This is an event that has caught my eye a few times over the last couple of years because of its quirky nature, and this year I finally snagged a place. Leading up to it I really struggled to motivate myself, not because of the event itself, but because of the year I have had.
I am never sure how much to give away. Will people bother to read it, will I embarrass myself, will it damage the coaching business? I would hope it is none of these. I would hope people will appreciate that I do understand it isn’t always easy, that it isn’t always fun, and that sometimes you just need someone to listen and nothing more. So I am telling it as it is, although this is a very abbreviated version and even that is long.
Quick facts
- Event: Escape from Meriden
- My route: Meriden to Barry, around 115 miles, with about 3 miles of trail in total
- My target: 90 miles
- What happened: lost my left shoe in waist-deep mud at mile 4 and ran 25 miles on one
- Result: 60 miles as the crow flies, called at the A40 junction
Just here for the race? Skip to the race report. The section before it covers the mental health background to my year (depression, anxiety, medication). You’re welcome to read it, but you don’t have to.
The year so far
After the Wildhorse 200 in April I sensibly backed off the training a little, but my anxiety, which I have always suffered with, started to escalate. To cut a long story short, I ended up seeking medical help for depression and anxiety. That seemed to open the floodgates, and by the end of June putting my running gear on led to panic attacks and emotional breakdowns. I had to take a complete break.
I would normally run anywhere from 40 to 80+ miles a week. Now I couldn’t face a mile and didn’t run at all for around a month. When I did get back out, the runs were very short and gentle, and any effort at all reduced me to tears. I wouldn’t have managed even those without a couple of friends who unexpectedly found themselves dragging me out of a very dark hole and providing a shoulder to cry on. I have leaned on them far more than is fair, so a huge thank you to them.
After a few appointments I was diagnosed with Social Anxiety Disorder and Depression. A few weeks of building the medication up to an effective level later, I started to run again. It was still sporadic and emotionally challenging, but it was a step back towards functioning, and after a few weeks I managed a few runs of 2 to 3 hours. My mileage was still very low, training was completely unstructured, and it was very much a mental battle.
That is when I made a slightly mad decision. I was booked to run the Leeds Liverpool Canal Race as a Spartathlon qualifying attempt. I was clearly never going to hit that time after running maybe 150 miles in 4 months, but I genuinely believed that if I didn’t start that event I would never run an event again. So I set my first running goal since falling apart: start the LLCR. I turned up, started, met some wonderfully understanding and supportive people, and somehow completed the 130 miles inside the time limit, relying on fitness built training for Deadwater and the Wildhorse 200, with a sprinkling of stubbornness. Fingers crossed I will be back next year in a better frame of mind, and I highly recommend the event.
After the LLCR I kept battling the mental demons and only managed sporadic runs. At the end of September I was diagnosed with a peptic ulcer caused by my anxiety and depression medication, and I was ordered off the meds. In a rapid space of time my mental health declined severely, and to be totally open and honest, it took me very much to borderline crisis point. After much conflict with my GP I was eventually offered an alternative medication, and after a week or so I was just about coping with the world again.
In October I was finally able to string 3 to 4 weeks of running together, building from next to nothing up to about 35 miles a week, with only minor side effects from the medication and the first signs of getting on top of things mentally. Then November arrived and I finally started making it to the top of the waiting list for the medical tests, screenings and therapy sessions. Running dropped down the priority list again, and back to next to nothing it went. At the same time my blood test results showed a vitamin B9 deficiency, which can contribute to mental health issues as well as dizziness, tiredness, problems concentrating and shortness of breath. I seemed to be getting all of them, and none of them help your running or your state of mind.
Getting to the start line
Escape from Meriden was fast approaching and I was once again finding every reason I could not to run. I had no interest in planning my route or getting my kit together, which anyone who knows me will tell you I normally obsess over. With 2 or 3 days to go I finally sat down, spent a couple of hours creating a route, and tweaked it each evening before deciding it would do.
Then I started on the kit. I threw just about all the gear I own on the living room floor, decided in about 30 minutes that I would have this, this, this and this, and that the rest could stay. I then spent 4 hours failing to find my running shorts, gave up, packed a pair of running leggings instead, and put it all to one side to try to forget about it. It was just as well I had arranged the travel and accommodation months in advance, or that would have been another reason to drop out.
As it turned out the travel and accommodation went far too smoothly and I ended up in Meriden much earlier than expected, twiddling my thumbs. Note to self for next year: arrive on the day. On race day, while getting ready before checking out of the hotel, I discovered the seam on my running leggings had failed. In the bin they went, which left me with my Ron Hill trail joggers to run in. I spent the day pub crawling, drinking lattes and eating far too much food to kill time.
I had booked a table for dinner an hour or so before registration with Hayley and Steve, a couple running the chained event (yes, chained together for 36 hours), who I had bumped into once or twice and spoken to in running groups on Facebook. Sean joined us too, a runner who had finished a 24-hour obstacle race in the States only a week or so earlier, which was reassuring. It is good to know we all make silly decisions about what to enter.
We were the first to arrive at registration, so there were no crowds to negotiate, and then it was back to the pub for a drink or two and to charge the devices before the race briefing. That is when the hall started to fill up and I found myself struggling. About halfway through the briefing I sloped off to the toilets purely to get out of the crowded room and calm myself down, then went back for the rest of it. I noticed a few familiar faces: Gareth and Jo from my previous running club, Gordon and Sean from Deadwater, and Rachel being the super volunteer she always is. I managed to miss Dylan, who finally said hello just before the start.
And there we were. After all the turmoil of the past few months I was still standing, I had still made the start line, and I was going to keep doing what everyone knows I do: keep moving forward. Without any fanfare a quiet voice said go, and a couple of hundred runners looked very confused and started moving in various directions, then turned around and went the opposite way as their GPS devices registered which way they were actually heading.
This is the only time I feel calm, the only time the anxiety goes away and I lose my fear of the world. For every other moment of the year it feels like everything is a test. Going to the shop to buy bread sets my pulse racing, my lips tingling and the world spinning, and even training runs send the emotional turmoil into overdrive. In a race, tell me to get from A to B under my own steam and a switch is flicked and I function.
Mile 4: the bog
The first few miles were uneventful, coasting along at a very sedate pace and chatting to a few others going my way, including Hayley and Steve. After a gentle 3 miles I diverted through a kissing gate, down a couple of steps carved into the bank and onto a nice track alongside a field. My route went all the way from Meriden to Barry, a total of around 115 miles with only about 3 miles of trail, so this trail wasn’t going to last long.
Through a second field and onto some sticky clay mud with large tyre marks in it, I noticed a sign and stopped to read it. It was nothing to worry about, just a warning of a high-pressure gas pipe so no heavy vehicles. I carried on, my route kicked left, and after about 20 feet I hit a rather large problem. Despite not having crossed any barriers or passed any warning signs, I had found my way onto the HS2 construction. Instead of a trail across a field I was looking at a huge valley that had been dug out and filled with water, absolutely impassable.
I retraced my steps to the muddy track and then suddenly realised my leg had disappeared. The mud I had walked over was a crust covering a quagmire. It broke, the water underneath came gushing up, the whole thing turned to slosh, and I sank past my waist. I somehow dragged myself out, but my left trainer stayed exactly where it was, lost somewhere in its gooey muddy grave.
Being the stubborn person I am, I spent a good ten minutes rolling about in the mud with my arm in as far as I could reach, searching for my trainer without luck. Headlights came towards me and I warned them to stay away because I had lost a shoe. Like all intelligent ultra runners, Hayley and Steve immediately came over to laugh and document my plight. Sorry, I mean help. I could tell this bit of the story for hours, but in short, another 10 minutes of fruitless searching, hysterical laughing and photos that will go down in history later, I made the only possible decision. Time to carry on without the shoe.
One shoe for 25 miles
Some people think this is not the only choice, and I will admit they are right. I did very briefly consider a few alternatives, but none seemed to have a good chance of ending well. Idea one was to offer a crazy amount of money for someone’s shoes, but I don’t have silly sums of money and I am tight. Idea two was to mug someone for their trainers, which is morally questionable and almost certainly a disqualification, so that thought was discarded. That left carrying on with one shoe. Somebody did mention stopping at that point, but I couldn’t quite grasp it. The first option finish point was 30 miles and I was at mile 4, so why would I stop?
Climbing out of the quagmire and looking like the creature from the swamp, I followed Hayley and Steve back onto firmer land while any bystanders would have seen a terrifying creature slowly stalking them from the mud and leaving a slimy trail behind. Eventually we found our way onto some road, with them keeping a suitable distance in front as the mud was getting rather fragrant. I tried rolling around in the grass, but it was a lost cause. No matter how much mud transferred to the grass I was still absolutely caked in it, and the pictures really don’t do it justice.
At some point I stopped to put a second sock on for a little padding. It was only about 01:00, the local Tesco stores weren’t open 24 hours so there was no chance of picking up footwear, and my first thought was to stop at a garage, buy gaffer tape and tape my foot and ankle into a shoe. I arrived at the garage, got a look of horror from the cashier, and was assured they did not sell gaffer tape. I gave up on that idea.
So let’s skip along a little. For the next 25 miles I lopsidedly plodded my way along, running whenever the ground was forgiving enough, catching up with and dropping behind Hayley and Steve on a regular basis, chatting to a few other runners whose names escape me, shouting “ouch” regularly when the ground turned out to be less forgiving than it looked, and narrowly avoiding a few smashed bottles. Messages came in from Heather, who was busily shoe shop hunting on my behalf, but I kept reaching the shops a few hours too early. Then at about 06:50 Rachel replied with an offer of a spare pair of Dylan’s trainers, which I accepted, and we arranged to meet at Droitwich.
A confession: for a split second I was disappointed, because this would be before I had completed a one-shoe marathon, and I briefly considered delaying delivery. But I am a wuss at heart, so I shot that thought down.
Droitwich: shoes and foot admin
I reached Droitwich and stopped at the first place with obvious parking and some steps to sit on for some foot admin: the local Methodist church. Socks off, talc liberally applied, feet left out to air. Just as Rachel arrived the minister came out to check what we were up to and said it was fine as long as we cleaned the talc up. I could have understood it indoors, but it didn’t seem very charitable in an outdoor car park. Hey ho.
The first pair of trainers didn’t fit at all, which was a slight worry, and the rest were trail shoes. Then a pair came out of the boot of the car and I had to chuckle: a nice white pair of Nike Pegasus 38 FlyEase, exactly the same as the one I was still wearing (half a size smaller, but who cares). You can read my Nike Pegasus 38 FlyEase review for more on them. On they went, and after nowhere near enough thank yous I trotted off. It was amazing how much better it felt to have cushioning under both feet.
I was fully aware that some damage had already been done. The sole of my left foot was very tender, which didn’t concern me too much, but there was the start of some visible bruising on my left shin and it was becoming very painful. It was the same pain I had on the last day of Deadwater, which I had to really grind through to finish, and I was far more motivated for Deadwater than I was for Escape from Meriden. So I started the realistic re-evaluation immediately. Unless my pace was clearly quick enough for the 90-mile target, I would call it at 60 and prevent further damage to my leg.
That left roughly another 35 to 40 miles. I had done 30 in more pain at Deadwater, so in my mind there was no doubt that 60 was a given. I let my wife know I would reach 60 as the crow flies and then call it a day. I had no interest in beating anyone’s mileage. To me it was about the most efficient route, so the lower the mileage the better to hit the 60, and I just wanted it done.
While stopped I had cleaned myself up a little, so my first priority with shoes sorted was food and fluids. I haven’t mentioned that I had got into such a mess that my drinks bottles were also covered in mud, and 2 of the 3 zips on my bag (as well as the zip on my shoe) wouldn’t open. In 7 hours I had drunk about 750ml and eaten 3 gels and a snack bar, not even a fifth of what I had planned, and it was showing in my energy levels. There was no point dwelling on it. The mud had dried, I had clean hands and shoes, so I bought sandwiches and water, cleaned my bottles, and carried on trying to hold a decent pace, quite content that anything around 15 minutes a mile would get the job done.
Calling it at 60 miles
Given how long it has taken me to get to this point in the blog it seems almost like cheating, but the rest of the event was pretty much uneventful. After mile 4 my plotted route turned out to be as good as I could have hoped: quiet roads, roads with pavements, and a few short sections of trail. There was one section of a lesser A road that was not ideal but far from dangerous, with room to step out of the way if needed. The final 40 miles were just me moving forward and occasionally popping in to buy drinks and snacks.
The views going over the Malverns were stunning and worth the climb. As seems to be the norm, the public rights of way around Ross-on-Wye had been generously protected by the farmers with fencing, bramble hedges and barbed wire, all considerately attached to the footpath signs to help hold them up, so I started to feel right at home.
My original route meandered a little from Ross-on-Wye to avoid the A40 heading into Monmouth, as I had no idea whether there was a pavement and I know it is a very busy road. But glancing at my route I noticed a name that stood out: Crockers Ash. It was just on the edge of the 60-mile marker, I was on a road heading straight to it, and I was about to divert off to avoid the A40. The A40 was at 60 miles. Instead of avoiding it, it became my main target. I followed the road straight to the junction with the A40, 800ft down one hill and 400ft down another, past the 60 mark, waited for the GPS tracker to update, swore at the tracker, cursed into space, shook it, and it finally updated. 60 miles as the crow flies, done.
I’m pretty sure that without the disaster at mile 4, 90 would have been well within my grasp. But to pull out a 60 from that, in a decent time and while still happy, all things considered, I’ll take it. I sent the text to say I was done, turned off the tracker and switched my brain off.
A quick phone call to my wife revealed a misunderstanding. She thought I would hit 60 miles in Monmouth, which was still a good way down the road, so she hadn’t left the house yet and would be about an hour. I took my waterproof off, sat on the floor, put my down jacket on for warmth and switched off. After a while I realised my phone was ringing. It was Hayley with an update: the cold was getting to them and a few other issues meant they were seeking warm shelter and calling it a day. I suggested they use their foil blanket, hung up, and realised I was freezing myself, so I pulled my own foil blanket out, wrapped it around me and over my head with just the head torch poking out, and set about staying warm.
After what felt like an eternity a car pulled off the A40 and went straight past me. I recognised it as ours and waited for it to turn around, but it didn’t, so I called my wife and explained that she had just driven straight past me. “Where?” she asked. “At the junction to the A40 where I said I was waiting. Come back down the hill.” She came back down, bringing a procession of cars with her, who all checked I was OK huddled at the side of the road wrapped in a foil blanket. It turns out she thought I was a Christmas tree.
The aftermath
I am recovering quicker than I thought I would. I was concerned I had done damage that might take a few weeks to clear, but I think a week and I should be good to go. I’m happy with my effort. I never really believed beforehand that I was in shape for 90, but my performance suggests I still have the engine. I just need a new clutch so I can use the gears again.
You can see from the photos, and the people who spoke to me afterwards will vouch for it, that I can see the funny side of how it turned out. The shoe incident didn’t faze me and didn’t spoil the experience. It has reinforced my belief to some degree that I can face the unexpected and deal with it. If I can carry that over into my non-running life, things will be so much easier. I’m also more than happy that my misfortune lightened the mood for others, even if only for a couple of days. It was all very good fun.
What ADAPT looks like in a real race
Looking back, the day was a live example of the ADAPT method I use with the runners I coach: Accept, Diagnose, Analyse, Plan, Take Action.
- Accept: the shoe was gone and the 90-mile goal was now under threat.
- Diagnose: one missing shoe, uneven loading on my legs, and a risk of blisters and compensatory niggles.
- Analyse: I could still move forward, and there was a chance of replacement footwear later in the race.
- Plan: get to Droitwich, sort the shoes, then honestly re-evaluate the target.
- Take action: stop mourning the 90 miles and run the 60-mile race that still existed.
I’ve broken the method down step by step in The ADAPT Method: What To Do When Your Race Falls Apart. If you want support that prepares you for the messy bits as well as the clean ones, have a look at my personalised coaching services or get in touch.
Thank yous
Thank you to Richard and Mark for coming up with these adventures so that we can all play for a day. Thank you to Rachel, especially for the shoe delivery, and to everyone else who volunteers and makes these events possible. I’m not sure how many runners mention it, but the attention you get from volunteers, even for a few minutes, can be incredibly uplifting, and I’m not sure we give enough credit for that. Thanks and well done to all the other runners, always a friendly bunch who will literally give you their spare shoes to help you through. Not sure what more you can ask for (half a size bigger, maybe). Thank you, Dylan, for your shoes. I have broken them in for you. Thanks to all the friends old and new who tracked my journey and supported me along the way. It is always extra motivating to know people are watching your little dot on the map, waiting for it to update. Finally, thank you Carol for putting up with all the inconvenience that running these silly adventures, and being married to me, brings.
If anything in this post sounds familiar, please speak to your GP or someone you trust. There are free UK support options listed in my post on how running can boost your mental health.
– Steve
