Run, forest, run
If I take one every 40 minutes, that’s nine of these for six hours, better make it eleven to be on the safe side. Oh, and one for the start line. Plus the chews, and better make the pre-mix energy drink now, and fill the water bladder. I’ll need breakfast as well, so let’s also set that out ahead of tomorrow’s 4.15am alarm call.
There’s a lot more maths involved in running an ultra-marathon than I ever considered. Making sure you’re carrying enough fuel and hydration without over packing and increasing your carry weight is a fine balance. There are aid stations stocking fruit, sandwiches, coca cola and more every 10kms or so along the race, but then all the literature suggests never trying something new on a long run. So, it’s twelve tried and tested energy gels with 30g of carbs (four with additional caffeine) that enter the pockets on my hydration vest, alongside two packs of energy chews (one with sodium), two 500mL carb loaded drinks, and 2L of water. Fortunately, the weather has negated the need to carry additional gear with the organisers allowing us to ditch the thermals (hat, gloves, top and bottoms), though not the rain jacket. All of that energy still puffs out the back of the vest and I, along with 1499 others, looked like a motley collection of ninja turtle action figures once we were huddled on the start line eagerly awaiting the siren.
It was only four months earlier that I even decided that this start line was somewhere I wanted to be. It was October, I’d been running eight months and was looking for a fresh challenge that I would be unable to compare to any past endeavour achieved when I was younger, fitter, and faster. I had run a very poorly managed marathon fifteen years earlier but, in running a marathon plus another 10kms through the forests of Rotorua, New Zealand, meant achieving something entirely new. However, 52kms is a long way and so those four months from signing up to lining up for the Tarawera T50 meant getting my head down, building up mileage and time on my legs, and working out what to eat and drink and when.
A friend had mentioned a running app called Vert Run that provides plans and coaches for a monthly subscription. I signed up to the ‘Lucy Bartholomew’s Become an Ultra Runner’ training program which I liked for two reasons. Firstly, it was exactly what I needed and secondly, Lucy was the only Ultra athlete I’d heard of at this point. (As a quick aside, Lucy is an incredible communicator, role model and advocate for the sport, able to carry the weight of being an inspiration to so many with grace and kindness, whilst still finding time to remain an elite athlete. Interviews with her are always worth your time.) But the Lucy plan does not involve her any further than attaching her name to a 12-week program, the actual coaching fell to another athlete, Adam Brown, one of Vert Run’s own. It was Adam that I felt accountable to, that would answer my questions, provide advice, offer his own experiences, tweak the plan to my needs and progression, and be the guy that pumped me up in the lead up to the race.
I’d had a surprisingly OK sleep and was out of bed a few minutes before the alarm went off the morning of the Ultra. I wolfed down my breakfast of jam on crumpets and a black coffee before putting my gear on. I made an extra carb drink as I now had a mile walk to the race village green (and eventual finish line) where a bus would be waiting to take many of us to the start. Being nervous, well prepared and a little anxious, I ended up on one of the first buses to depart which meant arriving at the start line of Te Puia over an hour before we were due to get going. This is a long time and was filled by stretching, stretching some more, nervous pacing, queueing for the toilet, a couple more stretches and finally finishing off the pre-race fuel including the energy gel that was the first of my twelve. With about fifteen minutes to go, we all ambled bleary-eyed through the gates of Te Puia as dawn arrived and into our respective starting corrals based on our approximate finishing times self-determined during race registration, for me the four months prior. I was in the Green Zone that would be starting ten minutes behind the elite athletes and those expecting to finish among the top 25%. I’d registered based on finishing somewhere in the top half but figuring top 25% was a tad too optimistic. Since we’re all wearing timing chips our results would be accurate to our own race.
We were welcomed to the start line by a Haka which got the adrenaline levels rising just that little bit higher and at 7am the starting pistol went and around 40 or 50 elites, men and women, bolted off at a pace quicker than I can run a 5kms. Some 30 metres behind them, the red group also started albeit funnelled through a starting gate that effectively spat them out in single file as they then too crossed the start line and their timing chips sprang into action. Around five minutes later the last red zone athlete was on their way, 350 or so people were on the course, and suddenly all was quiet again. There was now just three hundred of the longest feeling seconds to go before our green start time of 7.10am and if one listened carefully, you could hear the flutter of collective stomach butterflies taking flight. Finally, and after a countdown from ten, the starting gate was reopened, and we shuffled through. I was near the front and so at 7:10:19am my timing chip registered my crossing of the line, 0m into a run that had another 52,180m to go, 1,222m of which would be uphill.
It was now that all of Lucy’s on-line plan, of Adam’s coaching, and my own learnings came into their own. Unlike its road running cousin, the trails are often very narrow, and such was the case here. There was a lot of jostling, of overtaking and being overtook and at no point towards the first aid station did I feel like the race had settled. I was conscious of getting swept up by faster runners and managed to focus on my own rhythm allowing myself to be passed and to pass when necessary. 70 minutes and 11kms in and I reached the first aid station at which I did not stop since my second race gel was ten minutes away and I had more than enough fluid to keep going. At about double the time and double the distance, the second station arrived and here I topped up one of the 500mL water bottles that had now been exhausted of a carb drink. On and on, past the halfway mark of the race as we ran tantalisingly close to a lake shoreline but high enough above it that it remained just fleeting glances through the vegetation.
At 35.3kms and 3hrs50 into the race, the third aid station appeared and where two young volunteers, maybe eleven or twelve years old, squeezed sopping sponges onto my head and neck cooling me down whilst an older vollie filled up one water bottle with water and a second with electrolytes. The number of volunteers on the course, both at aid stations, and as course marshals along the route were many, giving their time up to look after and manage hundreds and hundreds of people they have never met and will likely never meet again. Each and every one, my eternal thanks go out to for I never saw one without a smile or lacking words of encouragement. Spectators along the way, all strangers to me, cheering me by name since we all have ours written across our race bib. One young lass on a bicycle riding with her family that went past me on some wider fire trails a few hours in slowed as she went past, glanced down at my bib and yelled ‘You got this Jonny!’ as she rode away replenishing my energy as much as any of the gels.
My longest training run had been 30kms, at home along a section of the Larapinta Trail. It was also the longest in terms of time on feet as my training plan worked to time rather than distance and that run was a four-hour effort. It was a fortnight prior and marked the end of the build-up ahead of the pre-race taper. I had now passed both 30kms and four hours and was closing in on marathon distance from where I would truly pass into the unknown.
I ticked off the marathon and still felt good. Seven gels down and only 10kms to go. My watch suggesting a sub-6hr run was on the cards, how good is this? And then came THE climb. In the context of the race, it was another climb, there’d been plenty, but this was both the steepest and longest on the course. A few kilometres earlier, we’d merged with the half-marathon runners that had started elsewhere at 10am and by the time I reached that point I was overtaking those half’ers towards the back end of their race which was exactly what I needed, exactly when I needed it. I had hundreds of mini goals ahead of me that I could tick off, passing each in turn which got me up the hill in better spirits than had I have been ascending alone. Coming down the other side, my natural affinity for the downhill had me whooshing around the outside of many more until the moment whereby my right toe caught a tree root, my left leg caught the fall and sent my left hamstring into a cramp and I had to stop. Now it was the turn of some of those half’ers to pass me as I started to stretch and alleviate the pain whilst also popping down a fair few of those sodium laced chews. Maybe a minute or two later I was able to continue but I lost the ability to change up my speed and so settled into a one pace lope into the final aid station at the 45kms mark.
Here I received another dousing of ice cold water from another kindly volunteer. The temperature had been rising all morning as the clouds parted and full sun hit at the same time I was finally exiting the forested trails. I got my final top ups of water and electrolytes before resuming my comfortably paced jog for the final 7kms along the geothermal lakes that Rotorua is famous for. Finally, I was able to look around and enjoy where I was. For this final leg back to the race village all there was left to do was to tick off the kilometre markers until finally entering the finishing chute, to hear my name called by the race announcer, to hear more strangers applaud, and to cross the finish line eight gels, 52,180 metres, and 5 hours 43 minutes and 18 seconds after I’d started.
In so doing, as well as the leftover gels in my pockets, I had energy left in my own tank. I’d run my debut Ultra about as well as I could have hoped. Things had almost gone wrong when the imagined unstoppable force of my right foot met the very real immovable object of the tree, but it hadn’t. To run so far and for so long and that be as bad as it got is something I am very grateful for.
After all was said and done, I managed to finish in 250th position, considerably higher up than where I started and putting me firmly in the middle of all the red zone runners. I’m glad I have no prior equivalent to compare this experience to because I feel really proud of my effort. Thanks, young lass on the bicycle, I did indeed get this.













