A chat with William Sichel. The multiple ultra distance record holder shares some thoughts on multi day running .

In this post, I chat with William Sichel, one of Scotland’s and Britain’s most experienced ultra-runners. His new book, “A Head for Running. Inside my ultra-marathon triumphs and disasters,” was published on 12th November 2022. Details on how to order it are at the bottom of this post.

After the usual marathon adventure, William started his ultra running journey with the 100km distance and, over the years, gravitated to the realm of multi-day running where normal boundaries get a little stretched.

Chat with William Sichel

AS. You were running ultras for several years at a very high level. You also ran for GB at 100 K and 24 hours. What inspired you to look at multi-days and going beyond 24 hours? Writers note: William has Personal bests at 100km at 7:07:49 and 246.704km/153.294 miles for 24 hours.

William, I think right from when I was a 12-year-old running up to the village, I was always curious about what I could do. I developed a deep sense that if I ran longer distances, I’d be better or be on the podium more. I just had a feeling that I would do better at longer events. So personal curiosity and willingness to have a go and be willing to try things. I always thought, well, if it doesn’t work out, I can go back to being a 24-hour runner or whatever else.

Moving up in distance

AS And you ran 48 hours first and then moved up to six days. Do you think that is a sensible and logical progression for anyone wanting to move up to multi-day events? 

William. I think it is generally, but some find it isn’t a long enough distance. I was one of those. 48 hours was more like a long 24 hours. 

It didn’t get me into that next zone, either physiologically or psychologically. I thought it would help. The reason I first did the 48-hour race was that I thought it might help because I was running into all sorts of nutritional problems in 24-hour races. Despite getting what seemed excellent advice, I never seemed to quite get to grips with it.

I kept running into stomach problems in 24-hr races, so the thought of going longer to 48 hours to see if the notionally slower pace would suit me. I hoped it might help me work it out and be better at the 48 than the 24, but it didn’t work like that.

It didn’t help me at all. I just vomited more in the 48-hour. It didn’t help in the way envisaged. It is a good step up but it is not quite long enough. Probably, a 72-hour or 3-day would be a more meaningful step up than the 48 hours. If I was advising someone now and they were interested in multi-days, and they were doing a 24-hour, I’d say try and find a 72-hour because that gets you into that rhythm which you can then maintain day after day. 48 hours isn’t long enough to give you a taste of the multi-days.

AS. I guess there are alternatives which it would be good to have your views on. You have majored with the “go as you please multi days” where it’s just run as long as you want to. The alternative would be to do one of the longer trail ones like the Cape Wrath Ultra or the Dragon’s Back. They are much more technical trails, and you’re going over or around mountains, but you have a dedicated break overnight. Would that be good for someone to dip their toe in the water? Just to see how they cope with racing on successive days?  

 William. Definitely. That would be another way of doing it. You are right I have never run any races like that. Where I lived, I had no access to the trails. I came from a road-running background. I had no interest in trail running either. When I started running ultras in the 1990s there weren’t the hundreds of races you have now, and there was hardly any marketing and no social media. Living on one of the Orkney Islands, I didn’t have anywhere to train on trails, so I didn’t have the interest that someone living in the Lakes or the Highlands would have for getting out in the hills. I have only ever done three, and due to my lack of trail running wasn’t able to appreciate them as a way of adapting to Multi-Day racing.

AS.  How well and how quickly did you adapt to the long multi-day races? we are talking of classic six days here or even longer?

William You know, immediately, I felt all right. I went to Monaco and almost went in secret, under the radar. I had no pre-publicity or social media posts. I went there undercover if you like, but I was spotted at the race. I just wanted to see what happens. It was November 2006, and as the race progressed, I realised this was for me. I had no stomach issues. I had short breaks every 4 hours. I felt fantastic. My stomach loved it and, as you know, I won the race and became the world-ranked number one for that year. 

AS Just remind people, what sort of distance did you cover in that six-day?  

William 770.247 km 478.72 miles  which topped the world 6-day rankings for that year, 2006

AS So it was pretty respectable.   

William,  I just passed Wolfgang Schwerk’s(GER) distance of 769.282km in the last hour. So it was just such a fantastic feeling being in a race and going from the back of the field, moving up in a negative split and feeling fine. I was exhausted but finished with no stomach upset. I felt like I was able to realise my potential. It was fantastic, almost like a cathartic experience psychologically, physically and in a sporting context as well.

AS And you did a few six-day races and got your distance beyond the 500-mile mark.

William,  I did my best 6-day in 2008 when I ran 532 miles/857km in very hot conditions. But that’s how it goes. So, yes, I became very consistent. I never really had a bad six-day. They were all decent ones, good ones.  

AS So on one level it is physically easier. People going from 100 K to 24 hours find a 24-hour race is a lot easier because they’re not going so fast with the intensity. Would you say your success at six days compared with 24-hour especially, with the stomach problems, was down to having more knowledge or just that you are going slower so your body could just adapt better? 

William Yeah, for me, with hindsight, the 24 hours was almost the worst possible race as I kept having negative experiences. I thought, what was the point of this? Running more slowly for longer made a huge difference to me. Why was that? It was a slower pace, but my body loved it. It was the way I described it. I just loved how you could do walking breaks and then eat with a wee break every 4 hours or a 20-minute lie-down or just allow my body to assimilate things better and restore energy levels. Digestion was not an issue and I could realise my athletic potential again. That was my feeling.

AS And this is the late 2000s. Heading towards 2010, were you also aware of the 3100-mile race by then? How did it come on your radar, and how did it evolve into something you might want to do eventually?

William To be honest, the first time I ever heard of anything like it was at my first 24-hour race in Tooting in 1996. Someone was running the race who had run it. (Writers note: that someone was Abichal Sherrington from Wales)  There was a guy in the race who’d run a 3,100-mile race in New York. It just went straight over my head. I was just new to 24 hrs from a pretty successful 100km career. It didn’t register, to be honest.

Although I won that race, I had to walk a lot in the later stages because I was vomiting so well. Winning the 24 hr did make me think I should persevere with 24 hrs as an event, which I did for a few years.

AS So you developed an interest in the multi days from then on?

William `Yes I started reading about multi-day races but the thought of going away for six days to do a race was a little hard to grasp at first. I’m self-employed and married with financial commitments. I just didn’t see it as being on my horizon as a possibility at all.

The 3100-mile race

AS So what was the trigger that sparked you into finally thinking you could do the 3100? 

William Well, it was mainly because, living in Orkney, with all the travel involved in getting to races I was very heavily dependent on sponsorship. I had to learn to be very good at getting sponsorship, especially money rather than help in kind as I didn’t have much. I was always taking the time to search out potential sponsors. When I did, I had a lucky break because one sponsor that turned me down referred me to an agency in Edinburgh, Red Sky Management. To cut a long story short, on my next visit to Edinburgh a meeting was arranged with Red Sky. At the time, they mainly handled professional rugby players and didn’t feel they would be able to help me specifically, but as we seemed to have mutual friends as contacts, they were happy to chat. I think they may have been fascinated by what I was doing, but they never were expecting to get me a sponsor.

Anyway, the meeting in a coffee shop in Edinburgh with the owner of the business was fruitful. He just planted a seed. He said, “what is the story you are trying to get over” or something similar.

I said: “Well, to set records”. He said: “That’s fine, but on its own, it has no interest to most people. You can’t just say, “I’m going to set records”. It is too nebulous. No one knows what you’re doing, or whether you’re being successful or not”.

He said: “you need to boil it down into some kind of story people can relate to. People can understand a project with a more definite goal of some sort much better than simply saying I want to set records”. So creating “A story” turned out to be the key thing.

On the long slow journey back up to Sanday, I thought it was a good idea. I could have a project 60/60 by aiming to set 60 records before I’m 60. If I was going to need something to be understood that the press could understand and the man and woman next door could understand.

I latched on to that idea and quickly got 60 records at 60 years old. Then I came out with 165 records at 65 years old. You probably remember I was involving you and Andy Milroy in researching and finding these records. What records were there? Who held them? How far were they and the rest of it?

When you’re in that mindset, the longer the race, the more possibilities there are to get records. The long races become very attractive just from the possible records you can set. From overall British and Scottish records to age group records at various distances. I raced, sometimes with the hope of achieving records, but sometimes set no records at all. I remember going to the New York six-day race only to find horrendous weather. I recorded what seemed like a personal worst for everything, but that was just part of the process.

However, the possibility of looking at the 3,100 seemed very attractive, not just for the chance of getting a lot of records, but it seemed a unique challenge anyway.

Eventually, my last target became just an open thing, 750 records without a time limit on it. That was how I started getting interested in the 3100 and when I started thinking more seriously about it.

AS. And when you finally went and did the 3100 in 2014, you had just turned 60. That opened up many age group records as well. When you did the 3100, can you remember how many records were set during the race at various distances?

William. If I can recall my notes, I made about 50 records in that 2014 race. Ironically, when I went back in 2018 to run it the second time, although I never actually completed the full 3100 distance, but set far more records.  I was faster in the first part of the race and was ahead of my 2014 times for quite a long time until I ran into a few issues. Up to that point, I was way ahead of 2014 because I had such a bad start the first time I ran it. I tell the full story in my upcoming book*

AS.  So I can see how the records were almost like an outer reason to keep going and doing these things but knowing you as I do, you are driven inwardly as well.

William. Yes. Yes. 

AS. When you go and decide to take on challenges like the 3100, how do you balance doing the outer achievements while trying to cope with preparing for the whole inner immensity of a race that long? 

William. Well, what happens in the race is you’re not thinking about the records. They just come, you know, because while I’m running the race, I’m not looking at the lap sheets and thinking I’m going to break another one. No, no, no, no, because the day-to-day requirements of getting through the event are just too demanding.

Again, I don’t have my notes in front of me but when I went to do the 2014 race, I always felt the previous 20 years of running was my preparation for it. My first 20 years running marathons and ultras had prepared me well for this ultimate challenge.

AS.Were there ever any times during your first race when you doubted you might finish? 

William. Oh God, yes. You have many little moments in a race that long but you get over them. I had a blip after two weeks. However, when my calf muscle went after about 30 days, I was walking a lot, and I slowly got way behind the famous red line of the perceived daily mileage needed to make the 52-day cut-off.

Deep down, I just got to that point where I was thinking, “it’s not going to happen.” We tried not thinking about it, but deep down, we thought we had to accept that it wasn’t going to happen. Of course, when I started running again after a week, I was 76 miles or something behind, and no one had ever come back from that far below the red line. That’s when I went into the deep focus I described well in the book. In that chapter, the whole process of just focusing minute by minute, hour by hour, every breath, and just running as far as I could every day. I just kept it as simple as possible. 

AS  It’s also often said when I’ve spoken to other runners who’ve run the 3100-mile race, as you’ve alluded to, it’s impossible to put a training schedule down. There is no ideal training schedule to get you in the best shape for the start line of a 3100. It just doesn’t exist. 

William. No, you are exactly right. 

AS.  Do you think you learn the race as you go along? You do need to be fit, but I remember you saying the first time you went and did the 3100 that, on paper, you were probably one of the most experienced runners in the field. Other runners though, had experience in how to run that particular race.

William. Yes. I mean, I felt like a novice amongst men when I was in the early days of the race. I thought, God, what am I doing? I had imposter syndrome. I know these guys know exactly what they are doing. Pranjwall mentored me in those early days. I thought going into the race that the course was flat but, you don’t know, and it’s only when you get there and start running do you realise it’s not quite flat and it makes a difference. Pranjwall said, “Walk the hills and run the downs and the flats, and do this and do that.” The hills were a slight incline on each lap but nothing you would call a hill in normal circumstances. However, when you are running hundreds of laps on the same loop, you become aware of the incline. 

The previous finishers of the 3100 are absolute specialists and have worked out how to finish this particular race. The experienced multi-day runners, if I saw one of them shuffling past me here, I wouldn’t give them a second look. Despite the fact they don’t run fast, they are incredibly bright, perpetual motion machines.

For anyone remotely contemplating doing long multi-days, do a few six-days or something similar on the trails. It is perfect preparation, so that you don’t just go into it cold. You learn how to feed and pace yourself and how to have rest breaks and the like.

AS The 3100, and the experience you had, has left a mark on you. Thinking through all the races you’ve run in nearly 100 ultras, where does that rank amongst them?  

William Oh, it just has to be head and shoulders above everything. Not just because it was the longest, but the whole way of life for almost two months. You are taken out of your day-to-day existence, and although you’re in the middle of day-to-day life, you’re living in this self-contained race environment. It is also weird because you’re almost living with physical agony all day. Each day you’re experiencing it, but j learn to cope with it.

 I just think about that little story I put in the book about lifting my foot over that little step of the flat we were staying in. You remember where I stayed. It was like one or two small steps, but I noticed I was having trouble just stepping up to them each night. You had just run 65 miles or something, then late at night, I had put my foot over that step to get into the room. That was when I realised just how tired I was. You got used to being horrendously bone-crunching tired all the time, but from first thing in the morning until late at night, you somehow keep going. You’re doing it, and you look forward to each day and just getting the job done.

AS Our good friend and co-race director of the 3100, Rupantar La Russo, is often quoted as saying that this race, the 3100, changes people’s lives and changes them for the better. Do you agree with that? 

William Oh, yeah, I would say definitely yes. After the race I became much more, how shall I put it, more spiritual. Sri Chinmoy knew this when he had the idea for the race. It is both an outer and an inner journey. I remember after I came back from the race, I read a lot of books on all manner of things and started reading things like the works of Eckhart Tolle. He is a German teacher who invokes the power of now. It has helped me become a more spiritual person. In a way, a long event like this offers the capacity for some inner awakening.

In a race like the 3100, every day can offer fresh challenges. You have to learn to deal with them all. If you didn’t, you would pack up and head to the airport. I always felt that whatever happened, I would stay to the end as you do for any race. Unless you have some serious incident, whatever happens, you’re staying. So you might as well hang in there as you never know what is going to happen.

AS. Just backtracking a little. You talk about the spiritual aspect of the 3100-mile race. Many coaches and athletes talk about this in some way. Even if they are not running an ultra but are running track or other events, you aim to get into a “flow state” so running becomes natural and purposeful without any pressure. 

It’s like those long training runs in the hills or on the roads when the time whizzes along or that shorter road or track race where you are in the zone and your race goes perfectly. Would you say that doing something like the 3100, leaving aside all the physical agony you go through, it’s easier to enter into a flow-style feeling and just pull on energy from inside yourself?

William When you’re running a race for several weeks, it can be a real roller coaster. I had that big dip in my first 3100 race when I was running behind the cut-off and hoping to play catch up. You try to go beyond fatigue and tiredness into what you would call a flow state. I was imagining I had an energy ball in my belly. Then I was breathing deeply into it all the time. You become totally and utterly obsessed with the breath, which helps take you into a flow state. I must have just got very focused and almost withdrawn. I didn’t realise the impression people had of me as, for a while, I wasn’t speaking to anybody. Only later in the race or afterwards, when I was chatting away with the other runners’ did it seem to them that I was capable of talking and holding a long conversation.

 I had to be totally focused and almost in my little space all the time. I was in that state for hours and hours every day, and I had to be, or I would never have done it. It is a great place to be. Every time I slipped out of it and lost focus, I just had to remind myself to go back into it because, yes, I came into the race with all the usual mantras and ways to keep the mind occupied and all that, but after a couple of weeks you get a little sick of that approach. I didn’t listen to music much.

It’s ok when everything is going fine, but after a few weeks you want something else. It is like looking for a different taste in your drinks or food.

With the breath, it is always with you. You just kept imagining this ball of energy in my belly. You just kept breathing into it and generating energy. The distance just went up and up and up. I finished with a day or so to spare. It’s hard to describe.

AS Fabulous. On that note, that seems like a logical conclusion to this chat. Just a last question. For anyone thinking of doing their first multi-day, what would be your two or three big nuggets of advice, whether that’s a multi-day stage race, a backyard ultra, or a go-as-you-please track race?

 William Number one, don’t be too ambitious. Start the race aiming to finish it but don’t be too ambitious. It’s better to grow into the event and start running better on day three or four rather than blast away on day one and then finish crawling for the last few days.

As well as not being too ambitious, aim to start to take your breaks early and regularly as planned rather than wait until day three or four when you can hardly move. Have the confidence to have short breaks regularly for refuelling and resting from the beginning, even if you’re feeling good. Treat it as gaining experience. In subsequent races, you can then set more ambitious targets. But you do need a repeatable pattern that you can keep repeating, day after day.

It is almost like a long training session and designing a training programme. You want a repeatable way of training because training only works if it has a long timescale. Anyone can go and do a fantastic training session when they are feeling good, but it is not one session that makes an athlete. It’s repeated sessions and rest and recovery over months.

A multi-day race is all about pushing yourself but like in a training schedule, allowing time for assimilation so you can continue the next day and the next day.

So don’t be too ambitious. Take your first break early and have a pattern that you can repeat throughout the 24 hours or whatever length the event is. 

AS Thanks as always William ‘for your great insights into the world of Multi-Day-running 

WILLIAM Pleasure

You can find information on the Sri Chinmoy 3100-mile race HERE.

William’s Book. “A Head for Running – inside my ultra-marathon triumphs and disasters” is published on 12th November and can be ordered from 

https://williamsichel.co.uk/product/a-head-for-running/

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