Left Field Tips for a 100 Mile Ultra

There's plenty written about how to train for and complete a 100 mile ultra marathon: training plans, race reports, video recaps, however having done my first in June I realised there's a few things I'd wished I'd known that were less well discussed.

Here's a compilation of them for those looking to tackle their first century. If anyone has any more they'd like to add please feel free to message me here 🙏.

Live in your race day shoes

On race day you will be spending anywhere between 24 and 50 hours in the shoes you decide to take with you. You'll hopefully get to know them well through training, your long runs and races on the lead up to the big day, however what is often neglected is taking the time to see how the shoes feel when worn hour after hour, when your feet are starting to swell and toes get sore and soles ache.

One thing I found invaluable is that I spent loads of time wearing a matching training pair of the shoes I'd be wearing race day, not only running but at work, around the supermarket, with the kids on days out, on long hikes and so on.

My favourite thing that helped was I'd get up early, hike 5 miles into the office in my race shoes, wear them all day then jog home. It helped get my muscles used to the dynamics of the shoes, whilst highlighting things that may get uncomfortable with long use (hotspots, sore toes, blistering etc)

Things WILL go wrong

You will not have a perfect race, you will fuck up, things will go wrong, over such a long distance it's inevitable.

People who finish 100 milers aren't folks who got it all right, they are folks who problem solved past the issues and kept going regardless.

Gary House had a great tip around this: before race day write down a list of everything that could go wrong, and how you will fix it. Then put that list in your drop bag or somewhere easily to hand.

Your brain will be mush by the half way point of the race, I've had so many races where an obvious solution to a problem didn't come to me because I just couldn't think straight. Having something you can refer to helps a lot.

Also be sure you have backups, and backups of those backups. If you tend to use a drink mix like Tailwind, make sure you've got some alternatives if your stomach starts rejecting it. Have a variety of different food, a whole host of spare socks, fresh clothes, some different shoes, anti chafe, KT tape and so on. Give yourself options to solve issues.

Chafe, no seriously, chafe

I imagine most folks going into their first 100 miler are pretty good at preventing and dealing with chafing by this point. Grab your favourite anti-chafing solution and lather it all over right.

My goodness when getting to the silly distances it becomes a whole different ball park. I've been meticulous about applying anti-chafe where I get issues for years, yet still get caught out.

Here's some fun ones:

• I use Happy Stride shorts, which have an inner liner with a handy phone pocket on your thigh. Still my favourite shorts, yet over distances past 40 miles the minuscule movement of the phone against my leg causes this horrid raw red patch. So now I slap chafe on my outer thighs too 😱
• I had this one race where I ended with two large red patches on my belly of all places, either side of my belly button. Took me ages to work out why. It's because I'd put my thick gloves in my front coat pockets, and they caused my coat to rub against my chest 🙈

The lesson here is always have some anti chafe in your race vest, and be sure to apply the second you feel any sort of rubbing or niggle. It's much harder (and painful) once it's already red. If that does happen then KT tape is your friend to protect the area the rest of the race.

Downhills are the subtle killer

Everyone thinks going uphill is the hardest thing, and from a cardio perspective they are right, but hills are also a chance to slow down, eat something, and use different muscles, if anything, weirdly, they are often a blessing in disguise, especially after a long flat stretch, though they rarely feel like it at the time.

What you need to watch out for though, are the descents! They fatigue your muscles more due to your legs having to travel further, often faster, increasing the forces being applied to your body.

Taking downhills gently will help keep you fresher for longer. Pretty please, with a cherry on top, don't send it on a 100 miler!

You are likely to gain weight during training

This ones super subjective, but one to be aware of. As someone who's had a difficult relationship with weight in his life, I struggled with this, and want folks to know it's quite normal when training.

When preparing for a 100 miler you are putting your body through a lot. Folks often say they always feel hungry when training for a road marathon, think how much more intense that feeling would be when training for almost 4 times that distance.

I put on a solid stone whilst training for the Epona 100!

The thing is, it's a difficult balance to get right. You can easily under-eat, as your calorie needs will be high, which can lead to increased fatigue and risk of injury, right up to conditions like Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport. You can also easily overeat, your body telling you it needs replenishment from all that effort, which ensures you get the fuel you need but will lead to weight gain.

I found using a calorie tracking app like Lose It helped, ensuring my calories out and calories in were balanced, but it's does take the joy out of eating when you have to pause and log everything you put on your plate. An alternative is to focus on good quality whole foods and use hunger signals, if you're more disciplined than I am!

It is can be expensive

Here I don't mean the cost of the race, or hotel, parking etc, though they are usually on the high end due to how long the race is.

No what I mean is that I didn't fully appreciate the cost of everything around the race, and something to be aware of going into it. Some examples:

• Due to increased training volume your food bill will be higher as you'll be eating much more
• Cost of nutrition needed for long runs
• Gear you need, both for required kit and things you may need on the day like backup socks, shoes, anti-chafe, KT tape, race vests etc
• Shoes! My goodness shoes. Due to the increased mileage per week you'll be getting through lots more pairs on the lead up to the big day

To help with this you can:

• Use apps like Vinted to get good second hand / unwanted gear
• Focus on eating supermarket brought food during training runs rather than expensive running focused gels and bars. Soreen, nakd bars, fig rolls, jelly babies etc
• Buy in bulk, sites like XMiles do discounts when getting your nutrition en mass, and I saved a good deal on Veloforte with a voucher code and large box of bars
• Take advantage of end of season sales around Nov/Dec time, you can often pick up cheap shoes to train in and get good deals on kit
• Ask around and see if there's anything you can borrow. Plenty of folks have sets of poles that sit at home most of the year, waterproofs they only use for kit checks and so on
• Use kit well and to it's full lifespan. You can patch up shoes with things like Pair Ups, fix holes in clothes and keep old gear for training runs

Additional Tips

Some last random tips that may help out:

• Foot care, Foot Care, FOOT CARE. Lube up your feet, change socks as often as you can, check for any hotspots or blistering early, carry a well stocked blister kit, have plenty of KT tape to put over areas that are rubbing, and have a towel to dry your feet
• Your feet swell a good deal over that distance: worth being aware of as your shoes may get too tight, socks be too short etc. Bringing some thinner socks or a backup pair of more forgiving fitting / half size up shoes can help
• Experiment with different shoe and sock combinations: I found as the distance crept up thicker socks helped remove any toe bashing for me by filling out the space in the toe box
• Bring along a token of strong personal meaning for motivation: I was lucky enough to have a message from my kids that genuinely was the only thing that kept me going at one point
• Ginger helps settle your stomach, you can buy crystallised ginger to eat that can act like a "reset"

And some tips kindly sent over by fellow ultra runners:

• From Karen Warlow:
  • Bring chewing gum, if you feel like you can't eat anything, chewing some gum can help get your saliva going and increase your appetite
• From Mike Jenkins:
  • Bring lip balm; he found on longer runs your lips get real dry
  • Some things to be aware of that can happen post race: shivers, night sweats, legs seizing up, needing to get up for a glass of water every few hours
• From Dan Morgan:
  • Learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable: practise worst case scenarios where you can (running without food or low on water, soaking socks with no change available etc)