum before sending them scrambling out of the check point.
I tagged along with Karen and the rest of her check point bitches for the whole day. We raced away from the start line in a car packed to the ceiling with party food. We were worried about getting the check point set up and food ready by the time the first runner, Richard Ashton, came storming through.
As it turns out, we needn't have rushed around. Richard came sprinting through just as the last crisps had been put neatly into paper bowls; but he didn't even take a jelly bean. He stopped just long enough to top up his bottle with water and then carried on sprinting down the road. I wondered if he knew he still had 40 miles to go. (Spoiler: he did.)
The rest of the runners filed through quickly enough, and before we knew it, we'd packed up the check point and moved on to check point fo--- well, I assumed we'd head on to check point four, but in actual fact we ended up in a pub.
On the way to the pub, Karen told me her take on Allan Rumbles' Gateway blog which ended up shutting down the race. She was helping out a runner during the event, so it was interesting to hear how badly organised the Thames Gateway was in comparison to the plethora of other races she's helped at.
After a few drinks at the pub, Team Karen was fully boozed up. However, I do not drink, so I was pretty much exempt from the chemically induced sense of calm that had overcome the team. Shifting around nervously, I was having problems containing my sense of urgency. I had visions of runners arriving at the check point with only a wet plate of crisps available. Thankfully, a fellow marshal who had his car decided to head on up to the check point. So I went with him to the designated patch of grass where we would set up the final check point for the runners.
It had turned into an extremely wet, blustery day. Between the two of us, we tried to set up the gazebo on a small patch of wet grass next to a quiet lay-by. We managed to get the tent upright, but the tent pegs wouldn't stay in the damp ground, and the wind kept trying to blow the whole structure away. My sense of urgency quickly turned to panic as we both held one leg of the tent each and hoped that the tent wouldn't become airborne, taking both of us with it. We couldn't put the tent down again because if either of us let go of one of the legs, we'd have lost the tent.
It was in this position that we both stayed for around 4 to 5 minutes - until the rest of Team Karen showed up, swaying tipsily in the wind, all laughing at us two idiotic-looking tent huggers. "What are you two standing arond for, we've got a check point to set up!", one arriving marshal helpfully offered. After a good chuckle, they finally intervened and helped us collapse the tent.
Karen's experience shone through as she pointed out that we should probably not set up the check point on marsh land - instead suggesting we set it up on the dry patch of grass nearby. Well, when put like that, it sounds obvious. But when in check-point panic mode, common sense should not be taken for granted. She recommended that we not bother with the gazebo either; we just braved the elements instead - even if we were more at risk from soggy crisps.
Soon enough, the front runners came through. We saw all the same runners in more or less the same order - the only difference from our perspective was that they looked a lot dirtier. However, due to an ingenious contraption that one of the marshals had set up (a plastic box placed on its side weighed down by four bottles of coke), there wasn't a wet crisp in sight, and the runners passed through happily enough.
Richard Ashton was still in the lead in the men's race (by a stonking 30 minutes), and Naomi Newton-Fisher, who I'd met briefly at the Stort30, was hot on the heels of Charley Jennings (Charley would go on to win by 7 minutes).
It was some time before the final two runners arrived into the check point. One of the runners was an American guy who explained to us that each year he and two of his university friends take a vacation to somewhere unusual. 2014's trip was to England, where they had decided to run the St Peters Way Ultra. None of them had ever run an ultra before, but in his words, "This just looked like a fun thing to do, so we registered."
To his eternal credit, even though he was in joint last place, the American runner was in great spirits. Rather than looking tired, he seemed more embarassed that he had kept us all waiting for him to pass through. Suddenly, from out of a bush, appeared the two course sweepers.
The sweepers' job was firstly to clean up any litter or course markings left on the route, and secondly, to make sure no runners became lost or left behind. The sweepers looked utterly devastated to find the two last competing runners still at the check point. "Oh damn it, we've been trying to avoid you all day! We thought you'd already left the check point!"
Both sweepers had spent all day trying to stay out of view of the last-placed runners to avoid making them feel 'hunted' by the cut off times. "We've spent the entire day hiding in bushes to avoid being seen!," one sweeper said. "Well, and the pub," the other added. "Yeah, bushes in pubs."
The happy band of four runners soon sauntered off into the distance on the final leg of their race.
We dismantled the check point at break-neck speed, threw it all into the various remaining cars. By the time we'd driven to the finish, it was completely dark. It was at this point that the reality of having to cycle back to London really hit me. I was all out of food, it was pitch black, I was tired, and I still had a three-hour cycle ahead of me in the cold rain.
I had to run up the path to the amazing Chapel of St Peter-on-the-Wall which is the finish line. I grabbed my cycling kit from race director Lindley, and sprinted back down the path in the dark to the shuttle bus that would take me back... to my bike. Oh Christ.
An hour later we arrived back at the start line, and everyone went their separate ways home. Which for me, meant setting up my bike head lamps and putting on my helmet.
I got my phone out of my pocket and set a course for home... except that my phone had run out of power. I'd forgotten to turn it off after arriving at the race! I felt like an absolute idiot. I would have to make the winding journey through Essex back to London without any kind of navigational aid - not even a paper map - just my memory of the route.
I set off in the pouring rain and within about four seconds I was soaked from head to toe by the rain. I also have Raynaud's phenomenon, which is a condition that makes sufferers' hands go white-numb when the temperature drops below a certain mild temperature.
The conditions on the road were awful:
- There are no street lights in that part of Essex.
- There were no street signs pointing me back to London.
- There was nobody out on the streets to ask directions.
- The roads were pot-holled and wet.
- There was road-kill all over the place. I kept re-running over hedgehogs. I also counted two pheasants and a badger. I was in such a foul mood thinking about my own stupidity that I swore at that dead badger. That poor bloody badger.
- Cars were racing past me at such a speed that it felt like the wind would knock me off each time they passed. The roads I was using were national speed limits (60mph), and though I was lit up like a Christmas tree, I was never 100% sure that they'd see me.
I have no idea how I sucessfully navigated my way through pitch-black Essex back to the edge of London. Even to this day, it remains an absolute mystery to me. I had absolutely no idea where I was, and had no memory of any of the roads which I was on. Everything looked new to me, and I didn't even have the moon to navigate with. I just kept on turning down roads that seemed like they led to home.
So an hour and a half into my horrible journey, I was understandably grateful to be back onto the familiar roads of East London. I cycled down to Leytonstone and was pleased to see signs pointing back to Dalston. Wait... Dalston? Was that right? I had to get back to Camden Town, but could not quite piece together the geography of London in my head at 10pm on a dark Sunday evening. Dalston seemed close enough to me, so I followed signs towards Dalston. Unfortunately, signs pointing to Dalston turned into signs pointing back to Leytonstone. Not 15 minutes later, I unintentionally found myself back in Leytonstone. I'd managed to navigate the hardest part of my journey, and now that I was in London, I was getting lost. "How is this happening?" I asked myself.
I soon found myself doing an impromptu tour of the Olympic Village. I had an idea in my head that if I headed south towards the river, I would soon come to the Regent's Canal which would take me straight home. So I was therefore quite excited when I found the canal in Stratford. However, the canal turned out to be a) closed, and b) the wrong canal. Peole say the Tour de France is the hardest cycle race on earth, but those cyclists at least have other people to ride with - and they have doping. I had neither of these things; but more than anything, I just wanted to find the Regent's Canal to whisk me home.
Another 20 minutes of searching, and I finally found the Regent's Canal. I followed the canal to a point where I know there is a gate that allows people on and off the canal. Except the gate was locked. My heart briefly sank, but the desire to be home was much stronger than to be put off by a puny gate. The gate was about chest high, and I said out loud to myself, "It's going to take much more than a chest high gate to stop me getting home at the moment." I picked up my bike and chucked it over the gate and then threw myself over after it.
I cycled down the Regent's Canal towards Camden faster than I'd ever done before, but it seemed to take twice as long as usual. My fingers had started to go hard, which is the first sign for Reynaud's sufferers that frost bite is about to set in. My gloves were soaked through with icy water and there was literally nothing I could do to warm them up while on the bike. My legs were heavy with all the cycling, and I was starting to get light headed from the mixture of lack of sleep and lack of food.
Was that it? Were my troubles to end? Home at last? Not quite. Where the path leaves the canal at Angel and then rejoins it near King's Cross, there were electricity works underway. The builders had dug up the pavement which led back to the canal path, and there was absolutely no way round the hole that they had dug due to a fence each side of the path.
I was in no mood to head back up the path to an extra mile to my journey just to go round the road works. "Nice try, you fools," I defiantly announced to nobody in particular. I picked up my bike, put it over my shoulder and stepped round the safety barrier which was protecting the exposed electrical wires beneath the pavement. As I hurdled the hole, I was half expecting to be electrocuted from beneath - "Well, at least then I'd get home in ambulance" was my reasoning - but much to my surprise, I passed unelectrocuted, free to continue my journey back to Camden Town.
As I completed the final 15 minutes along the home stretch of the canal, I remember laughing out loud to myself in a giddy sort of way. It was a laugh of victory, but also a laugh at myself. What an idiot I am. What a hilariously stupid decision to cycle to and from a race 30 miles away in such conditions.
Finally I arrived home, warmed up my hands, and collapsed in bed.
The perfect ultra training session.
I opened my bag to grab some food - and though I had very carefully packed spare inner tubes, tyre levers, and bike oil, I realised I'd accidentally left all of my day's food in the fridge at home. Spending a full day at check points without food leads to one thing: eating children's party food all day. The thought of 8 hours of crisps and cake did not appeal to me, so I made a sneaky dash to the local petrol station to stock up on some real food.
Armed with a large Tesco Metro bag full of fruit and nuts, I returned to the start line of the race for the marshal's brief. A summary of our instructions was, "Make sure runners are wearing water proofs towards the end, and please don't put any wet crisps out for runners." I considered suggesting that we ensure the crisps were wearing water proofs, but didn't want to be fired from my new lofty position as check point assistant. I had half been expecting instructions about how to put up aid station tents and a brief first aid tutorial, but it was good to know that the worst we could expect was some soggy crisps.
We were then paired off into check point teams. Here, I met the legendary Karen Weber. She is the "check point God" of the UK ultra running scene, as one fellow marshal told me. Karen greeted me by saying, "Oh you must be Kris. My new check point bitch!". Not 20 minutes into my role as check point assistant, and I had been promoted to check point bitch. I knew already that it would be a good day.
I quickly found out that Karen runs a tight ship at her check points. If any runners were going to be rude to the marshals, they'd be best of not being rude to her - I got the impression that she would take off her shoe and spank any naughty runners on the bum before sending them scrambling out of the check point.
I tagged along with Karen and the rest of her check point bitches for the whole day. We raced away from the start line in a car packed to the ceiling with party food. We were worried about getting the check point set up and food ready by the time the first runner, Richard Ashton, came storming through.
As it turns out, we needn't have rushed around. Richard came sprinting through just as the last crisps had been put neatly into paper bowls; but he didn't even take a jelly bean. He stopped just long enough to top up his bottle with water and then carried on sprinting down the road. I wondered if he knew he still had 40 miles to go. (Spoiler: he did.)
The rest of the runners filed through quickly enough, and before we knew it, we'd packed up the check point and moved on to check point fo--- well, I assumed we'd head on to check point four, but in actual fact we ended up in a pub.
On the way to the pub, Karen told me her take on Allan Rumbles' Gateway blog which ended up shutting down the race. She was helping out a runner during the event, so it was interesting to hear how badly organised the Thames Gateway was in comparison to the plethora of other races she's helped at.
After a few drinks at the pub, Team Karen was fully boozed up. However, I do not drink, so I was pretty much exempt from the chemically induced sense of calm that had overcome the team. Shifting around nervously, I was having problems containing my sense of urgency. I had visions of runners arriving at the check point with only a wet plate of crisps available. Thankfully, a fellow marshal who had his car decided to head on up to the check point. So I went with him to the designated patch of grass where we would set up the final check point for the runners.
It had turned into an extremely wet, blustery day. Between the two of us, we tried to set up the gazebo on a small patch of wet grass next to a quiet lay-by. We managed to get the tent upright, but the tent pegs wouldn't stay in the damp ground, and the wind kept trying to blow the whole structure away. My sense of urgency quickly turned to panic as we both held one leg of the tent each and hoped that the tent wouldn't become airborne, taking both of us with it. We couldn't put the tent down again because if either of us let go of one of the legs, we'd have lost the tent.
It was in this position that we both stayed for around 4 to 5 minutes - until the rest of Team Karen showed up, swaying tipsily in the wind, all laughing at us two idiotic-looking tent huggers. "What are you two standing arond for, we've got a check point to set up!", one arriving marshal helpfully offered. After a good chuckle, they finally intervened and helped us collapse the tent.
Karen's experience shone through as she pointed out that we should probably not set up the check point on marsh land - instead suggesting we set it up on the dry patch of grass nearby. Well, when put like that, it sounds obvious. But when in check-point panic mode, common sense should not be taken for granted. She recommended that we not bother with the gazebo either; we just braved the elements instead - even if we were more at risk from soggy crisps.
Soon enough, the front runners came through. We saw all the same runners in more or less the same order - the only difference from our perspective was that they looked a lot dirtier. However, due to an ingenious contraption that one of the marshals had set up (a plastic box placed on its side weighed down by four bottles of coke), there wasn't a wet crisp in sight, and the runners passed through happily enough.
Richard Ashton was still in the lead in the men's race (by a stonking 30 minutes), and Naomi Newton-Fisher, who I'd met briefly at the Stort30, was hot on the heels of Charley Jennings (Charley would go on to win by 7 minutes).
It was some time before the final two runners arrived into the check point. One of the runners was an American guy who explained to us that each year he and two of his university friends take a vacation to somewhere unusual. 2014's trip was to England, where they had decided to run the St Peters Way Ultra. None of them had ever run an ultra before, but in his words, "This just looked like a fun thing to do, so we registered."
To his eternal credit, even though he was in joint last place, the American runner was in great spirits. Rather than looking tired, he seemed more embarassed that he had kept us all waiting for him to pass through. Suddenly, from out of a bush, appeared the two course sweepers.
The sweepers' job was firstly to clean up any litter or course markings left on the route, and secondly, to make sure no runners became lost or left behind. The sweepers looked utterly devastated to find the two last competing runners still at the check point. "Oh damn it, we've been trying to avoid you all day! We thought you'd already left the check point!"
Both sweepers had spent all day trying to stay out of view of the last-placed runners to avoid making them feel 'hunted' by the cut off times. "We've spent the entire day hiding in bushes to avoid being seen!," one sweeper said. "Well, and the pub," the other added. "Yeah, bushes in pubs."
The happy band of four runners soon sauntered off into the distance on the final leg of their race.
We dismantled the check point at break-neck speed, threw it all into the various remaining cars. By the time we'd driven to the finish, it was completely dark. It was at this point that the reality of having to cycle back to London really hit me. I was all out of food, it was pitch black, I was tired, and I still had a three-hour cycle ahead of me in the cold rain.
I had to run up the path to the amazing Chapel of St Peter-on-the-Wall which is the finish line. I grabbed my cycling kit from race director Lindley, and sprinted back down the path in the dark to the shuttle bus that would take me back... to my bike. Oh Christ.
An hour later we arrived back at the start line, and everyone went their separate ways home. Which for me, meant setting up my bike head lamps and putting on my helmet.
I got my phone out of my pocket and set a course for home... except that my phone had run out of power. I'd forgotten to turn it off after arriving at the race! I felt like an absolute idiot. I would have to make the winding journey through Essex back to London without any kind of navigational aid - not even a paper map - just my memory of the route.
I set off in the pouring rain and within about four seconds I was soaked from head to toe by the rain. I also have Raynaud's phenomenon, which is a condition that makes sufferers' hands go white-numb when the temperature drops below a certain mild temperature.
The conditions on the road were awful:
- There are no street lights in that part of Essex.
- There were no street signs pointing me back to London.
- There was nobody out on the streets to ask directions.
- The roads were pot-holled and wet.
- There was road-kill all over the place. I kept re-running over hedgehogs. I also counted two pheasants and a badger. I was in such a foul mood thinking about my own stupidity that I swore at that dead badger. That poor bloody badger.
- Cars were racing past me at such a speed that it felt like the wind would knock me off each time they passed. The roads I was using were national speed limits (60mph), and though I was lit up like a Christmas tree, I was never 100% sure that they'd see me.
I have no idea how I sucessfully navigated my way through pitch-black Essex back to the edge of London. Even to this day, it remains an absolute mystery to me. I had absolutely no idea where I was, and had no memory of any of the roads which I was on. Everything looked new to me, and I didn't even have the moon to navigate with. I just kept on turning down roads that seemed like they led to home.
So an hour and a half into my horrible journey, I was understandably grateful to be back onto the familiar roads of East London. I cycled down to Leytonstone and was pleased to see signs pointing back to Dalston. Wait... Dalston? Was that right? I had to get back to Camden Town, but could not quite piece together the geography of London in my head at 10pm on a dark Sunday evening. Dalston seemed close enough to me, so I followed signs towards Dalston. Unfortunately, signs pointing to Dalston turned into signs pointing back to Leytonstone. Not 15 minutes later, I unintentionally found myself back in Leytonstone. I'd managed to navigate the hardest part of my journey, and now that I was in London, I was getting lost. "How is this happening?" I asked myself.
I soon found myself doing an impromptu tour of the Olympic Village. I had an idea in my head that if I headed south towards the river, I would soon come to the Regent's Canal which would take me straight home. So I was therefore quite excited when I found the canal in Stratford. However, the canal turned out to be a) closed, and b) the wrong canal. Peole say the Tour de France is the hardest cycle race on earth, but those cyclists at least have other people to ride with - and they have doping. I had neither of these things; but more than anything, I just wanted to find the Regent's Canal to whisk me home.
Another 20 minutes of searching, and I finally found the Regent's Canal. I followed the canal to a point where I know there is a gate that allows people on and off the canal. Except the gate was locked. My heart briefly sank, but the desire to be home was much stronger than to be put off by a puny gate. The gate was about chest high, and I said out loud to myself, "It's going to take much more than a chest high gate to stop me getting home at the moment." I picked up my bike and chucked it over the gate and then threw myself over after it.
I cycled down the Regent's Canal towards Camden faster than I'd ever done before, but it seemed to take twice as long as usual. My fingers had started to go hard, which is the first sign for Reynaud's sufferers that frost bite is about to set in. My gloves were soaked through with icy water and there was literally nothing I could do to warm them up while on the bike. My legs were heavy with all the cycling, and I was starting to get light headed from the mixture of lack of sleep and lack of food.
Was that it? Were my troubles to end? Home at last? Not quite. Where the path leaves the canal at Angel and then rejoins it near King's Cross, there were electricity works underway. The builders had dug up the pavement which led back to the canal path, and there was absolutely no way round the hole that they had dug due to a fence each side of the path.
I was in no mood to head back up the path to an extra mile to my journey just to go round the road works. "Nice try, you fools," I defiantly announced to nobody in particular. I picked up my bike, put it over my shoulder and stepped round the safety barrier which was protecting the exposed electrical wires beneath the pavement. As I hurdled the hole, I was half expecting to be electrocuted from beneath - "Well, at least then I'd get home in ambulance" was my reasoning - but much to my surprise, I passed unelectrocuted, free to continue my journey back to Camden Town.
As I completed the final 15 minutes along the home stretch of the canal, I remember laughing out loud to myself in a giddy sort of way. It was a laugh of victory, but also a laugh at myself. What an idiot I am. What a hilariously stupid decision to cycle to and from a race 30 miles away in such conditions.
Finally I arrived home, warmed up my hands, and collapsed in bed.
The perfect ultra training session.
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