I love seeing other people doing races because it makes me want to sign up for them too. I did Race to the King as my first ultra because I'd seen somebody else doing it on Instagram and I thought, ‘Oh, that looks really fun, I’ll sign up to that!’
Meet Anna Harding from the Women’s Running gang; she runs ultras and reports back, and she also writes our Running Skills features and specialises in super practical advice. You may think Anna, who’s run 12 marathons and eight ultras and skipped from race to race since her first marathon back in 2017, would have a stack of race dates in the calendar for 2024 and a list of PB ambitions… But something has shifted, she says. “Over the last few years, my goals have changed so it’s not about chasing times anymore. It’s about having fun and doing the things that excite me.”
Anna knows what she wants when it comes to running, but it doesn’t mean she’ll stop taking on big challenges. She loves watching documentaries about runners and she’s the first to admit a girl crush on most of the mad racers she sees on them. “Every year,” she smiles, “I follow races like The Spine, The Arc of Attrition and the Centurion Winter Downs 200, and it’s all incredible. But I don’t think it’s for me – I’ll just stick to the smaller ultras I think.”