Dougie Selman won the UK 100km title in winning the Sri Chinmoy 100km race at Perth on March 24th. We caught up with him to chat about his journey from junior 800 metre runner to 100km ultra champion.  We also talk through the challenges of moving up in distance, and of course his victory in an exciting  race at Perth ,where the top 3 men finished within a minute of each other after six and a half hours of running.

EARLY YEARS OF RUNNING

AS. I am aiming to paint a picture of your journey from 800 metres to 100 kilometres if that makes sense. 

DS. Yes, of course.

 AS. As a subplot, I hope this will inspire others who might follow in your footsteps.

 Looking at your extensive Power of 10 entry, it seems one of your first races was a wonderful, JSB Plumbing, Forth Valley League as an under 13. Do you remember much about that? What are your first memories of going to Wednesday and Thursday night meetings at tracks like Livingston and Pitreavie and running 800 metres? 

DS.  I think my first races are pre-Pitreavie to be honest. The first races I can remember doing were when my Dad would run the BUPA 10k in Edinburgh every year, and I would do the kid’s race. I  have no idea how far that was, but I think it was probably 800 meters or similar. It felt like a long-distance event. Maybe it wasn’t even that far, but I remember doing them, and I think I had an idea that I  enjoyed it. I  ran through school, and in the later stages of primary school, I would go to the Scottish Primary Schools cross country in Kirkcaldy. It would be my one outing a year. No training. Just my one race a year doing that. 

AS. How did you get into running at the club 

DS. I think it was around 1999 that I joined Corstorphine AC. I went down to the club towards the end of a summer season and got stuck into cross country straight away. The first cross country races I can remember doing are things like the Lasswade Open cross country, Preston Pans Open cross country and then the classic East District League circuit of Hawick, Livingston, Alloa, Stirling and the like. All the places we grew to love. In the summer, I started running in the local track leagues, which was fun. 

AS. Then winding forward a couple of years. You started concentrating on being a track runner.You did very well at events like Edinburgh Schools and Scottish Schools championships. Getting on the podium and winning medals. Did you have dreams of being an 800/1500 meter runner? 

DS. Yes. Definitely. That was where I saw myself. So, in my late teenage years, I was training with Dave Campbell’s group at Meadowbank. That was a really high, high-level group at the time. There was Mark Mitchell, and Kris Gausen, who were two of my best friends then and still are two of my best friends now. They were ranked number one and two in the UK for their age and I was maybe ranked five or six. So, I was constantly training with these guys who were better than me. But I was still at a good level. I was constantly chasing them and getting dragged around to try and get a bit faster. And yes, I was 800-1500 at that stage, probably more 800 even than 1500. I thought 1500 was a long way. I liked 400 and 4×400 relays, but I didn’t like cross-country. At that point, I was very much a track guy who saw 3km as a long-distance race. There weren’t many signs that I would move up, let alone move up to where I am now. 

AS . Talking of Dave Campbell’s group. You think of the runners that have come through that group. You don’t have to name names, but you all started with your original club coaches at different clubs, but the cream gravitated to Dave’s group. It’s an incredible talent conveyor belt.  You can name names if you want to.

DS.  I have named Kris and Mark. But when I was training with them, there was a very, very young Chris O’Hare, who was tiny. I could beat him then, but he was less than half my size. And since then, there’s been Josh Kerr whose come through, Dave Campbell’s group and Jake Wightman also trained with them for a while, as did others. So yes, an amazing conveyor belt of talent came through that group.

AS. And I recall you all wore red shorts at cross country.

 DS. Yes, that was the rule. That was the Campbell squad’s attire. It didn’t matter what colour your own club vest was. It was red shorts for the Camppbell squad. It went well with the Corstorphine vest.

AS.  For those wondering about the red shorts story, Dave Campbell used to get his squad to wear red shorts for cross country so that he could identify his runners when they were on the other side of the course.

DS. It was also for when they were on the other side of the track. It wasn’t just in cross-country but was any terrain.

BMC MEETINGS

AS.  As you got older and went to Uni, you placed highly in some Bucs  (British University championships,) so obviously still had track in mind. You’re also running several BMC (British Milers Club) meets too.

 You hear stories of Mark Pollard, taking a squad of  people, in a minibus and, driving down from Scotland to Manchester or Watford to take on the rest of the world, as it were? 

DS. I was pre-those days. Mark Pollard’s project, which I think is now called the Middle Distance Project, is a good initiative. At the time, when I was doing that, it was more like sorting out yourself and going down with others. There were always people who were going down to the BMC meets, but now it is maybe a little more coordinated. 

So yes, I’d go down with the people I was training with, or my dad would come down with me, and that tended to be how I’d do it.

 We’d go to the same places year after year. I don’t know how many times I stayed in the Watford Premier Inn for a meeting. Maybe more than most people.

Top Ten at Scottish National Cross Country

AS. Moving on, you started to move up in distance because I can recall you placing in the top 10 in the National Cross Country on a couple of occasions, which many Scottish distance runners would be more than happy to achieve. Were you majoring in trying to be a good cross-country runner, while using that to be a better track runner in the summer? 

DS. I’d say I never majored in cross-country. It’s always been something that I’ve found hard. Just the surface is not that natural to me. So if there’s a muddy day, I’ll generally have quite a hard time out there, even if I’m really fit, if it’s a frosty, hard surface, I’ll run better. But my result can be very dependent on how the weather is. 

So cross-country has always kind of been a support for whatever else I’m training for. I guess around the time I was coming towards the top 10 in National Cross was when I decided I had left 1500 metres running behind and started thinking I’d just try and get a bit quicker over 5 km and 10 km.  I’d generally be training towards the track 5k’s in the summer and road 10k’s somewhere in the winter and using cross country as a support for that. 

AS. Then amongst all that, I have to mention that you used to ship up at The Meadows in Edinburgh and do our own Sri Chinmoy summer races. 

DS. Yeah, I’ve got some good memories of doing them. I would quite often come down. There was one year I remember doing them quite a lot and I was racing regularly against Murray Strain who was just on a different level that year using the Meadows races. I kept turning up and he kept just being out of reach I think multiple times one summer.

 AS.Yes, Murray, when he was an international Orienteer and fell runner, used to come down using The Meadows races as one of his midweek speed efforts, often timing the race whether it was 1 mile, 2 miles or 5km as part of his overall session.  Especially if it was a mile race. He’d come down and do like four times one mile, and the mile race would be timed to fit in probably as the third one of the session, which I recall was quite fun for him. 

DS. Yeah, they’re great, great, great events. 

First Half Marathon

 AS. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve got 2014 as your first attempt at a half marathon.

DS. Yes.  I originally started training for a marathon, at the start of 2014, but had a few injury problems. It took me a while to get to the first start line of a marathon. I did run my first half marathon in 2014, so that was the beginning of me moving away from track, towards road and slightly longer events. 

AS. Looking back now, it probably seemed a small step, but when you were running 5k, 10k and cross-country, you’re then running a half marathon. Did that seem like a quantum leap at the time? 

AS. No, not really. I’ve always found a half-marathon not that much of a jump from a 10k. I think the physiology of it’s not that different. And even when I was training for 5k and 10k, I’d do long-ish sessions.  I’ve always quite liked a bit of volume in the training that I do. So going to a half didn’t feel like much. Going to a marathon is more of a jump. And I had a lot of lessons to learn, just in terms of how to train for those things more than how to race them. And that’s probably why I had a few injury problems as I tried to get used to that.

 AS. Making the move up to the marathon, were you being coached by anyone in particular at this stage, or were you doing your own thing? 

DS. So, I’d been coached by Lewis Walker, who started coaching me in maybe 2011. At the point when I started training with Lewis, my training became more aerobic with more of an eye on longer distances. I didn’t move up immediately, although, within three years of training with Lewis, I was starting to think about marathons. That is maybe quite soon, but he was helping me with the transition to the marathon. 

AS. Did he possibly identify that you had a future there and that you would be competent at the marathon? 

DS. I think probably, partly that. On the track and the shorter stuff, I maybe felt like I wasn’t getting the results that I felt the effort I was putting in deserved. There was part of me that just needed a new challenge.  I just needed something totally different, to give me a bit more reward for what I was putting in.  I never wanted to stop running anymore. I just wanted to get more from running and I think that’s probably one of the things that Lewis has always been quite good at. Helping to find a way to make running more rewarding and work better for me. I think at that point, it just opened a new door and made for something different that I was more excited about. 

The challenges of getting to a  Marathon start line.

AS. Your first marathon was in 2016 in Berlin when you ran 2:21. 

DS. Yeah, that’s right.

AS. Is that close to what you and Lewis were expecting? 

DS. Yes. When I first started training for a marathon, I thought just going under 2:20 would be easy. The first couple of times I tried to train for a marathon, I  kept getting injured. I kept training too hard and then having pre-existing problems that I was never letting settle. That’s what I meant when  I said earlier that I had a lot of lessons to learn in terms of how to get myself to the start line. By the time I got to Berlin in 2016 for my first marathon, I just trained thinking that I was going to get to the start line. I’d done a lot less training, and I was going into that feeling like I’d have been happy with a 2.24 even or a 2.23. So running 2.21, was probably faster than I thought. My expectations had lowered quite a lot in the two years previous to that. There had been times before then when I thought I would have run quicker than that, but with all the little injuries and moving up in distance, it didn’t materialise.

AS. This question is for people thinking of following the same journey and moving up in distance. How do you cope with being injured? Is it just a case of, “OK, here we go again?” Or is it a case of, “Oh, this is just part of the journey. I’ve just got to deal with it and get on with life. Did you ever get really down on yourself and think, “Oh gosh, I’m just not made for the marathon. Did that thought ever go through your head?

DS. I don’t think there was ever a point where I thought, “I’m not going to do it.” I definitely was disappointed and down about being injured. My injuries tended to come during a training block where I’d already done a lot of work. Often, I’d maybe have a 12-week plan for a marathon, and I’d get to week eight, and then I’d have a problem. Or I’d get to week nine. So you’ve done a lot of work in those periods to make me think, “I could run well here.” Then I didn’t get there. So it was frustrating, but always enough to make me think if I  do something better next time, it will work.

 How do I deal with it when I’m injured?  I’d just do lots of cross-training. I’d turn my mind to doing something else that would keep me occupied. I probably was a bit more down about that than I would be when I wasn’t running. But I can’t imagine thinking, “I don’t want to do this anymore”. I think it’s finding a way of making it work more consistently.

 AS.Perseverance is always rewarded. Then you didn’t run another marathon for five or six years.

  DS. (Laughs ) Yeah, but I tried!  I had a persistent hip injury that kept recurring when I was trying to do volume, and I probably had a cycle of never really letting that recover, so it kept coming back. My overall training capacity would keep going down. I was in a cycle of trying to come back too quickly, then doing too much, and then just never quite getting back.  I was always busy at work. I was a little bit stressed and needed to back off running. I think at that point, if I was stressed at work, I’d do more running and I’d run harder.  I’d just dig myself a hole. Even if I’d just get really tired, or my performance would go down, I wouldn’t really be able to explain why, but I was just doing too much.  I think it took quite a while before I realized I was going to have to change that.

Covid years and coming our of them

AS.  So COVID came along in the middle of all that too.  COVID, affected runners differently. Some people just went out and ran stupid miles and other people were a bit more chilled and focussed and knuckled down. 

  How did COVID affect you as a runner? 

DS. Fine. I ran a lot and bought a treadmill at the start of  COVID. Although I like racing, I also just like training, so taking racing away didn’t reduce my motivation for running at all. In some ways, it was liberating because there were no races. I could train without a target in mind. 

 I didn’t feel any slump in motivation, but it wasn’t ideal for a lot of reasons, 

AS. You seemed to come out of the Covid era strongly because going forward to September 2022, you ran the Loch Ness Marathon, which is known as an undulating course, and came away with the victory in 2:23:53. Then, just eight weeks later, you ran the Valencia Marathon, and you were only just 12 seconds slower running 2:24:05.

The 100km seed is sown

DS. I suppose probably in about June 2022, I decided I was going to start planning to do 100k. So the seed was there, yes.

 Around that time, I felt like I was banging my head off a brick wall over 10km and half marathon. I’d done very similar training at that point for several years, and it felt like I didn’t have that much room to improve doing what I was doing.  I was looking for something different. 

 Like I said to you before, when Lewis was encouraging me to move to the marathon to change something. That was probably another point where I thought, let’s do something different. Let’s go to an ultra, and I started thinking about training for an ultra. It would be totally different, and I can approach it from a very different perspective, and it might just reinvigorate my running at all distances.  I had planned to do that, aiming for Valencia in December 2022, while using Loch Ness as part of the training for that, but always with an eye on the ACP 100K in Spring of the next year. So, I was very much moving towards 100km over that year. 

AS.  I think Lewis shouldn’t have been too phased by it because he’s worked with Kyle over the years.

Note. Kyle is Kyle Greig, who Lewis had also coached for several years to success in Ultra’s

DS. Yes, and I think he probably saw that there were many things in my training and my approach to training that would suggest I probably would run quite well over 100km. When I decided that I wanted to do that. I think he probably thought physically, I was ready to run longer, earlier than I mentally decided I wanted to. 

 It was a big jump for me. I guess I had done those two marathons in a relatively short space of time, but I had never raced beyond a marathon distance. I’d never done a 50k or any ultra. I’d only run, I think, three marathons, so I didn’t have a huge pedigree.  I wasn’t that phased about whether I could or couldn’t do it. I knew I would have a lot to learn, but I knew I’d be able to do it.  I think the point that I was in my life, I suppose, I was much more disciplined than when I moved up to a marathon, which was the time before when I’d done a big jump, and I got it horribly wrong. I think I was much more mature with how I’d approach it. I was fairly confident that I’d be able to do it, but aware that I’d have a lot to learn on the way. 

AS. More for anyone else thinking of making that jump from marathon even to 50k, let alone 100k, did your training change drastically?

 Was it just tweaks in volume and tweaks in a few extra long runs?

DS. It changed, but it changed throughout 2022 as well. So it’s not like I got to Valencia, got selected for the ACP 100K and then started training for 100K. I did have probably nine months where I’d changed my approach and I’d come into that nine months aerobically pretty strong and with a relatively good training volume. I could run a hundred-mile week fairly comfortably at that point. So I didn’t have massive jumps to make, but I’d already changed my approach to focus more on developing lower-end aerobic capacity rather than constantly trying to chase a 10k pace. I’d changed that part of my training gradually over a six-month period towards the end of 2022 before I started fully training for the 100k. And then, yeah, it was probably an extension of the marathon training. I dropped some of the faster work and did a bit more longer stuff, but my volume didn’t massively spike when I started training for 100k. It was more like changing the ratios of the different paces that I would run, with the volume that I had.

First 100km in Northern Ireland at the Anglo Celtic Plate

AS. So when you got to Craigavon in Northern Ireland in April 2023, was the race as hard, and interesting, as you thought it would be?

DS.  Yes, it was hard. It was harder in fact. It’s an interesting one because I suppose I got there fit. I had a really good training block, and I could run four minutes a km very easily for a long time. I had run some 60K runs around The Meadows in Edinburgh, significantly faster than that pace, but I also knew that that’s only 60K, which is so much shorter than 100km. I was going to say you don’t know what’s going to happen. You do know that there’s a lot that you don’t know, and you can’t prepare for it without doing a 100K. So I suppose I went in knowing that I didn’t know how it was really going to go. 

AS. And was it harder on the day? 

DS. I think I probably found it harder, earlier in the race than I thought. In my head I was going to find it hard. It started getting hard around 68k and just in my head, having another 32k to go, I was already 8k further than I’d ever run before and I still had 32k  to go.  I wasn’t that prepared for that. So I had a much tougher period over the next 20k than I thought I would. I thought it would be later before I struggled. The other thing is the Craigavon course was hillier than we thought it was going to be.  I hadn’t done any prep for anything other than complete pancake flat. So my legs, I think, struggled earlier than I would have anticipated, partly because of just the little ups and downs each lap that I hadn’t done any prep for.

 AS. I think that caught a few people out, being a bit more undulating than we were expecting, but you got through it. You had a sprint finish there as well. 

DS. Yes, but I was unsuccessful. I wasn’t expecting to have to sprint the last 400 metres of a 100km race and come off second best. (NOTE: Dougie was involved in a sprint finish right to the line at Craigavon …and lost out!)

Lessons learned in building to a second 100km in Perth

AS. Fast forward over the last 12 months. Did anything change in your training building up to ACP Perth this year?

 DS. Yes. Quite a lot of things. I definitely said to a couple of people after the race, ” I never wanted to run a 100k again.” At the same time, I  quickly started thinking about what I needed to do to improve for next year. I knew before the Craigavon race that I was going to have to run 100K to understand it, and then actually train for 100K. Craigavon was almost like step one in preparing for 100K. I needed to get that race done to learn what I needed to do. If I had never done another 100K again, I wouldn’t have felt like I had actually done it. So straight after that, I was thinking, “What could I do differently?” And part of that was getting in the gym to get a bit stronger. Pretty quickly after that, I started going to the gym a couple of times a week. I was thinking about how could I maybe improve my fueling too and not just like how much carbs I was taking on, but maybe see if I could become less dependent on carbs so that I would just be more efficient at burning fat rather than just carbs all the time. 

I felt like I’d taken on as much as I could, and still, I felt like I was running out of energy. I was going to have to do something there. Then I kept the broad structure of the year similar, and I still aimed for a marathon at the start of the block, but I suppose I just learned through the first 100k block what sort of things worked well and just tried to do more of them in this training block. So yes, there were a few things that I did differently.

AS. One important fact that is more for people who are thinking of moving up and thinking their marathon times might get slower, you proved beyond doubt as other people have proved over the years that doing 100k training can actually improve your marathon time.

DS. Yes, I ran a PB in Valencia last December.  I think other times at shorter distances did get slower, so it took me quite a while to recover over the summer and I think I would approach my recovery from the 100k differently this year.  I think I could still run PBs over shorter distances and I think there’s definitely a recovery phase after 100k before you can. It’s just not a balanced event. It’s so heavily aerobic-dominated that it’s going to take you a long time to get back to the shorter distances. But I definitely don’t think it causes permanent inability to run faster. If you decide you want to go down to 10k, I think you could still do that. You just need to plan how you’re going to do it and accept that it’s not going to be a couple of weeks, it’s going to be several months. But that’s fine. You’ve usually got several months if you need it. 

Sri Chinmoy 100k. Perth March 24th 2024

AS. Moving forward to the Perth race. In the race itself, a pack soon developed as it does. A couple of people went out hard. I think it was James Turner and Stuart Paterson. If not running hard, they went out ahead of the main pack. You just sat in the pack, and there were about 10 of you there. Were you conscious of working together, or were you sitting behind everyone and letting everyone else take the pace? 

DS. I wasn’t overthinking it, to be honest. There was a big group of us like you say. I was quite often at the front of the group just because that’s what it was.  I mean, there wasn’t like loads of wind. You’re running at just under four minutes a km or so, around 6:20 a mile, and that’s quite easy, so you don’t really have to tuck in. It’s not like a 10k where you’re running really fast, and tucking in and not taking the wind. I think in a 100k at that pace, you don’t want to take the wind for the whole 100k, and we were rotating it a little bit, particularly in the second half of the race.  I wasn’t getting too stressed about that. I was trying not to get stressed about anything until I had to. I was just running where I found myself for as long as I could, and trying to conserve energy. Then, as the race progressed, people started suddenly going off the pack at 40 miles.

AS. Then it was just the three of you. James Turner went into the lead, and you and Joe Turner were a little apart, but you were all within a minute of each other over those last few laps. 

The gaps didn’t grow, and it was clear to the experienced watchers that one of you was going to win, but that last 10k is all about who’s going to hold it together best.

  James was in front and looking very strong. You and Joe were trying to not let too much distance develop. What were you thinking when you were not quite with James, but couldn’t quite get back to him?

DS.So I went through a bad patch at about 87k. That was probably where the gap had grown, and I went from joint first into second and then into third. I was hurting a little at that point but not panicing too much because I was running a mental check to ask myself, “What’s actually wrong? Am I injured? No. I’m not injured. Am I outof energy? No. I’m not out of energy. Am I just tired? Yeah, I’m just tired.“

 And that’s fine. You can keep going when you’re tired. That’s not a major problem. It’s just uncomfortable.  I was running that checklist and then thinking, what can I do? I can keep going at this pace. I wasn’t losing massive amounts of time. It’s just I’d slipped a few seconds off, and I’d lost a bit of pace. I was trying to stabilise the pace. It took me maybe a couple of laps to work through that emotion and get back to thinking, “I’ll just hold this”. Then I was looking for a positive hook. And the first positive hook was Joe Turner comes back to me, and I am in second. Then the next positive hook is, that James Turner’s not going away from me anymore. So we’re probably running at the same pace. I feel rubbish. So he probably feels rubbish as well. We just both feel rubbish at a similar pace. And then gradually, it started closing a little bit. And again, that’s just building and building. , I was trying to not panic and stabilise my emotions, and then just try and find a hook to get back in the race as much as I could. 

AS.  It was the first time you have run at Perth. How did you find it? I mean, it’s not like it’s a big football match or the national cross country, but there are some ultras you have no one watching at all. You can go 50 0r a 100 miles from A to B in an ultra, and you might not get a single cheer from anybody. At Perth with the loop course, you’ve got that little tunnel where all the tents are where you can literally feel a surge of energy each lap and you’ve got people around the course who are just spotting the Scottish Vest. 

How much of a help was that in just keeping you focused? 

DS. It’s really big. I mean, you come through the small tented support area every 10 minutes and you’re getting the boost there. Then, there are people dotted all around the course. Some people can get from side to side of the course, not that hard. And as somebody in a Scotland vest, you’re getting a disproportionately large number of shouts. It makes a massive difference because that was one of the things last year that I found hard on the  5K loop at Craigavon. When I was going through a difficult patch, I was around the other side of the Lake and wasn’t running with anyone. There’s a couple of people walking their dog, who are not really sure what you’re doing. And I wasn’t sure what I was doing either

 I think it was just much easier on the Perth course because you don’t have those moments of isolation quite as much.  I was in a race basically, the whole time.  I didn’t feel like I had those lonely questioning moments as much as I might have done on another course. 

AS. We get to the bell, and it’s all getting quite exciting. James has a 10-second lead on you. I found out later that Izzy Knox, who ran the ACP for Scotland a few times and was there helping on the day, was standing by the kitchen in the finish area asking my daughter Dhavala, “Who’s your money on in the last lap?”

 Dhavala immediately said, “I’d put my money on the 800-metre runner to close this one out!”  which I thought summed it up well, as she obviously knew your background.

 Did you have to lift your pace, because I think your last lap was probably your fastest of the race when you look at the splits.

Dougie ran an approximate average pace of 3mins 56 sec per km or 6 mins 20 sec per mile for the 100km.HE actually ran negative splits as well. 3:18:00 for the first 50km and 3:16:28 for the second half. His last lap of 8:57 for the  3.281 KM loop was his fastest.

DS. So, I was maintaining pace to ensure James wasn’t going further away. Then, I increased the pace in the last 700 metres. That was the point when I went into first place, and I was pouring it all in there. I don’t know if the pace massively increased before then, that’s probably where a lot of the time came within that last home stretch when I could see the finish and I was switching into a faster gear. Before then, I was largely just maintaining it as I didn’t have a huge amount more to give. That’s almost the battle at that point to maintain pace and not slow down. Just keep going with the same effort as long as you can. You almost always find something in the last couple of minutes when you see the finish, but before then on the last lap, I wasn’t upping my pace massively to catch him. There was probably a slight lift, but at that point, there’s a limited amount you can do physically. 

DS. I think if someone had forced me to say a time before the race, I definitely wouldn’t have said 6.34. I wasn’t setting times before the race in my head.  I just had an effort level that I thought I could run. I was pretty sure that I could run under 4 minutes a Km for quite a long time. I didn’t know what that would end up being. I don’t know what my splits add up to. I didn’t know during the race what pace we were running. I just knew I was running at the right ballpark effort level. I had no idea what time we were on for until maybe 75K. I think someone said I was on for around 6:33 pace at that point.

 That was the first time that I knew. I think that’s why I ran faster because if I had gone in targeting a specific time or a specific pace, I’d probably have targeted 6 Hours 40 minutes. Then I would end up running around 6:40 or a high 6:30 at best. I think that because I didn’t have any of those expectations, that helped me run much quicker in the end. 

AS. That is a fascinating approach as many runners go into a race with the thoughts “I’ve got to do this time or that time.”Do you feel if you left the watch at home and go with how you feel, you think there’s much more benefit in that? You don’t stress out so much, and you’re just going by feel.

DS. Yes, I do think that. At the shorter distances, you probably have to be more focussed. I think there’s a couple of things where I think you maybe have to be more careful.

  I think you know more of what is realistic in a marathon and a 10 km as you train a lot closer to that race pace and what you are going to experience. If I’m training for a marathon, I’ll have done sessions that are not that different to a marathon, whereas in 100k training, the furthest I go is 60 kilometres. I do lots of 40k and 60k runs in a high volume, but none of that is similar to a 100k race experience. So you’re coming into the race without knowing how it is going to go.

 I know I’m fit, and I know that I can run under 4 minutes a Km for a long time. But I don’t know how it’s going to go. So that’s why I think in 100 Km you’ve got much more scope to roll the dice a little bit, and not put a limit on it. If you run a couple of seconds a Km quicker for every Km, that’s quite a lot of time in a 100 K. It’s almost taking advantage of the fact that you’ve got that slight unknown as long as you’re not being cavalier in your approach. I think you have to accept that you just don’t know what you’re going to run. 

AS. You’re absolutely right. I think you can overthink it, and many people do, with disastrous effects in some ways.

What’s next for Dougie?

AS. Looking ahead, where do you see Dougie heading? 

DS. I don’t know. There is now the possibility of getting selected for the World 100km in the autumn in India as I achieved the qualifying time.(NOTE The men’s individual qualifying time for the World championships in India in December is set at hours 38 minutes) I actually don’t know beyond that. I’ve got lots of goals on lots of different things. I’d still like to run faster in a marathon. I’d still like to run faster in a 10k. I don’t know if that’s possible. But I’d like to try and run under 2:20 in a marathon. That’s probably one thing that I would like to do.  I think it’ll be running of some sort, and it’ll be competitive running, and it’ll be endurance competitive running, but it could be anything. 

It’s difficult to know in a year when I could potentially run two 100k’s in the space of 9 months. I’ll need to think if I want to run another 100k that quickly again after that because I think I’ll probably need to rebalance my training a little bit.

 I’m more likely to target a marathon after the next 100k and then think about the next ultra. 

AS. The wise coaches and the wise ultra observers will say, “You’ve only got so many good long races in you, so they need planning well.”

I have fond memories of your dad retiring and then going and running The  Comrades. Marathon in South Africa.  Does that inspire you to go and do Comrades one day? 

DS. Yes, it looks like a really cool race. I’ve watched several YouTube clips of the start and I think that’d be a cool race to do. But you have to do it in both directions, don’t you? My dad only did it in one direction so I might have to go and finish it and then go back and do it in the other direction. 

NOTE, For those unaware, the Comrades Marathon in South Africa alternates direction every year.

Best  advice for anyone thinking of moving up to 100km 

AS. One last thing. What is the best advice you could give to a marathon runner who’s possibly thinking, “Can I run a 100K?”

DS. If you’ve got to the point of thinking about it, then you probably should. If you’re a marathon runner, not thinking about doing 100K, then I wouldn’t push anyone to do it because it’s really different. But if you’re a marathon runner thinking, should I or shouldn’t I, then yes, why not? You probably should. You’ve obviously got to the point where you’re thinking about it. Why not? I’d always recommend going to 100km rather than 50 km though, I think.

 If you think you’ve got it in you, I think 100km is more of an experience. It doesn’t mean you’re going to love it, but I think you learn a lot about yourself, and you learn a lot about your body. I’ve had a great experience doing it. 

AS. On that. I got into running ultras also as a way of also exploring myself in some ways. Trying to find out what was possible by pushing my own boundaries in many areas. Would you say that just going to that area where it is so much the unknown, you’re just stepping off a cliff in some ways, but you can find out a lot about yourself and what you thought your limits were along that whole journey? 

DS.Yes. I think you can learn a lot of mental coping mechanisms that you probably don’t learn in other events. 

This is maybe natural the longer you go, but so much more of it is psychological. There’s a big physical element and you have to be fit. You have to be prepared. But how you perform can be so influenced by your mental approach that I think there’s so much to be gained by developing that part of yourself. I think there are a lot of lessons you can take down again once you’ve done it. So I actually think that that’s one of the interesting things. I think having gone up in distance and learned those things, it’d be interesting to see what you could do in all events using a similar sort of thought process.

AS. I’ve known many great ultra runners over the years. You just have to look at what Jasmin did at Barkley recently. There is definitely a physical element of being very fit to take on these challenges, but do you ever get to the point where you feel that something is going on that is just way beyond the physical?  

DS.  I felt in Perth that I’d managed to be very mindful in my approach. I use mindfulness meditation in my everyday life.  Every day, I do mindfulness meditation, but at Perth, it was the first time, in a race, I’ve felt like I was using that. Just being totally present in the moment, accepting thoughts and feelings, letting thoughts and feelings go, not feeling like things are permanent, just letting things happen. Even when things were going badly, I was still just not getting wrapped up in, “Why are things going bad?” and, “Why is this happening to me,”  but just feeling, “This is happening to me. This is hard, but that’s fine, it’s going to go away.”  I just felt like I was in that state the whole time. Even coming through with a lap to go when it’s really exciting, and there’s a real buzz going on, I wasn’t thinking, this is really exciting, there’s a real buzz going on. I was just immersed in that moment and experiencing that for what it was rather than thinking about it. I felt like I was involved in it and soaking everything up because I was just there and present. I’ve never had that really in any other race. It’s an amazing experience when you get that because it tends to go well, but you also just think that the richness of your experience is so much more when you can get to that point. 

AS. That’s a very good point to finish.  Thanks a lot, Dougie. Great to chat. Let the journey continue.

DS. Great to speak to you. 

FOR Further info on the Sri Chinmoy 100k/50k ultras

Watch a Short video with drone footage by Stuart Ross of Stuart Ross Media HERE

Full results from the Sri Chinmoy 100k/50 ultra races HERE

Read about the 2024 woman’s 100km champion Sarah Webster HERE

Our Blog on all the records that fell at Perth is HERE

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Adrian Tarit Stott.

The author is a former GB 24 hour ultra international with over 100 ultra race completions.  He has also been involved organising ultra distance races for over 30 years.  Still an active recreational runner, he is currently a member of UKA’s Ultra Running Advisory Group (URAG) and part of the selection and team management for both Scottish and GB ultra teams.He is also a freelance writer in his spare time, contributing articles and reports to several websites and magazines including Athletics Weekly and Irunfar.