Chris runs ultras

Race to the king, by Threshold Sports, is a 103 km single loop course, starting and ending in West Dean gardens, near Chichester, in the south of England. The route is made up of two distinct halves; the first half is 90% road and is essentially a road marathon, then, at about 34 km, you join the trails and hills of the South Downs.

The weather conditions were pretty much ideal for the first half, very overcast, with a light mist in the air, although humidity was high. The sun did make an appearance in the second half, which spiked the temperature, but by that point I was running slow enough that it wasn’t having too much of an effect.

I completed 100 km in 12 hours and 20 minutes (12:56:38 for the full 103km course). This was disappointing given the elevation was only 1500m, and especially given the damage I did to my body in the process. At first I didn’t understand it, I’m relatively experienced in these races, having now completed 12 at the 100 km distance, why did my body break down as badly as it did? I think there are two main reasons.

Don’t race in 1200km shoes

I had purchased new Hoka Tecton X 3’s just 4 days before the race and I didn’t have the opportunity to break them in at all before the race because I was healing my right knee that had been causing me some pain just a week earlier, and I didn’t want to risk running again before the race. So I decided running in my current Tecton X 3’s would be fine, especially given I had just completed a training block in them with multiple double long runs and they were fine.

I think running such a long distance, with so much of it on road surface, exacerbated the effect of shoes that were effectively dead, probably completely compressed, with little to no protection for the impact going through my body with every step, coupled with the fact I taped up my big toes too tightly. They swelled and caused big blisters as they rubbed against the tape.

One big tell was that the skin on the bottom of both my feet had separated from the foot, which is something I’ve never had before. Also, the pain in my joints and leg muscles was intense during and after the race, far more so than usual.

I thought the safe option was using shoes with over 1200km run in them, instead I now think I should have used the new versions and run easier in the first half.

There is no doubt that that much running on tarmac, whether in dead shoes or not, probably contributed to the pain in my legs later in the race.

I held a 5 minute per kilometer pace for the first 25 km, then dropped to about 5:30/km until the hills started at around 34 km, but from there I could feel I didn’t have enough strength to run the hills and the aching in my hips had already started.

My heart rate was about 20 beats higher than it normally is which I couldn’t understand given how slow I was running on flat ground. This might be because of the early start or just the race day feeling, or maybe because of the extra bit of weight I was carrying forcing me to change my gait slightly or use more muscle than normal, I’m not sure. This was ten 90g pouches of PFH gels and a change of top and hat, so not a lot of weight really.

The second half of the race was, by far, the most enjoyable. Running up and down the hills of the South Downs, with beautiful scenery in all directions, is really what I love most about ultra running, that and the challenge of maintaining a certain pace whether I am climbing or descending.

Unfortunately I was in the pain cave for much of the second half because of the damage I’d done. I felt pain in my feet, knees and hips, and had large blisters on the bottoms of both feet, so it wasn’t long before I gave up my 7th position and just worked on survival essentially.

I did this along with American John – a 20 year old man studying in Ireland who had come over to England just for this event. He was actually leading the race for much of the first half before deciding to back off. He never did give me a clear reason why, just that he was happy “chilling” at whatever pace I wanted to go at, and he turned out to be a big highlight of my day.

We spent much of the second half of the course in conversation which helped me a lot and is one of the things I love most about ultra races in general.

Soft body, soft mind

This was the first ultra of my 2026 season. It can be easy to forget how difficult the longer races are, it is possible that a lot of the pain and slowness was just my body and mind needing to get used to ultras again. My last ultra was 8 months ago. Hopefully as I progress through this summer’s races, my body will get “ultra” hardened, along with the additional general fitness.

Mentally I think I did well, there were sections that were a real physical and painful grind, but at no point did I want to quit and I never felt like the time was dragging, the time between aid stations felt relatively quick, and overall I was enjoying it, except for the frustration that I had to keep walking.

I really wanted a sub-12, but got a few (more) strong learning points instead, which is a fair enough to start this years summer of ultras.