THINK RUNNING AN ULTRAMARATHON IS A STEP TOO FAR? ELIZABETH ELLIOTT DID TOO, UNTIL SHE COMPLETED THE IMBER ULTRA…

UPPING THE DISTANCE

It’ll be easy. Like a brisk walk in the country with lots of cake.” These were the words ringing around my head as I set off from the umpteenth food station having already run the equivalent of a marathon. “Easy” is probably not the description I would use. But even as Salisbury Plain stretched out uninvitingly before me beneath leaden skies, I could kind of see what Women’s Running columnist and GB ultramarathon runner Damian Hall (@damo_hall) had meant.

“Once you’ve done a marathon, stepping up to ultra marathons is much easier than most people seem to think,” says Damian. “The secret is that you just go a little slower than your marathon pace – and make sure you keep eating. Hiking for spells is totally fine, too. Then you realise you can go on and on and on… indefinitely. I remember when 100 miles seemed like an impossible distance. Now it’s something I run two to three times a year.”

It was off the back of this convincing argument that I’d decided seven months earlier to enter the 33-mile Imber Ultra. Now with just over six miles of it remaining, my legs were tired and aching and, on a day punctuated by snow flurries, I was quite cold. But considering the distance I’d already covered and the amount that lay ahead, I didn’t doubt that I would finish.

With six miles left of my first marathon two years earlier, my legs were cramping and pain was shooting through my heels with every foot strike. I feared I wasn’t going to make it and, if I had stopped, I’m convinced I couldn’t have got going again. The ultra was different. The fact it was partly trail helped, as Wiltshire grass and mud are much kinder on the body than London tarmac. “Trail ultras, despite usually being hilly, are often softer and much more varied under foot,” explains Damian. “So the body isn’t being stressed in exactly the same way stride after stride as it is in, say, a road marathon.”