My First Ultra Hike

A month has passed since completing Ultra Hike no.1 and it’s time to catch up on what happened.

I had originally planned on putting together a YouTube video all about it, but honestly I am struggling to find the time to script, film and edit a video with all the footage I took so I’m taking to the blog - my favourite medium - to share with you how it went, and what I’ve learnt. Sometimes we just have to meet ourselves where we are, and be kind.

A week before the hike I decided to do a final training hike of about 35km. I have uploaded a video from that to YouTube if you’d like to watch the full story. But to cut a long story short, I ended up hiking 43km, I was utterly miserable by the end of it, and it was only through the support of some amazing friends that I saw it through to the end.

Laura bringing me hot, sweet tea - perfect

My feet were wrecked, my legs hurt so much I could barely walk straight and I realised - what sort of lunatic does a marathon, the week before they do a marathon? No runners do that, so why did I think hiking it would be a good idea?

Needless to say, I felt very nervous about heading to London at the end of January to complete my official Ultra Hike no.1, the London Winter Walk of 42km.

Beautiful sunrise over London

I met some lovely people on the Tube to the event who took this for me

We had beautiful weather, I was so fortunate on that front. I made sure to blister plaster my wounds from the previous hike and also opted to wear my running trainers as this walk was all tarmac and pavements. I learnt my lesson the week before, and I would be changing my socks a couple of times during this walk to help reduce the risk of blisters.

The first half of this walk felt relatively easy. It was a figure of 8 track and the first half was my old stomping ground when I used to work in London. Up past the London Eye, Southbank, past the Tate Modern, Cutty Sark, Tower Bridge, up to Rotherhithe then back down the opposite side of the Thames, past the Tower of London.

I got back to the midpoint feeling a little sore but far better than I felt heading to the halfway point a week before.

Heading into the halfway point

Heading out onto the second half is where it gets mentally tough. Knowing that you have to do the same amount you’ve already done, when your legs are starting to ache and your feet are starting to hurt. It’s very much a mental game at this point.

The second half saw me heading west down the Thames towards Battersea Powerstation. An area of London I’ve never explored before.

I was lucky enough to know that my oldest friend, Eve, was coming to meet me along this next section and she joined me at about 25km and rolled a k or 2 with me, acting as a bit of a pacer as my legs wanted to slow right down!

The wonderful Eve meeting me by Battersea Park

I think the biggest lesson I’m learning from the past two weeks of hikes is how difficult it is mentally. In this case between 21km and 35km but I’m sure it will be a different segment on future walks (perhaps 25km to 40km on my 50km walks and heavens knows what it will be on the 100km ones…) but essentially it’s the point at which the finish line seems so so so far.

This is the point at which it’s good to have an audiobook, a podcast, or some music to pick you up. I had an audiobook, but I feel I made a mistake in my choice. I’d been listening to The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton, which is a fantastic book but it’s pretty dark as it’s set in the 1600s on a ship where they believe the devil has been set lose and is killing the passengers.

It’s not exactly the uplifting, joyful type of story that you really need when you are feeling low - no matter how engaging the story.

If anyone has suggestions for funny podcasts, please let me know! I think something funny would be perfect for my next walk, and I’m also creating an uplifting and fun playlist of music to keep my feet moving.

Somehow I made it to the final rest stop at 34km, meaning I had 8km left to the finish line. I was really struggling by this point, all the new blisters had appeared, I’d stopped being able to eat (my stomach has started to turn on both walks towards the end?) and I didn’t stay long in this last stop for fear of not being able to get up again.

Heading out of the final rest point

And of course darkness was setting in. Whilst there were lots of people, I had spent most of the walk alone and not talking with anyone but on this segment I met 3 women who were absolute powerhouses. They were steaming ahead, and I thought to myself, I must keep up with them to get me to the finish line. I knew that if I didn’t, my pace would get slower and slower and it would be hours before I crossed the finish line.

So that’s what I did, I stuck behind them, making sure I kept up and chatting with them when we got to the traffic lights, and then reverting to being just behind them as we took off again. I am so grateful to those women just for powering through and letting me tag along behind!

As we approached Vauxhall Bridge and the final km back to the Oval, my mum, my sister and Eve were waiting for me to get me across the finish line.

I ran to them - it sounds bizarre but running and walking are different muscles and different parts of the foot so actually it was really comfortable to run over to them and do something that wasn’t walking!

And I was across the finish line, having completed another 42km on this journey of Ultra Hikes.

The finish line is never the end of the story though.

The week before I hadn’t been able to walk at all when I finished, and I have to say it was agony walking away from the venue to find a taxi. We went out for dinner, I could barely eat anything and my legs hurt so insanely much that I didn’t know how to sit. Somehow though, I managed to walk from the restaurant to the hotel to soak my legs in the bath.

And when I woke up, yes my legs were stiff but honestly it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as the week before. We walked with all our bags to the tube station and got ourselves back home and I was at Uni to start the next semester the day after!

It seems that my practice walk the week before was not entirely in vain because my body felt much more prepared this time around and I am not massively worried about the upcoming 50km hike at the beginning of April. It’s 7km more than I’ve achieved before (and I will be in hiking boots this time over trainers), I’ll still struggle with the mental block half way round, but physically it feels achievable.

What I’m worried about is the 106km that I’ll be doing the month after…. I can’t even imagine how I’m going to prepare my body for that.

All I can do is try and try I will.

This has become an enormous blog post, so I will save the details of how my training has evolved for the next post and will update you soon on how training is going!

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