After a safety talk from Rory, 169 crazy runners set off on the 2nd running of the Thames Path Ultra – 50 miles from Reading to Shepperton.
The weather over the last few weeks had been awful so the Thames was badly flooded in various places. We were all told to stick to the route as much as possible but use our map reading skills to navigate round the badly flooded areas. 2 minutes into the event and I was up to my calves in water – marvellous, it was however going to get far worse! At Sonning the Thames was completely unrunnable – in fact it would have been a swim session! so a small diversion on to the Road which took us past Shiplake College where once again we were could have re-joined the Thames but made the decision to continue on the road to Henley. We had to navigate ourselves along smaller paths/roads to get to the first CP at Remenham Church, again a lot of wading! During this section of the race I found myself running with Anne Wade, her husband Vaughan and Jacko, they were great company and Anne and I ran at the same pace.
The section of the Thames going past Temple Island and Hambleden Lock was completed impassable so we set off along the road to Aston, heading towards CP2 at Marlow – coming up to the CP we were wading up to our thighs in water – on the brightside it would stop any swelling of our muscles but it was bloody cold! At this point we saw a few people running on the A404 above and coming into the CP from the wrong direction! We then headed off along the Thames, but soon realised that this wasn’t such a good idea so climbed over a fence into the field and wended our way towards the road finally making it to CP3 at Bray Lock, the path we were on ran parallel to the CP, so we ended up coming in just below. Refreshed our water bottles, grabbed something to eat and we were off again in high spirits. (Anne and I still chatting at this stage!)
The next CP was at Runneymede, running towards Windsor along the River was a beautiful sight with Windsor Castle on our RHS, and unfortunately we had to stick to the roads, but were pleased with our progress rejoining the Thames Path just after Windsor. Got to CP4 in good time and headed off for the finish. We were all feeling strong, more wading required which was hugely funny, once we hit the final section to the finish the boys went on ahead of us, Anne and I continued at a really good pacing finishing in a time of 7hrs 48 mins and 2nd females which we were thrilled with. Anne who was the Ladies winner last year had improved her time by 10 minutes so she was thrilled.
