INTRO incoming

 Why 24 Hours?

AS. As a preamble, where are you speaking from now?

SW. From my house in Rottingdean. We moved down near Brighton a few months ago.
AS. And how are you finding the change from the Isle of Man?

SW. It’s very pretty down here. A bit warmer and definitely a little less windy. Running up and down the coast and along Brighton seafront means you do get the headwind in one direction. Whereas, in the Isle of Man, I tended to avoid the seafront.

AS. Are you still working as a vet down there as well?
SW. Yes. I work in Peace Haven.
AS. And is that full-time or part-time?

SW. Part time. The hours are very carefully crafted to do as much or as little as I can for the amount of money I need. That allows me to train well and recover. It’s a very nice situation to have.

AS. So, that’s just a little bit of background for everybody. Many people won’t be aware yet that you’ve moved from the Isle of Man.
You’ve been very successful at 100k. Why decide to run for 24 hours?

SW. I looked at the opportunities of running for GB in 2025, and the options were a possible world 50km in India, again, or the 24-hour championship in France in October. I didn’t want to return to India for the 50k, so the 24 hours was the logical step. I would have preferred to do something between 100K and 24 hours, but in order to qualify for the world champs, there wasn’t that choice. So, it was, “Get on with it and find a 24-hour.”

AS. So, you’re very competitive and want to achieve national representative honours. When was the seed finally planted that you were going to enter Crawley?

SW. I think Walter probably suggested it.
Note Walter is Walter Hill, the GB 100km team manager.
Running a 24-hour was coming on my radar as the logical thing to do. I ran in the Gloucester 24-hour last September, but only to do 40 miles as a build-up to the world 100km in December. It was good to go to Gloucester to experience a little bit of what it looked like, but because I only stayed 40 miles, I didn’t get a full appreciation of what a 24-hour race looked and felt like.
A spring 24 hours, if I was going to do one, was the only option.

Training prior to Crawley 24 hour.

AS. Your last race before Crawley was the IAU World 100k in India in the first week of December. You ran well there to take the individual bronze medal. After recovering from the 100k, how did training change, if at all, to focus on 24 hours as opposed to 100k?

SW. Not massively. Moving down here meant I got to do reps with the local group because my coach is down here. I have been training with a group once a week, and I loved that. It’s so good having done reps on my own for 10-plus years to run with the group. That was probably the main change, but there was no real general change in what I was doing. We weren’t doing any other speed sessions. Just one a week. Then, the longer runs were more time-based than distance-based.
Everything was either 90 minutes, two hours, three hours, or four hours. It was based on time rather than distance. I think we managed three four-hour runs, possibly four. I think we only did two big runs before the 100k, both 60 kilometres. The longest runs in the 24-hour build-up were just over four hours. The general training was similar. I probably didn’t worry so much on my long runs if they weren’t near a 100k pace. You know, the pace wasn’t the problem. It was getting through the distance and the time rather than worrying that I had to run at 100k pace.

AS. So, was four hours your longest run, or did you venture any further?

SW. Four hours was the longest run. Because I had run the 100k in December, I didn’t think I needed another long effort before April. I think, if I hadn’t done 100km in December, I might have done something a little bit longer in the build-up, but neither Dave, my coach, nor I, were experienced in 24 hours. It was all a learning curve. Robbie Britton was useful as a mentor, so we were a little bit guided by him. I Don’t think we ever did any really long runs or double runs, like two and four hours or four hours and then three hours.
If we did a four hours, we were down to two hours the next day. We didn’t particularly rush to do another four hours. I only did one week of double days just because of the way things worked out with work and life. I probably would have liked to have done a few more, but whether that would have actually helped, I don’t know. I’ll talk to Dave and see whether we can incorporate a little bit of that in the next block, or rather probably not in the next block, but if I start training for a 24-hour in the Autumn, then we will put that in.

AS. Yes. As you mentioned, you got input from your coach Dave, and obviously input from Robbie, who’s involved with the 24-hour Squad and has been for a little while. Did you feel you got too much advice from other people as well along the way?

SW. To be honest, no. I will willingly take advice and listen to all opinions. I did a lot of reading around to see if anybody had any pearls of wisdom online as to what you should I love to hear other people’s fueling strategies. Camille Heron, interestingly enough, I think it was her 48 hours rather than her 24 hours she was saying she cut down on carbs. She’s probably doing no more than 60 grams an hour of carbs, maybe more like 40 to 50 grams, I think, for some of her longer races, which is interesting.
I’m not sure I would have changed anything,’ It’s just fascinating to read other people’s accounts of what they did, how they did it, and whether it worked, or not.

Race plans for pacing and nutrition.

AS. Did you have a fixed plan going into the race, or was it a flexible plan ? In terms of pace or fuel? Let’s take them one at a time.

SW. In terms of nutrition, I had a plan. I was realistic enough to know that I probably wouldn’t take everything I put down on the plan down because I never usually do. I was slightly disappointed that I couldn’t take it all on so early in the race. I would guess I started feeling sick at about six hours. So I knew full well that I wasn’t taking on much more than 60 gms per hour beyond that. Probably, more like 30 grams of carbs per hour, which really wasn’t enough. But it was like, I really can’t get anything in. I had tried my gels and the drinks, both in training and 100k races. It’s not that I just tried these drinks and gels in training. I’ve tried them in races, so I know what they tasted like in races. They were vile. They coated my whole mouth in sugar to the point that I just couldn’t taste anything else. I had some macaroni cheese, which I thought would be good. I had about two mouthfuls, and it tasted awful. I passed it on to my crew and she said, no, no, it was really nice. So it definitely wasn’t the macaroni cheese that was the problem.
From about 10 hours onwards, I started to feel very dizzy for most of the night, which was frustrating. I don’t think that affected my running, in the sense I wasn’t particularly dizzy while I ran.

As far as pacing goes, I had a rough idea of the pace I wanted to run. I knew I would slow down, but I expected that. I wasn’t worried. The goal wasn’t to run at a set pace, like two minutes a lap. It was more to run at a pace that for the first, well, preferably 20-plus hours, felt like I was expending little energy whatsoever. It didn’t matter to me if it was two minutes a lap or two minutes 30 a lap. It just meant I was expending little energy. I was just running and hopefully enjoying it.

AS. From what you’re saying, it seems although you may have had rough time goals in your head and benchmarks along the way, you were trying to run by feel on energy expenditure.

SW. Yeah. I think managing energy expenditure was definitely my main goal. Occasionally, I would check the watch per lap to make sure that I wasn’t running much faster than a two-minute pace. If it was faster than that, I knew I wouldn’t cope later on. That was the plan. I just checked the watch occasionally to ensure I was either on target or slower. Then just keep going. 

AS. So the training’s gone well. You’ve got your plans in place, and you’re there on the start line. What feelings were going through your head? Were you nervous, or were you just up for this wonderful adventure that was waiting to unfold in the next 24 hours? 

SW. I was very nervous, in the days leading up to the race. The morning of the race, I would say I was more stressed than anything else because we set off at nine am, and it was only supposed to take half an hour to get to Crawley. We got stuck in an accident on the A27 and finally arrived at 10.45. So, not having set up anything, Matt Field helped Paul and Penny set up a tent. We hadn’t done the bottles. We’d mixed all the drinks, but the bottles weren’t made up. But that was fine, as the crew sorted that. I decided that for 24 hours, you don’t need to do a proper warm-up. So I did a few hamstring swings, waggled my legs around, and decided I was just going to get going. It was a bit surreal.

AS. A geeky question that people always ask is, what shoes did you choose to wear?

SW. I wore the same ones as I wore for the 100k World Champs. They were the original Vaporflies. I’m still wearing the original Vaporfly, at the moment. I will have to go to something else at some point.

How the race unfolded.

AS. It worked well for you. Yeah. So, you’re off. The race starts and things seem to go pretty well for the first few hours. I mean, were you happy with your pace? I mean, it’s well documented that your marathon 50k, 50-mile times, were roughly in the sort of zone you want to be.

SW. Yes, I think so. I think I had pretty much that sort of target. I’m not sure what I went through 50k in, but the marathon split was about 3:30, which was fine. 50k was 4:08, probably slightly faster than I expected.
I think I was still feeling good at that point.

AS.  You went through 50 miles in around 6:50 and 100km in 8:33:27. Then, you get towards 100 miles and I am looking from afar. I’ve got all Jo’s splits from hr 24-hour record. ( Jo Zakrzewski, ‘current GB 24-hour record.) I’m thinking, “Okay. This is going well so far. Did you ever have a thought that Jo’s record would be possible on the day?

SW. I had 240 kilometres in my head as a target. More than anything else because it made nice, easy maths in terms of laps. But since I didn’t actually realise how many laps I’d done, unless somebody told me, that wasn’t really an issue. I don’t think I wanted to know by that point how many laps I’d done. I was never going to attempt to do the 100k track record, because I knew that would be too fast. The 100 miles I had in my sights that it was achievable, and I knew I had slowed down.

Running through and beyond a 100 mile record.

AS. You mentioned you looked at your watch a few times, but were people or your crew aware of the 100-mile and Sam’s 100-mile time and how close you were to it?

SW. No, I don’t think my crew were. I told Penny, my daughter, “You don’t have to do any maths. Don’t worry about it. All you have to do is focus on feeding me. My sole aim was to still be running at the end of 24 hours, preferably not walking, but to be there at 24 hours, not to have dropped out after a hundred miles or whatever. So it didn’t really matter what I did. I mean, as long as I did over 100K, I had a PB. So, it was a case of just going and running for 24 hours.

AS. So 100 miles comes and goes, 14.05.05. Were you aware of the time and that you’d broken Sam’s record or did Hillary or someone, one of the officials have to tell you afterwards?

AS. No, they gave me my hundred-mile time. So I was like, “Oh yeah, great.” I thought Sam had done 14:07. Note. Sam Hudson De Figuera’s (Amend) previous 100-mile record was 14:10:41.

AS. All these little landmarks. Do they give you a little lift when you reach a landmark, and you know, it’s been a successful one?

SW.  I think that was a nice little lift for that one. Definitely. I got a lot of positives out of that. The original plan was to have a wee break each hour and treat it as 24 reps, not hours. Therefore, have a break every hour. But I was realizing that actually going through the hour was more positive because I could tell I was speeding up at the end of each hour because it was finishing the rep. It felt as though it was better to go through the hour to quarter past.

AS. By now, it’s obviously the middle of the night and early in the morning. How is your body clock coping with being awake at three, or four o’clock in the morning? Are you starting to feel tired, or are you just having a long weekend run as normal?

SW> I was certainly very tired. Whether I was any more tired than any other run, because it was so much slower, I don’t know You’ve got to focus to get through that tiredness,

The 200km blip!

AS. So everything seemed to be going fairly well. You’re slowing a little but I’ve delved into your lap splits, which are relatively even though 17 hours. Then there seems to be a little blip around 490 laps in. Just before 200km ( 500 laps), That was about 5 am, where you suddenly put in laps of 6.42, 4.05, 5.06, 11.21 and then 15;18.
SW Yes!

AS. There’s a story behind that, but the stats don’t really tell what it is
.
SW. Well, my back went at that point. It was like, “Ouch! This hurts.” So I got round again to where my support, Penny was. She was at the 1500-meter mark. So I then put on thermal leggings, which meant she took my shoes off, helped me put the leggings on and then put my shoes back on for me. So that was, you know, a quick change. And I was quite shivering uncontrollably at that point. And then I hobbled around to the first aid tent, which was by the finish and went to see them and went, “Ow, it hurts.”
They gave me a little quick massage, just on the back. Paracetamol, a little bit of, I believe gel, and said, “Well, walk, do what you can, put your coat on, get on with it.” So I then ran/walked, run rather than run-walked for roughly the next four hours. Then, Walter appeared, and I was told to “get moving!”
So I did. It was still quite painful. But the good thing was the pain wasn’t getting any worse. I just kept going at that point. Then actually, it did start to ease off a bit and it only hurt. I couldn’t lift my right leg much. So the only times it really hurt was over the timing mat because you have to lift your leg over that. It’s only less than a centimetre, but it’s that lift of the leg was enough to start it off. So that was every lap. Then if I passed somebody, if it was particularly on a bend, you know, it was that angle, that little bit of a twist was enough to sort of tweak it and make me go, “Ow. This hurts.” But by that point, we’re an hour and a half to go, and the adrenaline starting to kick in, I’d gone through it, and by half an hour to go, there was no pain left whatsoever. And I could just run, which was quite a nice feeling.

AS. Just backtracking to around about 18 hours coming up to 200k, when you had that little medical timeout, should we say. Did the thought of stopping ever go through your head? Or did you have this 230k or whatever still engrained as a goal?

SW. I was absolutely determined even if I’d had to walk the rest of the way that I would finish. There was no thought of pulling out. I had said to Penny I was not stopping unless I was unconscious or the medics had pulled me out of the race and would not let me continue. Otherwise, I walk. I may not be able to run, but I will walk i

There was no intention of pulling out at any point if I could help it. Plus, we had to wait till the end because my husband had to come and pick us up. We just had to get on with it.

24 hour reflections

AS. So, you’ve had a 24-hour experience now and you’ve had a few days to reflect on it.
Do you feel you have redefined to yourself what is achievable? 

SW. I think I have enormous respect for those, you know, the top Europeans and world athletes. What they’ve achieved is incredible. If I am lucky to be selected for the Worlds, I will go into the world champs with no expectations of getting anywhere near their distances. If I can do it, fantastic, but I will have no expectations of doing it and hats off to them. They are amazing.

AS. You alluded there to the fact that you had a little physical wobble at about 200k with the back situation, which you seem to come through okay. Did you ever have any mental wobbles where you just felt, as people do in any race, this is just too hard for me at the moment?

SW. There were definitely moments that I was like, my feet hurt. I want to sit down. I think I had three toilet breaks off the top of my head. One of them definitely was needed. I think at least one of them, and then one of them I think was a, “Let’s try and empty the stomach just because it might help the sickness”. Then I suspect the third one was more of a, “Well. If we just sit down for a minute and if it’s on the toilet then great!” So I think by the third one it was like, this is a bit of a mental sit down rather than because I actually did a physical break.

AS You’ve alluded already about the World Championships in October. Selection hasn’t been made yet and won’t be for another couple of weeks. You have achieved the individual standard for selection. Without assuming anything. If selected, would you go?

SW. I have booked the time off work just in case. There was a part of me when I was walking and running those few hours that I thought I could tell Dave, my coach, that I never have to do this again and we can go back to doing normal marathons and things.
Then of course, because I then got the, the qualifying standard, it was like, “Oh crumbs, now I’ve got to do this again.” I think I would like to give it another go. I think I have unfinished business with the 24 hours because of that four-hour run/walk. That’s four hours that I can improve on. So yes, I have unfinished business with it and If selected I will go.

Were you at the Max?

AS. That’s always the wonderful challenge of 24 hours and one of the fascinations of ultras in general, but 24 hours in particular. The goal is always moving out. There’s no fixed goal you just keep pushing the distance up each hour.
AS.Although you set your goals very high. It applies to anyone, even people who are just trying to do 100 miles, or 100k in 24 hours. Did you feel you were ever at the max during this race?

SW. No, I don’t think so. I think the goalposts just kept moving as the race progressed. It was like, okay, the team standard was 219km. Okay, we can do that. We can just walk around, and that’s achievable. Then, as time progressed, I was working out, “Well, actually, if you can walk a bit faster, you can get to 225km, and that’s the individual standard. Then it was like, okay, well then my 240 Km original goal is actually only a little bit further, and I’ve still got two hours to go.
So, I really could try and get this as I have gone through to the last hour and I’m running eight-minute miles again. So that’s less than four miles to go.

The final countdown to 24 hours.

AS. The last hour at a 24-hour is always quite special for everybody.
Having now experienced that, did you have much interaction with other runners, both throughout the race in general and especially in that last hour when the energy levels just ramp up to something ridiculous?

SW. Yes. Everybody was lovely. All the athletes were lovely. They were sort of saying, “Well done” when I passed them and vice versa when I was running. I was also saying to them, “ Well done, you’re amazing. Keep going.”  They were so incredibly encouraging, which was so nice. The last hour when I was back running smoothly again and passing them was definitely something special. The support crews too were great, as a lot of them were there for the whole 24 hours.
Their encouragement was brilliant.

AS. That last hour is always a very emotional time because you’re just watching everybody pulling out what they didn’t think was possible a few hours before. They have almost, if not given up hope, found their hopes have drifted. Then all of a sudden, everyone gets back on track that last hour if they are able and it’s a great feeling.

Lessons learned?

AS. Finally, if you look at the main elements that go into any ultra, the training, nutrition, pacing mindset etc,
Are there any one or two points that you feel you can improve on as far as 24-hour goes?

SW I think nutrition is one of the biggest ones. I don’t know what I’m going to use for the next one, but it certainly isn’t going to be as much sugar as I planned. I’ve got to find something because I still think I was under-fueling for maybe 20 hours. The run-walk for four hours wasn’t so bad because obviously I wasn’t really expending as much energy, and the last hour I was just drinking Pepsi which was fine. But yes. I need to find something that my stomach can cope with eating and drinking in the first 16 to 20 hours that isn’t going to make me feel dizzy at night. So that’s going to be the next challenge. I’ve got some ideas to try already, and other people to talk with to see what they do. Try and find something that works. The frustrating thing is what worked in training is just fine but definitely didn’t work in the race.
I think I need to find some savoury food that I can actually eat and has enough carbs in it. I will talk to some off-road ultra runners too and tap into what works for them.

AS There’s no shortage of advice and experience out there to tap into, but at the end of the day, you did something right to cover 150 miles, so maybe only minor tweaks are needed rather than wholesale changes.

SW. Definitely. Yes.

Advice for wannabee 24 hour runners.

AS.One last word. For anyone reading this who has never done a 24-hour race before. Would you advise them to give it a go? And B. What’s the best piece of advice you would give them about approaching a 24-hour?

SW. I think the 100k up to the 24 hours is a bigger jump than the marathon to 100k. I think a marathon to 100k was doable. Obviously, I did 100k to 24 hours, but it was hard. If I could have done a race in-between time, whether that was 12 hours or 100 miles, I think that would definitely be a middle ground. Maybe the 24 hours wouldn’t have been so much of a shock. I’m not sure I want to do another track one. I think running around a track is a very different mentality from running on a road or even an off-road ultra. So yeah, I think if you’re not sure about running ultra distance, I would go off-road, or I would do road before you do track, unless you, really like running round in circles and very small circles, for a very, very long time. There’s no change in the surface on the track. Regardless of how flat a road ultra is, there will always be some change, even if it’s just in the camber of the road, or there’ll be a little bit of unevenness. There will be something to change the gait of your muscles. There is nothing to do that on the track.
I think mentally running around a track is much harder than running either off-road or even on the road in slightly larger circles. So yes, I think running a track for 24 hours was probably a lot harder than I could have made it if I’d done a road one.

AS. Good advice and thoughts to finish with
Thanks ever so much for your time
SW. It was good to catch up again.

Full results of the Crawley 24 hour HERE

For some interesting posts on women’s Ultra running checkm out Katie Holmes Blog Runyoung50

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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 in 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 the Mountain and Trail Advisory Group. He also contributes as part of the selection and team management for both Scottish and GB ultra teams. A freelance writer in his spare time, he contributes articles and reports to several websites and magazines including Athletics Weekly and Irunfar.