A week ago I spent a somewhat surreal weekend around the fringes of Centurion Running's Autumn 100.
It came about because I had offered to pace someone on leg 4 of the race as their pacer had gone down with Covid-19. The someone was a person I'd never met but had seen a few of their tweets as I follow a few runners who follow them, and I thought it would be a lovely thing to do to support someone in their 100 mile endeavour. It also occurred to me that running leg 4 might help to offset the unhappiness from the last time I was a part of that race, the story of which you can read here.
So Saturday was spent dot-watching. Not just Nick's dot but also several other dots too, willing people on to run well. Nick was doing brilliantly and by late evening I thought rather than try to get some sleep at home I should drive to Goring and set up camp in my car in the station carpark. It looked like he'd finish leg 3 well ahead of schedule and I was terrified I'd fall asleep at home and not be at Goring when I needed to be. Crewing or pacing is such a responsibility and, as well as anticipating disasters, you have to anticipate things going far better than planned and be there in good time. I was also very anxious about parking- the station carpark isn't big and with so many people running I worried about being able to park. So fuelled by the fear of messing up on pacing duty I got to Goring about 10.30pm. The back of the car was set up with blankets, duvet and pillows so, after buying some snacks, I curled up under the duvet and alternated between dot-watching and occasionally dozing.
Nick was going beautifully on leg 3 as was Mike, with whom I ran much of legs 2 and 3 of A100 back in 2018. I was so delighted for them both, especially Mike as he was aiming for a fast race. But there's something about that stretch of the Ridgeway at night, something that just seems to sap all a runner's energy, cause mystery injuries to appear, and make the wheels fall off...
Both those dots suddenly seemed to be making no progress- every time I checked the live tracking they seemed to have scarcely moved. Then Mike's dot disappeared, his name had gone from the list of runners too which seemed so strange as he'd been smashing it. Nick's dot crept along but barely. Then a couple of messages came through on twitter. Nick was at a CP but feeling awful; Mike was at HQ and had called it a day due to a hip flexor issue (same as I had in 2019) and the fact that his feet were destroyed. (I've seen a photo since and it's not pleasant.)
At about 3.30am I headed over to HQ to see Mike while he was waiting for a lift home and also to give him a gift I'd made:
Yes, a knitted hammerhead shark.
He was pretty philosophical about his race but it must have been a huge disappointment to have trained so hard only for it all to have suddenly gone so wrong. @teef2 was there too, his race had also gone wrong but he too was quite philosophical about it all.
Once he'd gone I watched people coming in either having finished the race or at the end of leg 3. I'd forgotten what 100 mile races look like and what they can do to people. Being a spectator to it all wasn't comfortable- people reduced to pale shadows of themselves, unseeing and barely able to speak. Had a lovely chat with someone I follow on twitter but had never met before. He'd called it a day after leg 3 too and again seemed pretty ok with that all things considered. And all the while I watched that dot and the minutes inexorably pass.
The dot hardly moved but the time slipped by all too quickly. I was watching the time as much as the dot now, talking to the dot on my phone, coaxing and encouraging it to keep going. 4.30am came and went, 5am, 5.15, 5.20... I knew it was going to be very tight, but I'd decided my runner wasn't going to get a choice- I was going to get him out on leg 4 before the cut-off. It was then that I realised I had no idea whether this was his first 100 miler, whether this race was particularly important to him, or what his goals were for the race. No matter: I intended to get him onto leg and and keep him going until we were told to stop. That way at least he would have given it his all and not chosen to quit.
Well, Nick was well known to the Centurion team so when he staggered in at about 5.30am he was well looked after. I said hello, introduced himself and announced that we'd be heading out onto the last leg so he would have up to to 15 minutes to get sorted. Poor guy, there was me being all bright and breezy and he was almost asleep on his feet! We headed out onto the Thames Path with about 10 minutes to spare.
Almost immediately it became apparent that we wouldn't make it. Nick was struggling to walk and needed to stop several times but each time he stopped he would begin to fall asleep. I'm not great at small talk but all the way to the CP at Pangbourne I just talked. About owls, moths, running at night, jays, mist, my children, work. Anything that came into my head really just to try to keep him awake. It didn't really work. What he needed most was daylight but we couldn't wait for that because he'd miss the cut-off. The sky was beginning to lighten but not quick enough- perhaps if it had been a bright sunny day there would have been more light a little sooner. We plodded into Pangbourne about 10 minutes or so after the cutoff, the sky a leaden grey.
A flight of stairs (leg 4 is the leg of stairs!) up to the room where there were chairs, hot drinks and food, and the lovely Ally. Within a few minutes Nick was considerably more alive but it was too late to continue. I stayed there a little while with him, watching him devour a huge quantity of cheese and pleased to see some colour return to his face. I decided I would run the whole leg to make up for the people I knew who hadn't been able to finish but assuring the CP volunteers that I would not offer any assistance to runners I might happen to meet. Before I set off I took the knitted yellow shrimp off my race vest and gave it to Nick as a sort of consolation prize. No buckle, but no-one else will have earned a shrimp!
On the way to the turnaround I caught up with the sweeper and ran along with him. We then caught up with a runner and her pacer in Reading. She was walking and content in the knowledge that they were not going to make it in time. I ambled along with them up to the checkpoint but decided I would turn around as soon as we got there and head straight back- the morning was passing and I hadn't planned on being out for so long.
Of course it had to start raining quite heavily as I went back through Reading! Luckily nothing as biblical as in 2018 and it did stop somewhere before Pangbourne. It was a strange feeling running back along the TP and I got a bit nervous and jittery as though I was actually finishing the race. It got quite embarrassing hearing passers-by cheering me on and I kept saying "No, I'm just out for a run, not in the race." Anyway, after stopping in Whitchurch for a lovely chat with a couple out walking I eventually arrived back in Goring about 6 hours after setting out, just in time to cheer in the last two runners to finish.
I was shattered, legs sore and so grateful that I could spend some real life time with my tiny phone friends. Thank you to @NickThompson3, @runningmiker, @teef2, @photogirlruns and the other people I met but can't remember their names.
