Someone wise once said ‘if you never fail, are you truly aiming high enough?’ Whether it is a time or distance goal, it is through our failures that we may glean the most useful information about ourselves. The key is to not get too disheartened, find the lessons, and work to become stronger in the long term.
The C I 100k
On the night of Friday 29 November at 2200, 39 people started out from St. Catherine’s pier on an epic adventure. 14hrs later 10 would finish having covered 100k through the night, battling the wind and battling the mind.
This was the inaugural year for this event. Organised by Trail Monkey who have put together some epic races in Jersey. The route was from the end of St. Catherine’s breakwater, along the North coast cliff path, down the 5 mile road, across the South coast cliffs, then over to St, Aubin. Then back the same way! 100k with 2500m climbing, 14 hr cut off time. This race now takes pride of place at the very top of the Jersey trail running calendar.
Interesting thought: It is 30k less to continue around the island and back to St. Caths! That was a really powerful realisation for me.
My experience
I hadn’t planned on trying for a 100k race this year. I was concentrating on Round the Rock and Wendover Woods 50 as my big ones. But when I saw the C I 100k pop up in my email, I just had to give it a go. The only issue was that it was only 2 weeks after Wendover! At the time I thought ‘yeah thats sound’…
In the days leading up to the 100k I’d been resting and nervously monitoring some pains lingering from Wendover. By the Friday morning I was feeling almost fresh! Brilliant! During the day I tried to rest as much as possible and eat lots too in preparation for an all nighter on the trails. I arrived at the start ready to smash it out.
We all started off from the end of the pier then started on paths and a bit of road until White Rock 5k in where the North coast Cliff path starts properly. I had been feeling good so far, taking the hills with an easy power hike and steadily running the flats and downs. But by now I could feel the shadow of Wendover looming over me, sharp knee pain on the descents was getting worse already! Looks like I wasn’t as rested as I had thought.
This section of paths are the hardest. They undulate with steep climbs and twist into every contour of the coastline. I had my first gel as we climbed out of Bouley Bay towards Bonne Nuit bay. I managed to get into a nice rhythm through here, these are my home trails and I know every twist and turn, I could only go into semi auto mode though because there was still chances to slip if you hit a muddy patch wrong.
At the first CP I filled up my 2x 500ml flasks and ate something, I was planning to spend as little time as possible at checkpoints to A stay warm and keep momentum, and B to save time.
The next section was flatter from La Fontaine to Gronez, though with a little sting in the tail with a few sharp ups near the end. I was still having pain in the left knee but over all I was feeling good. Through this section I was meeting people who were struggling after the gruelling paths. I was still on schedule, having planned 4hrs for the north coast. I arrived at Gronez castle and had a quick coffee. Coming out of the shelter of the cliffs we were hit by the wind and the chill was bracing as I finished off the last couple of ks on cliff path before the flat and straight 5 mile road.
This should have been the time to get the head down and really eat up the ks, pretty much 10k straight and flatish. But I started to bonk hard! Disaster! What should have taken an hour took an 1:20, and the same again with the South coast paths.
The South coast cliff path runs from Corbiere to St. Aubin. It is only about 10k but has a few good climbs in it. The hardest part about this section is route finding, even though the course was marked there were a couple of junctions where you might struggle if you didn’t know there area, especially in the dark. I was feeling ok by now, but still not managing the pace I would have liked. I hadn’t managed to take in as much fuel as planned either. Towards the end of the section I met the lead runners on their way back. I was surprised at how few I was seeing, I thought for sure there would be more ahead of me.
It was a road section leading down hill into St. Aubin that really got to my increasing knee pain, but none the less I managed to run the rest of the way to the turn around CP. I was on about 6:30 30 mins ahead of the cut off. I took a little while at this CP, changing my socks, taking on some coke and some food. I took my return Starmix sweets from my bag and started off again at about 6:45.
I started meeting people on my return some just about making it into the turn around before the cut off, others with no hope. As I took the slightly longer but firmer way along the promenade at St. Brelade I could see head torches on beach walking deflated to the slipway to hear the news that they had to retire. I met a woman waiting for a lift by the road sitting head in hands defeated by the 100k beast. I wasn’t feeling too good either by now! I calculated my chances of finishing within 14 hrs at 50%.
Just before starting the South cliffs I joined met with Steven who I’d never met before but now found ourselves feeding off each others energy, encouraging each other. Thats what I like about these things, you might be running alone for 5 hrs then meet up with people and really band together through the hard times.
The Cliffs went by reasonably quickly together, I thought if we make it to Gronez with 5 hrs till cut off then it could be done. We made a heroic effort along the 5 mile road as the sun rose to greet us. But as the North coast cliffs came up to face us I felt myself fade. The pain in my knees had become unbearable, and I had a heaviness on me that was more than the usual bonk, not even eating more sweets helped.
And so, as we crested our last climb, the Gronez CP came, and that was it for us with 4.5 hrs left to do the whole of the north coast, in our condition it was unlikely. And I didn’t want to risk doing long term damage by pushing on.
It was bitter sweet leaving the CP and driving back to st Caths defeated by the 100k.
Lessons learned
With every failure comes the opportunity to learn. I think most of us learned something from this race! There were a lot of DNFs and the cut off time was brutal, but then so it should be! This race is the longest, hardest race in Jersey, it stands as an ultimate test piece, and something to aspire to finishing for every local ultra runner.
I think my main leaning point is to not underestimate the length of time it takes to recover from long races. I definitely felt a hang over from Wendover, lets call it a ‘Wendover’ haha! Other than that, again nutrition could be improved, I need to incorporate more longer runs into my training week where I also train nutrition strategy I think.
Even as I write this, I’m starting to look to the next one.
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