A herd of sheep stares at us. We are around 32 kilometers into the race when the poorly marked blue flag instructs us to run through a large field. There are two parallel lines of flattened grass with footprints to follow before we are forced to clamber over a wooden gate. The sheep are also in the field, a short distance away, unbothered as runners march through into oblivion.
But for the sheep, watching a crowd of aimless humans go by is nothing new. Historically, humans have always had a remarkable ability to travel great distances. If you think about it, outside of birds, there are very few truly global species that stretch from remote islands in the South Pacific to the Arctic. And this was all before modern technology and transportation. Then there is the “endurance running hypothesis”, in which anthropologists and biologists posit that running is one of the chief biological differences between homo sapiens and other humanoid species and contributed greatly to human development1. The idea goes that early humans separated themselves from other species by being able to outrun different game (and predators). If this theory is true, it does feel inherently cruel; the only way we can impose human superiority is to make other animals feel the abject pain of running. Throughout the ancient and medieval period, we hear numerous stories of absurd long-distance travel – an ancient Roman army could routinely march 20-25 miles with 50-70 pounds of equipment per person, and have time to set up a fortified camp. Adherents to religions embarked on sprawling pilgrimages across thousands of miles.
Maybe the ability to endure running or walking functions like the “Gom Jabbar” test from Dune. If you can endure the pain to achieve your goal, that makes you human. This is best described in the first page of What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami, undoubtedly the most famous piece of writing about ultramarathoning2. In the essay, Murakami discusses finishing a 100K race around Lake Saroma in Japan.
“I don’t know what sort of general significance running 100 kilometers by yourself has, but as an action that deviates from the ordinary yet doesn’t violate basic values, you’d expect it to afford you a special sort of self-awareness. It should add a few new elements to your inventory in understanding who you are. And as a result, your view of your life, its colors and shape, should be transformed. More or less, for better or for worse, this happened to me, and I was transformed."
“Transformed” is a strong word. Given that my left leg is no longer very functional, I would say I was “deformed”, but the passage does get to the gist of the experience.
The book is rightfully famous among runners (and already referenced in a previous marathon recap). Because Murakami is the most famous living Japanese writer, people who have no interest in running or ultra-marathoning have read this short volume. An excerpt was even included in the SAT I took in Spring 2014. Murakami’s ultra occurred in 1996 when ultramarathoning wasn’t a chic moneymaker for the fitness event industry. The Lake Saroma race was only 10 years old, and the International Association of Ultrarunners was only 12 years old. The Barkley Marathons were an obscure event that had only been completed one time. UTMB would not exist for 7 years. None of the six members in our group running the Ultra X Series: Surrey 75K were alive.
Ultramarathoning, particularly on trails, has since become the “next big thing”, so to speak, for the running community. Although I often joke that the West simply adopted more absurd endurance challenges once East Africans started winning everything, the truth is ultramarathoning is growing because it offers a compelling product. For good runners, the ultra offers something a bit different from racing shorter distances. At a certain point, the road marathon is often entirely devoted to a robotic, mechanical process of training and hitting exact times to qualify for the next level. It can get suffocating. An ultra, on the other hand, is often something to complete. Since the human body starts to suffer so much after about 3 hours of exercise, completing any ultra is as much a challenge of logistical planning and food intake as it is being fit. And, of course, there’s no stigma to walking up a hill if your legs start to die.
Of course, this is all contrary to Murakami’s experiences, which largely focus on “never walking” and “I am a machine”. In the essay, he admits that he may never do an ultra again, and I understand why. For people attuned to the predictable and calming repetition of road races, running a trail ultra can feel alienating. Murakami is an idiot; it’s perfectly fine to walk during an ultra, especially as they get longer. Switching over to hiking was one of my favorite parts of the race – now I could walk off my leg cramps instead of rushing to get a time and having my limbs explode. Sources say that Murakami does a marathon every year, but has not done any more ultras.
I held off running an ultra until this spring because I was worried about attempting one alone. However, the LSE Running Club organized a group of guys who wanted to run an ultra somewhere in Europe for the spring, and it seemed like a perfect opportunity3. Our shortlist of events included grand plans for the Italian Alps, Croatia, Norway, or Slovenia. But after some discussion, we picked the event that was closest to home and had the least elevation: the Ultra X Spring Series race in Haslemere, Surrey. Ultra X is a small business run out of England that hosts ultramarathons in choice locations around the world (Morocco, Tanzania, Finland, Madeira, and others are listed as options). The Spring Series race in Surrey is something of an entry-level event, designed to ease people into ultras before splurging on a trip to Rwanda, or something.
I have found that ultras are still seen as a “purer” form of distance running. Marathons and half-marathons have gotten unbearably commercialized, with most of them charging huge entry fees (or charity minimums)4. Then there are the equipment manufacturers, who reached their apotheosis with the release of carbon-plated shoes five years ago. But ultras are often slightly more hippie-friendly. Most of them are run on outdoor trails rather than large cities, and there is more focus on having fun rather than rent extraction.
Ultra X was…not that5. The people involved were in it for the atmosphere and enjoyment, but the oeuvre of the event suggested rent extraction. The entry fee was a pricy £125, but that was supposed to come with a free pre-race dinner and a meal after the race. We had to pay an extra £65 to rent a two-man tent or pay £30 to pitch a tent on a rugby pitch. When we arrived at the event, they still had tents available because not enough people purchased them, so we all got to sleep individually. The pre-race dinner was a £7 chicken nuggets and fries we could purchase from “the clubhouse” (a bar next to the pitch where a local children’s rugby team was having their end-of-year party). The post-race dinner was also £7 for a burger.
These £7 microwaved chicken nuggets were so discouraging because a 75K race requires so much preparation and effort simply to make it to the door, and they couldn’t figure out how to cater some half-decent food. Each of the participants had sacrificed hundreds of hours to train for the race (Ryan hit the peak mileage for the group at 133K, but everyone had done at least a month training above 80K and we had all raced a half-marathon three weeks before). In our backpacks, we had all brought loads of gear, food, camping supplies, hydration tablets, and clothing. Before the race, we had all been assigned an exhaustive kit list which I had assiduously collected. And yet, when we arrived, we found ourselves ordering a Deliveroo from Pizza Express. I did notice that none of the other runners had shown up early to eat dinner. Perhaps some of the runners had gotten wise to the chicken nuggets scam.
We started at 7 AM. That’s false. We started at 6 AM when they started blasting music and waking up everyone dumb enough to camp. I remember hearing “Hate to Say I Told You So” by The Hives, a song much better designed to hype up attendees at a sporting event rather than an ultramarathon. The other four guys doing the 75K were already awake and had eaten breakfast. I had gotten the most sleep (four hours). Sara, who was doing the 25K, would’ve preferred to sleep longer, but the loud music put an end to that. Since we weren’t starting in darkness, a lot of the stuff in the kit list was already useless: safety whistle, rain jacket, survival blanket, headlamp.
After we did start, I quickly realized that running in a group was one of the most important factors in staying sane during an ultra. In addition to being good at endurance running, humans are also a very social species. We tried to stick together as a group for the first few kilometers, but I very stupidly lost them when I tried to remove my rain jacket mid-run. Then I was running with a solid pack of people before I made my first of many wrong turns, missing a poorly marked flag where we had to climb over a stone wall into a private lane.
The course marking was poor (a feature of Ultra X races confirmed by Reddit and former participants). I opted to not download the GPX file to my phone or watch, figuring the directions would be self-explanatory enough. I did have the file as a backup, but I would have to upload it to AllTrails mid-race…if I had cell service. That was one of the biggest mistakes of my entire life. The markings consisted of tiny flags or blue banners they’d hang on the side of trees or the road. Sometimes, random passers-by would steal the flags or the banners would fly off in the wind. The only way to be sure of the course was to follow the GPX file, which I couldn’t really do. But even if one had a GPX file, there were still plenty of opportunities to get lost. There was a bizarre section where we doubled back into a much muddier footpath that many people missed. One aid station was so badly marked that at least half the 75K participants missed it, meaning they had to run 23K of the last 27K without any water or food resupplies.
The staff running the event were quite kind – one staff member kindly drove us back from the train station and to Tesco to pick up supplies the night before. However, if I had to pick between nice people and water to live, I would pick water to live. The feeling of constantly getting lost or having to retrace my steps to find a missing flag was truly miserable.
Yet I have found no one particularly cares about the logistical difficulties when you tell them you ran 50 miles. No one wants to know about:
The gels and bars you packed.
The good and bad snacks at the aid stations.
How all the muscles in your legs are connected, so if one starts getting sore, it prevents adequate movement.
Why you vomited your own mucus for 2 minutes.
How to best suck electrolyte water out of a rapidly-depleting bottle.
Why a particular flag at a certain point was pointing in the wrong direction.
What clothes to wear to avoid chafing.
The joy of being lonely and the deep despair of being lonely, often correlated to which point of the race you are at. All participants spent at least 2 hours completely alone, and some of us had up to 6 hours with zero contact.
Why I had to go back and hit the 58K timing strip out of a sense of completionism.
Marshals who were asleep instead of directing runners.
I would advise doing an ultramarathon with a group of people you know (or make friends along the way) simply because it’s good to have other people who give a fuck about these sorts of inconveniences. Similar to the long relay races I’ve done, the ultra creates its own language and milieu during the experience that can only be shared by participants.
Externally, anyone wants to know “How did it feel????” or other silly questions in that vein. There is no answer to that question. This is where Murakami does get to a universal truth about running an ultra: at some point, you “pass through” some invisible mental barrier into a phantom zone where your brain no longer perceives what’s occurring. Some could argue this is just the feeling the brain goes through before dying. What’s funny is that “passing through” into a different world is one of the key motifs of Murakami’s literary corpus6, but while the characters in his novels pass through into elaborate alternate realities that appeal to their inner weirdness, the ultra runner passes through into a zone of such pain and torment that the mind ceases to function. And he had aid stations every 5K! What a lucky guy!
The only thing occasionally filtering through my mind was the scenery of the English countryside, which felt like questing in a Zelda game. We passed by at least 20 horse farms.
At some point, I thought I’d run through George Orwell’s Animal Farm, and all the animals would rise up and overthrow the capitalists. We even spotted a castle in the distance, where I would presumably have to find a Triforce piece. Other sections of the course went through golf courses where very wealthy Tories were having a nice round of golf before afternoon tea. They looked bewildered as half-dead runners putzed through the grass. We all ran through fairways while they were playing, which didn’t seem allowed. There were also sections where we ran through backyards and driveways on private property. One driveway had a dog who would occasionally square up with runners he didn’t like. And as with any British running competition, there was mud. It could’ve been much, much worse, but it still felt like they placed bogs and mud pits every few kilometers so that your feet would never dry. At one point, I stepped so deeply into a mud vortex that I thought my foot was stuck.
Going back to the action role-playing game analogy, each participant of a trail ultra does have certain “attributes” that make them better or worse at certain aspects. The road marathon has 1-2 skills (run well, pace well), but the trail ultra adds in stuff like “Bravery”, “Organizational Competence”, “Wayfinding”, and at least a dozen other skills. So, let’s say someone is very brave, and has a lot of stamina, but cannot find a way out of a bathtub. That would lead to some problems! In a video game, these would all be given to you on a 1-100 scale, and you’d have to grind XP to improve, I can honestly say that this is a realistic simulation of what it’s like to run ultras. I did start to get better at Organizational Competence by about 45K (I took many snacks with me! Wow!), and I hope to get to Level 2 someday.
At the end of the day, I completed 80K rather than 75K after getting lost four times. My friends fared better: Ryan finished second overall7, Sean and Felix powered through under 9 hours, and Sam managed to grind through 20 miles without any functional legs to finish. Sara finished her also poorly-marked 25K (having already done several better-organized ultras, she probably made a good choice). I seriously thought about dropping out at the final aid station, having already completed 75.5K. I had been limping for an hour with a disintegrating left calf and was dehydrated from the aid station debacle. The staff were very nice and nursed me back to health, and I resolved to finish. After all, it appears humans are genetically predisposed to the endless suffering of running. And it’s not like I had anything better to do.
Popularized in Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. I disagree with his point about cushioned running shoes causing injuries; my HOKA trail running shoes are the greatest piece of sporting equipment I have ever used. Seriously, I didn’t get any blisters or even a bad callous from the entire race.
I have shamelessly stolen the title of Murakami’s novel A Wild Sheep Chase for this essay. In the English translation of What I Talk About, all of the distances are converted from kilometers to miles, which makes it seem that a bizarre 62-mile race is occurring instead of a 100K.
I have to thank the LSE Athletics and Running Club for being so welcoming and allowing a slightly odd 27-year-old MS student to participate in all of these events.
The marathon I ran in Barcelona was specifically marketed to have “fewer turns” than any other marathon in Europe, which only meant we ran down several very long streets before doubling back.
lthough their website still says Ultra X is sponsored by Asics, I checked with a staff member and this is not the case for 2024. Fun fact.
See: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Kafka on the Shore, and IQ84.
His prize was a £75 race credit to any Ultra X Series race of his choice! Who knows, maybe they put more effort when the race is in Tanzania? But imagine getting lost during an ultra in Tanzania? Then you would be really testing the original origin of human endurance running: fleeing from animals in the savannah.