Summary
The 2021 Chiltern Wonderland 50 miler took place on the 18th of September. A single loop of the Chiltern Hills starting and finishing in Goring, the race took in approximately 5500 feet or 1700 metres of cumulative elevation gain, and was the third in the 2021 Centurion 50 mile Grand Slam series. I finished in 9:40:07, 41st overall, 36th male, and 12th in my age category.
Race report
It’s taken me a few weeks to get around to writing this race report. That’s partly been a result of life getting in the way, but it’s also the case that unpacking all that went on is guaranteed to be a sufficiently arduous task that it’s just put me off even starting. But, like the race itself, it’s incumbent upon me to put one foot in front of the other, and see where I end up.
My goals going into the event were mixed. On the one hand, a couple of months of no racing (beyond a local 10k) meant I was harbouring ambitions for a PB. On the other, my training had been steady but not substantial, and whilst I knew I was in good shape fitness-wise, I wasn’t confident that my endurance was quite up to scratch.
In the end, I opted to adopt the same approach that served me so well at the North Downs Way 50 – that of avoiding thinking too hard about end goals, and focusing on the process. As it happens, this served me very well, though it took a lot of work to stay on track.
The race opened in heavy fog with a few kilometres along the Thames Path, which made for a comfortable start, though it did complicate pacing as it was so easy to move swiftly. I stuck with Aidan and Mark, two Bushey friends who were running their first 50-miler. At one point I let them go entirely as I felt like the pack we were hanging with were getting a bit carried away, but eventually we reached the first climb of the day, and I felt strong enough to push on ahead.
The course soon left the Thames Path and we were treated to some spectacular early morning views of the beautiful countryside surrounding Goring. This being the first race in the 50 mile Grand Slam that didn’t stick entirely to a National Trail, navigation was a bit more of a concern than in previous events, but the course was well-marked and, combined with the GPX file on my watch, I was able to remain confident about staying en route and enjoy taking it all in.
Soon enough, we hit the Tokers Green aid station, and I was pleasantly surprised to have my water bottle refilled by none other than Backyard Ultra world record holder John Stocker. Unfortunately, I couldn’t recall his name at the time, so I just sheepishly asked him if he was ‘the backyard ultra guy.’
“I might be, I might be,” he chuckled. I told him (in case nobody else had) how epic his achievement was, praise he graciously accepted before reminding me that I was the one working hard today.
This next section was, I believe, where I made some crucial mistakes. I opted only to refill a single bottle at Tokers Green, knowing that the next aid station was only around 13km away. The day was still cool and misty, ideal running conditions, and I wanted to minimise the amount of weight I was carrying. This method had worked for me at both previous Grand Slam events but, as I was to find out, you can’t always rely on time-tested strategies.
By the time I got to Bix, the sun had burnt off most of the cloud coverage, resulting in bright blue skies that beautifully complimented the race’s bucolic views. It was not yet properly ‘hot’, but I definitely failed to hydrate properly in this section, and I compounded this error by once again only refilling a single bottle at Bix, at kilometre 29.
This meant that by the 35km mark I was more or less down to 100ml or less of water. Forced to make this last another 7km until the Ibstone aid station, I quickly felt the wind fall out of my sails. My body began to feel the way it usually does at the 60 or 70km mark – in a word, rubbish. It was all I could do to remind myself that opting for a sunhat had proved to be a good choice.
As it happens, this also turned out to be one of the toughest sections of the course, which packs most of its elevation gain into the middle third of the race. In some sense, this validated the sufferfest I was enduring, but it certainly didn’t make me feel much better about it at the time.
Thankfully, I’ve always been a much stronger climber than descender, and I was able to make decent progress and even overtake a few people despite feeling like the world was slowly ending. But the less said about the Turville ‘windmill climb’, the better.
So vicious was the climb combined with the heat of the day that, upon reaching the crest of the hill, the gentleman ahead of me opted to simply sit down and take a breather. It was all I could do to resist joining him.
What followed was an almost equally sharp descent (whoever thought up this course has a sadistic streak) followed by a long, gradual ascent through a lovely patch of woodland. It was slow going, and I was really starting to feel the effects of my dehydration – by this point I had abandoned any notion of a PB, but a quick bit of mental maths told me that even ‘walking it out’ I would have time to finish. I knew that if I could just hold on and get to the next aid station, there was a satisfying drink waiting for me.
Soon enough I made it to Ibstone, where a couple of other runners who also looked to be struggling were stood or sat staring into the void. I did my best to put on a chipper face, but I think all the volunteers could tell I was hanging by a thread. I immediately downed a full 500ml bottle of water, before refilling both bottles and eating a few slices of tangerine for extra liquid. Whilst it was temping to hang around and wait until I felt better, I knew that forward progress, however slow, is the key to getting ultras finished, so I did my best to suck it up and get a move on.
After walking down a short section of road, I followed the course into another woodland (via a rather unwelcome stile) and started to slowly descend. Miraculously, as I strolled along, the sense of doom began to slowly clear, and before I knew it I was able to break into a gentle jog, something that had seemed unimaginable just a few minutes earlier.
I could have laughed. The rational part of my brain knew that drinking all that water should make me feel better, but to actually experience my mood change on the basis of a nutritional decision still seemed miraculous nonetheless. It brought with it a sense of affirmation – I am my body, my body is me; my body can feel better, I can feel better.
Before I knew it was making great progress and feeling better with each passing mile. In a way, it felt like I got my inevitable ‘low point’ out of the way early, as the rest of the race passed with relatively few issues. I moved well, and whilst I still experienced the usual discomfort that comes from shifting one’s body up and down hills for hours on end, I could tell that I had managed to get on top of the nutritional deficit that I’d spent the first half of the race accumulating.
The only exception to this was a subtle but persistent cramp which plagued my calves for the rest of the race. It never blew up into a fully blown, standstill-inducing cramp, but it was enough to put me edge a few times, and force me to adjust my gait here and there.
At the Swyncombe aid station (which we had to access via a depressingly long, straight hill, giving those in attendance a full view of the damned for minutes before their arrival) one of the volunteers told me I was somewhere between the 30th and 40th runner to arrive, which lifted my spirits even more. I began to piece together that it wasn’t so much that I was having a bad day – but that the day was bad. Or, hot, at least. Everyone was slowing down, and all those souls behind me had a lot longer to suffer.
One particular highlight of the latter half of the course was the dead straight 3km Grim’s Ditch, an ancient earthwork which shares its name with a similar structure near Bushey, where I grew up. Whilst it’s hardly the pyramids of Giza, running alongside a structure that predates Christ was a novel experience, and, just like the sparsely forested South Downs, reminder of the extent to which humans have defined the English landscape.
By the time I got to the final aid station at the end of Grim’s Ditch, I was definitely suffering, but feeling like it was very much ‘in the bag’. There to greet me was none other than John Stocker once again, who advised me to eat a banana to deal with my cramp, given that salt and sugar had not yet worked. As I walked out I followed his advice, and it seemed to do the trick and alleviate the worst of the cramping – so thanks John!
In the end, I made it back to Goring in daylight, which was not a given at all, and passed through the modest finish line (an alley way by the village hill) in 9:40:07. My slowest race of the Grand Slam by just over a minute, but definitely my best performance in the podium. Passing through the first aid station at CW50, I was in 75th place – by the end, I was 41st, 36th male, and 12th in my age category.
Whilst it was probably the toughest race of the slam in terms of conditions, it was also unexpectedly my favourite course. I had thought that a great big loop would have less of the allure than the long straight line courses that characterise the North and South Downs Way 50s, but the variety of scenery and the sense of going on a ‘tour’ of the Chilterns was really magical. I plan to focus on a road marathon next year, but I will definitely be returning to the Chiltern Wonderland course in 2023 or 2024.
Onto Wendover Woods!
