Huge congrats to Alice R who completed the 50KM Race to the Stones on the 13th July.
Alice always said she would never do an ultra (who else has said that??) and then attended our fab ultra lunatics talk last year and after hearing Donal talk about his experience of trailwalker and RTTS … she signed up the next day !! The fact that there was little time pressure and lots of pit stops appealed.
The training encouraged her to explore lots of new places and she (enjoyed!) doing a couple of the longer runs with her husband. He normally runs too fast for them to run together but the longer distances meant he had to slow down and he ended up enjoying them more than Alice!
As you would expect there are highs and lows along the way of an ultra. Alice “hit the wall” after the last checkpoint and had no motivation to start running again. … what do you need at this point?? Some fellow Benson Striders to scoop you up and motivate you back to running … which meant Alice ended finishing on a huge high. Huge thanks to Anna, Gina and Kerry!
The finish was emotional .. and there were happy tears .. and i’m not surprised … completing an ultra is an epic achievement.
Have you ever said you would never do an ultra?? Catch Alice at training and she will convince you otherwise .. she says she would definitely recommend the 50km – she loved it! Apparently it’s a manageable distance where the training doesn’t talk over your life too much! (so who has got so far in reading this and thinking maybe …… ). If you do sign up then another tip from Alice is to not carry too much stuff as so much is provided at the checkpoints. Sounds like a party!
Well done Alice on your first (and maybe not last?!) Ultra!