Thames Path 100 2019

Thames Path 100 had been a priority race for a while, and I trained hard for it for about 9 months.

My goals were:

- Finish
- Not feel sick for 40% of the race (like usual)
- Finish without having a dodgy knee that stops me walking (like usual)

I set out to run the whole thing with my friend Jonny, since we have run together a lot before and it's always worked well.

The race was really split into five parts for me:

0-40 KM

Ate and drank a lot. Glorious sunshine. At 40km I remarked, "Yeah I reckon we could do that three more times no problem!" Idiot.

Having someone to run with during the early parts of a race makes a huge difference. Most people have pacers from mile 50 onwards, but having someone to chat to until half-way really makes time fly.

40-80 KM

I managed to eat and drink such a vast amount of water that I felt sick. Jonny pointed this out. I stopped doing that. I swiftly felt better.

We reached the half-way point and had a nice big bowl of pasta, which was nice.

80-120 KM

The night section began. My legs felt strong, but I was seriously dropping off the pace. I really didn't fancy running very much. Therefore, we had to heavily modify our "run 15 minutes, walk 5 minutes" strategy to something like "power-walk as much as possible". This turned out to be nearly the same speed as our run-walk strategy, so we continued. There was a huge bloody hill that went on for ages, which I definitely did not expect on the Thames Path, but hey ho.

120-160 KM

Jonny's ankle had started to hurt. We spent 20 minutes at the aid station at Goring just sitting around drinking tea and looking in our drop bags. I hoped to find a sense of urgency in mine. In his, Jonny was hoping for a new foot.

With around 20km to go, the sun came up. I felt low on energy, but my legs felt good, and I was enjoying walking instead of running.

Jonny's foot deteriorated with 15 KM to go. He couldn't really stand up straight, but somehow he managed to power-limp all the way to the finish. It really was an epic show of endurance, pain management, and generally being an impressive and irresponsibly hard bastard.

After a few impossibly long field crossings, he finally started smiling with a few kilometres to go.

Crossing the finish line was superb as always, but for me, the real success had been all morning in which I hadn't been feeling sick, and my knee hadn't been hurting. The real victory was every pain-free step and the ability to eat as many jam wraps as needed to get me to the finish.

The aftermath

After my race finished, events took an unexpected turn.

I have a habit of passing out during or after races, and that's exactly what happened after I got my bags and went to get a cup of tea.

I laid down on the floor and the paramedics came to check up on me. After getting me up onto a chair, I started passing out, and wouldn't stop.

I have a history of epilepsy, and though I haven't had seizures for a number of years, and they weren't sure whether my passings-out were related to epilepsy. When I feel like I'm about to pass out, I start feeling an aura of impending doom, which makes it feel like I'm about to die. It's like panic and sickness and it makes me want to do anything to avoid it. And I was feeling that feeling before passing out.

They started hooking me up to an IV to rehydrate me. Unfortunately I also have a phobia of needles, which sometimes causes me to pass out and/or have a seizure. That was a dodgy mixture.

Due to the multiple passings-out, they decided to cart me off to hospital with blue lights. I was given more IV fluids and some EKG monitoring. Turns out I was just dehydrated, which they found very alarming (though I'd be surprised if anybody who finished a 100 miler wasn't somewhat dehydrated). After two hours of lying in a hospital bed, they gave me the all-clear and I was driven home.

I guess it's just one of those things that happens to me, and I need to be a lot more careful after finishing 100 milers to ensure I don't sit down without warming down properly and starting to eat and drink. That sounds like a good goal for next year's race.

If I can't get better at remaining conscious after finishing races, I'll be left with no (responsible) option but to stop racing hundreds, and focus on shorter things.