Solemate Runners - The Podcast

Episode 2 - Arc of Attrition Aftermath

• Solemate Runners • Episode 2

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In Episode 2 of Solemate Runners The Podcast (recorded in March 2025), Paul and Aimee dive deep into their experience running the Arc of Attrition 100-mile ultramarathon. Tune in as they share the highs and lows of tackling one of the UK’s toughest winter ultras. From harsh weather conditions to the gruelling terrain, they recount every detail of their journey, including struggles with nutrition, unforeseen challenges, and the bittersweet outcome. Whether you're an experienced ultra runner or just curious about the extreme sport, this episode is packed with insightful reflections and valuable lessons that can help anyone preparing for a long-distance race. It is an honest and heartfelt look at what it takes to push one's limits in the world of ultrarunning.

00:00 Welcome to Solemate Runners

00:42 Introducing the Arc of Attrition

02:04 The Journey to Ultra Running

03:43 Signing Up for the Arc 50

05:16 The Arc 50 Experience

09:20 Challenges and Triumphs

13:05 The Arc of Attrition: A New Challenge

20:48 Preparing for the Big Race

21:43 Race Day: The Arc 100

32:00 Arrival and Pre-Race Observations

32:39 Wave Two Start Experience

34:31 Navigating the Early Miles

36:44 Struggles with Nutrition and Hydration

40:16 Battling the Elements

42:27 Checkpoint Challenges and Crew Support

45:44 Pushing Through the Night

52:29 The Brutal Final Stretch

55:04 Missing the Cutoff and Emotional Finish

57:32 Reflections and Future Plans

Thanks for listening!
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Paul:

Hello and welcome to Solemate Runners, The Podcast. I'm Paul Betteridge.

Aimee:

And I'm Aimee Tippins. We are a middle aged couple who like to run ultras together,

Paul:

So we decided to start a podcast about our experiences in the ultra running world

Aimee:

Especially as we're embarking on an adventure taking on our biggest race yet at the end of this year.

Paul:

And that race is the Winter Downs 200, a 200 mile ultra marathon in December.

Aimee:

So whatever you are doing, we hope you enjoy us waffling on for an hour or so.

Paul:

Waffling on? I don't waffle on. I'm a professional! Enjoy. Thank you for joining us back in the Running Room. Episode 2, March 2025. Arc of Attrition Edition. It's took me a while to say that one. Tongue twister! It was, it was. We've had to jump forward to this one. Because obviously, as we explained in Episode 1, we were going to jump back in time and then explain to everybody through the episodes, how we got to signing up for a 200 miler. But, the Arc of Attrition only just happened a couple of months ago, so we've had to do it now, or else we would forget, because it would, It just gets back and it'll be months. Do it while it's fresh in our memory. Fresh in my memory and still very bitter in my memory. Bit raw still. Bit raw, but we will come to that later on. So, what is the Arc of Attrition? Well, the Arc of Attrition is a one hundred ish mile, I think it's about 104 mile, winter ultra around the coast of Cornwall and it has been described as one of the toughest hasn't it in the UK. They can't never describe it as the toughest but believe me it's a toughie. It's up there, it's in the top three let's put it that way. So yes we signed up for the 100 miler which happened at the end of January and yeah. It didn't go to plan, but let's jump back. How did we actually get to signing up and doing 100 mile round the coast of Cornwall? Where did it all start?

Aimee:

Well, basically you became obsessed with it. So

Paul:

A little bit.

Aimee:

I would say it was the Arc that got us into ultra running

Paul:

Yeah, you're probably right

Aimee:

at all. I am right, I know where I am.

Paul:

You are, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Aimee:

We weren't ever thinking we were going to become ultra runners. We were just dabbling in running, doing 5k's, 10k's, bit of a half marathon here and there. That was it really, didn't have any other plans. Any goals to go further than that? I don't think I'd even heard of ultra running.

Paul:

No.

Aimee:

Then you started just watching videos on YouTube, didn't you?

Paul:

Yeah, yeah.

Aimee:

And he stumbled across this race called the Arc of Attrition, watched a few videos, and then kept banging on about it,

Paul:

like

Aimee:

on and on and on.

Paul:

I'm doing that.

Aimee:

Yeah, that's what he kept saying, I'm going to do that race. My reaction was laughter and horror in equal measure, because it just looked so brutal. And also 100 miles, who runs 100 miles? That, that was completely like, insane to me. Well, yeah, in the winter as well, completely insane, but he kept on and on about ultra running and then we had a few conversations and I said, well, perhaps we need to start looking at smaller races just to get us started. So that was when we actually booked onto our first ultra race, which we did in February, 2023, which was a Run Walk Crawl Brecon to Cardiff.

Paul:

Yep.

Aimee:

So we booked onto that. That would have been in 22 that we booked onto it, to do in the February. And then, obviously, the Arc happened in that January, 2023. And again, watched it live on YouTube or however it was broadcast. Got even more excited, and was just adamant we're booking on it. He kept saying we're booking on it. Even though I didn't really feel I wanted to do this 100 mile race.

Paul:

You didn't want to do it.

Aimee:

We were there with our laptops ready because the tickets sell out. Fortunately, from my perspective, we hadn't realised until we came close to looking at booking it, we were actually looking at all the criteria. We weren't eligible to do the 100 miler at that point. Thank goodness. Because you had to have run 100k, I think it was.

Paul:

I think it was 100k, yeah. At the time it was a bit like, hey, we're alright, but you needed experience. And I get it now. I think for the 50, you didn't need anything, it was okay for the 50.

Aimee:

Because that's the thing Paul didn't mention in the beginning, the Arc of Attrition 100 miler is the main race, but there also was at that time a 50 mile race as well, so a half option.

Paul:

Ah, yeah, yeah, two options.

Aimee:

So, we realised we weren't going to be able to enter the 100 miler. Phew! But we were eligible for the 50, so we were there laptops poised, and we managed to get two places, didn't we, for the Arc 50. So we were doing that in January 2024, because at that point the only ultra race we'd done was the Brecon to Cardiff in February, which was 44 miles, so it didn't qualify us for the 100. So then, yeah, rest of 2023. We built up our mileage doing other races, we will talk in other episodes about other races, but we had a couple of failed 100 mile attempts.

Paul:

Ah, it's how you look at failed really, it's how you look at failed.

Aimee:

They weren't A to B races, they were lap races, but Paul went into them completely ambitious, we are going to do 100 miles.

Paul:

Didn't want to do 100 mile.

Aimee:

Yeah, you did. But it's too big a jump, you do have to build up to that kind of mileage, so it's kind of inevitable that we didn't, but anyway. So, roll round to January 2024. And we're on the start line for the Arc 50.

Paul:

Arc 50.

Aimee:

Wow! Eye opening.

Paul:

It was, it was. We went down there, obviously it's over the weekend.

Aimee:

We hadn't done any recce ing, so we'd got no experience of that course.

Paul:

No.

Aimee:

Had we?

Paul:

No, none at all. But we thought, alright, okay, it's a bit of trail running round the coast of Cornwall. Can't be that hard. Yeah, so the whole thing, look, it was brilliant. So we got there on a Thursday and we were starting on the Saturday, wasn't we? Because the 100 start on the Friday. We got there earlier, didn't we?

Aimee:

Yeah. We traveled down to Cornwall on the Friday.

Paul:

Yeah. And you had to go and sign in and the buzz of the place. It, it was brilliant, wasn't it? It was a real good atmosphere.

Aimee:

Yeah. You registered at the Eco Park in Porthtowan, which was the race finish.

Paul:

Yeah.

Aimee:

You had to register there the night before, which we did. So that was on the Friday. And then on the Saturday morning you have to get to the Eco Park and you're then bussed to the start of your race.

Paul:

It was an early start, wasn't it?

Aimee:

For us, the start was Minack Theatre.

Paul:

Yeah. Was it like an half five start?

Aimee:

It was a very early start.

Paul:

It was an early start, which to be fair didn't bother me, but I think a few people it did bother

Aimee:

Yeah, we started at Minack Theatre, which was an absolutely stunning location.

Paul:

Yeah.

Aimee:

Beautiful. It's literally an amphitheatre, open air theatre, on the on the edge of a cliff, effectively. Gorgeous scenery, we were really lucky with the weather, weren't we? There'd been storms leading up to the start of the race, but the day of the race itself, it was really sunny, beautiful.

Paul:

Yep.

Aimee:

Obviously the terrain wasn't great because of the storms that had hit in the preceding day. So there was lots of mud and slippiness and wet rocks and brutal terrain but beautiful sunshine as well.

Paul:

It was good. We started. Yeah. Yeah.

Aimee:

Stunning start, but then

Paul:

The start was hard actually. The start was hard. Stephen Cousins from Film My Run. He was doing the commentary. And he's right down at the bottom of this amphitheatre.

Aimee:

On the stage, effectively.

Paul:

On the stage, there was a geezer with a drum giving it all that, and I was like, I want to be right down there. I want to be in the thick of it. That was a wrong decision wasn't it really? Because what we didn't realise, you're at the bottom of this amphitheatre, you've got to get back out!

Aimee:

All the runners had to go up the steps, so effectively up all the seating area.

Paul:

Oh, there was a lot!

Aimee:

And then up and out of the theatre and out onto the coast path. But we kind of got stuck, because we were in the middle of the stage effectively, and you could go either way up, because there's steps either side of the stage area, I suppose.

Paul:

Yeah, yeah.

Aimee:

Because we were in the middle. It essentially meant whichever direction we went, we were at the back of the pack. So, we got a bit trapped and it took us ages. It felt like ages to get out of the theatre, didn't it? Up those steps.

Paul:

It did, yeah.

Aimee:

And then we were trapped on the coast path for quite a while.

Paul:

Because it's single track.

Aimee:

You couldn't overtake. So we had to walk. Not that we wanted to sprint start anyway. But we did feel a bit trapped and going slower than we wanted to, to start. Eventually it obviously then opened out and as in all races the runners spread out

Paul:

Yeah

Aimee:

You get more room and then you can go at your own pace but it felt like the first couple of miles we were

Paul:

Probably more than that. It did feel like the first hour or so it just

Aimee:

It was hard to get going wasn't it.

Paul:

Stop start, stop start, stop start.

Aimee:

And then you had to stop to climb over stiles and stuff as well.

Paul:

Yeah.

Aimee:

Or go through gates which was awkward but anyway we got going.

Paul:

Yep. And we had a crew, on this occasion. It has changed now because you can't have a crew when you're doing the 50, but when we did that one, we were allowed a crew.

Aimee:

We were.

Paul:

Which it's worth its weight in gold innit, a crew because I, my trainers fell apart. Well, three times I think I changed my trainers.

Aimee:

I think you had to change your trainers, yeah.

Paul:

Through the whole race. But you could meet your crew along the way. I think the first proper checkpoint was that Lands End?

Aimee:

We only had, was it only two official checkpoints?

Paul:

Yeah, because I think

Aimee:

Or was it only one?

Paul:

No, there was two. St. Ives was the proper checkpoint, I think. But you could have crew at Land's End.

Aimee:

We could have crew anywhere.

Paul:

Yeah, you could have crew anywhere.

Aimee:

At that time, there were no rules about where you could meet your crew.

Paul:

No.

Aimee:

So they could meet you at any point on the course.

Paul:

So we did, to be fair, we got going, we set off, it wasn't going that bad was it, I don't think. It was

Aimee:

No, I mean, I think we were both taken by surprise with the terrain and how brutal it was. I mean, you just literally, I mean we knew there was a lot of elevation, but there's literally no flat sections really. You're either climbing up out of a bay or down into another bay. And you get false headlines all the time as well, so you think you're coming close to what might be the next checkpoint and then you go round the corner. Nope, still not there. Round another corner. Nope, still can't see St Ives. And that kept happening. And a couple of pebble beaches you had to go across.

Paul:

Ah, you had pebble beaches, you were climbing up rocks. Like old riverbed type things. The bit coming up from, I think it was Lands End to St Ives. There was a bit in that part which was, it was horrendous, wasn't it? How these guys run it, I, it just blows my mind.

Aimee:

Oh, the elite runners are just so impressive on courses like that.

Paul:

Yeah

Aimee:

We're definitely not in that category.

Paul:

No, relatively comfortable on technical stuff, but how you could run it, I don't know, but they did. But, we did, we battled on through. We thought we've got a time in our head, haven't we? Really? That went out the window.

Aimee:

I can't remember what that time was now, but

Paul:

I think we thought we were gonna get in kind of daylight ish, but no, no. It, it, it was tough. It took us

Aimee:

Well what didn't help was my knee went

Paul:

Yeah.

Aimee:

That I had an issue with my knee.

Paul:

Yeah.

Aimee:

So for the last. Well it was for the last 8 miles, I had to use my poles, and I wouldn't have, I don't think I'd have finished without the poles. Because I just couldn't go up the really steep steps, I was really struggling, I needed the poles to like pull myself up. And then also I was having issues with my toenails, they were really battered. And so any downhill I was struggling to run that, because it was hurting my toenails so much, and then I couldn't run up because of my knee. So I had to walk a lot of the last 8 mile section really.

Paul:

It was hard.

Aimee:

And then the real kick in the teeth with the Arc race is the finish is the worst climb really, isn't it?

Paul:

Well there's a few, they call them The Bitches or something.

Aimee:

Yeah there's some horrible climbs in that last 4 mile section, well even 8 mile section. There are some horrible climbs with really steep steps. There's a section called The Bitches because these steps are so bad. But literally when you, you think you're at the finish, there is this really steep.

Paul:

Yeah.

Aimee:

And when you look at the elevation profile of the race, it is one of the steepest climbs.

Paul:

Yeah.

Aimee:

To the finish, literally. So you're exhausted and you've still got to get up this horrible hill.

Paul:

You think you'd be buzzing, but you're not.

Aimee:

It was an exhausting race. Exhausting.

Paul:

It was.

Aimee:

But we finished.

Paul:

Yeah.

Aimee:

Which was pretty amazing.

Paul:

How long did we do it in?

Aimee:

I want to say 14 hours and something like 25 minutes, I think it was. I haven't actually checked. It was something like that. We, we weren't. The cut off was 15, I think.

Paul:

15 or 15 and a half or something like that.

Aimee:

Yeah, so we weren't

Paul:

We were close, we were close,

Aimee:

to the cut off, but we finished, we finished. And that's why we got these beautiful medals, which we love.

Paul:

These are beauties.

Aimee:

Do love.

Paul:

Look at the size of it.

Aimee:

Yeah. Apologies to anyone not watching the video who won't be able to see the medals that we're holding up.

Paul:

Valid point. We, for people who are listening to it, it's massive.

Aimee:

Yeah, so yeah, we finished the Arc 50 and on crossing that finish line we were interviewed by Stephen Cousins from Film My Run and he straight away said'So are you coming back for the 100'? Simultaneously, I said, well you said yes, no hesitation yes, and I did a very emphatic no.

Paul:

She did say no, and it was one of those no's that I know meant no.

Aimee:

I meant it, at that time I meant it, I seriously meant it. Because I found that so hard, I'm not going to lie, I found the Arc 50 really tough, really really tough.

Paul:

It was hard, it was hard. It was like, but I knew I'd be able to get her to go for the 100, I knew.

Aimee:

Yeah, so that was January 2024. No, you hadn't got a year to persuade me. January 2024. So tickets for, or places for 2025 went on sale in April.

Paul:

Yeah.

Aimee:

Yeah, what happened is a couple of months after the 2024 Arc, there was a big announcement about the Arc of Attrition being taken over by UTMB.

Paul:

Yep.

Aimee:

Which did cause

Paul:

a lot of keyboard warriors to come out.

Aimee:

It caused a lot of drama, a lot of people weren't happy about the change. We were kind of neutral on it I'd say really because we've got no experience with UTMB.

Paul:

It's a big corporation.

Aimee:

We'd done Mudcrew Arc 50 and loved it. Mudcrew were brilliant.

Paul:

Yeah,

Aimee:

It was a great event. The Arc Angels that Mudcrew put on- fantastic.

Paul:

Yeah

Aimee:

At one checkpoint they actually run you into the checkpoint. You have like your personal Arc Angel that runs you into the checkpoint and they look after you brilliantly. That was amazing. But one of the things that the old Arc of Attrition was renowned for was not having a lot of checkpoints. So I think we only had the two checkpoints on the 50. And it was probably four or five for the 100, wasn't it? It wasn't a lot.

Paul:

No it was only four. There was four across the whole thing.

Aimee:

So one of the changes that UTMB introduced was more checkpoints. And a lot of people weren't happy about that.

Paul:

Well it was lots of changes.

Aimee:

One of a number of changes. They also changed the crew. The whole crew setup. So they made it so that you weren't allowed support crew at all on the 50 anymore. And if you were doing the 100, you were allowed a support crew, but they could only meet you at four specific points on the course. And they were at designated checkpoints. If you were using your crew at any other point on the course.

Paul:

So what Aimee just did there, was knock her microphone off. We're not gonna cut it, it's going to be in the video, because I did mention to Aimee, don't put it so close to the edge of the table because you'll knock it off. That's staying in. So now Aimee's got her microphone back. No, you were saying about like, UTMB have obviously come in and changed everything. You were saying about a lot of crew and different places and stuff which

Aimee:

So yeah, they changed it so that if you were on the 100, you were allowed a crew, but they could only meet you at four very specific points which were designated checkpoints as well. There were nine checkpoints for the 100 mile runners over the course, but only four of them, support crew, were allowed in. And they couldn't support you anywhere else on the race. If you happened to bump into your support crew, they could cheer you on, but they weren't allowed to like pass your food or anything. And technically that could get you disqualified.

Paul:

Yeah.

Aimee:

So that, that made a lot of people unhappy as well.

Paul:

There was a lot of change. It's, ah, you know what. I think a lot of people would've still loved it just to be Mudcrew.'Cause it was a brilliant event.

Aimee:

Yeah.

Paul:

But you know, for me, it's the race and the course. Okay, whoever's running it is a bonus, but it's doing that course in the winter. You know, that, that was it for me. The crew side of it would have been useful if it was spaced out a little bit more.

Aimee:

Yeah, we've kind of jumped a little bit here.

Paul:

We're going to jump back.

Aimee:

We were talking about signing up. You were saying about persuading me to sign up for the 100. We were saying in the interim it changed to UTMB. That led to a delay in the 2025 places being put on sale. But that gave you more time to work on me, try and persuade me to do the 100.

Paul:

I think it was just, you'd got a reservation, I think in your mind, because the 50, when you were on the 50, your knee went, I think that stuck in the back of your mind and you were thinking, if it went on the 50, it's going to go on the 100. So you still had, I think it was from conversations, you were just worried about your knee.

Aimee:

Yeah, I was very worried about my knee.

Paul:

Yeah, but I just said just sign up, stop, man up.

Aimee:

No, I was worried about the elevation generally as well, but we had many conversations about that and we just realised we just needed to do more hill training.

Paul:

And we had got better.

Aimee:

That's the key, just do more elevation training.

Paul:

So I finally convinced her to sign up. The signing up thing, that did ruffle a lot of feathers, didn't it?

Aimee:

Yeah, they did dynamic pricing.

Paul:

I get it a little bit. If they would have explained right at the start that the price is, I can't remember, 250 for argument's sake, but it's discounted for early bird. So all the early ones will get it cheaper, but the end price is 250. It wasn't explained like that was it? So it almost looked like the price was about 150 and then every time somebody was doing it, it was going up and up and up and up. But it was silly because if they just, there was no communication on it was there? You found out on the day. Because the Facebook group chat was going off the wall on this, because we were lucky, we, I'd got that many devices going, I tell you now, I was

Aimee:

I think we'd got two laptops and three mobile phones all logged in, ready to try and purchase these two, these places.

Paul:

It didn't go live at the right time, because I think they had it, I think they had it European time, because it was an hour in front.

Aimee:

And then it crashed, didn't it?

Paul:

And then it, yeah, it crashed, but we were lucky, we got in, we got the early bird price didn't we?

Aimee:

We got the lowest early bird price.

Paul:

I think 150 or something like that we got.

Aimee:

I can't remember how much it was, but whatever the lowest price was, we managed to get two places at that price. But then people were paying, like an hour later, whatever it was, they were paying like double almost for what we'd paid I think it was.

Paul:

Yeah, but that aside. It was

Aimee:

For exactly the same place.

Paul:

That aside, it's what it is.

Aimee:

But we were signed up, which was terrifying.

Paul:

I was like, bring it on. I was all cocky.

Aimee:

Because at that point we hadn't even done 100 miles.

Paul:

We had.

Aimee:

No we hadn't because it was April, we were booked on The Bridge which was May, and we didn't even know if we could do the distance.

Paul:

You're right, you're right.

Aimee:

So we, we didn't know if we could do 100 miles and.

Paul:

You're right.

Aimee:

I don't, I think, I mean there are people that have done this and I really admire them, but doing the Arc 100 as your first 100 miler is mental.

Paul:

Yeah.

Aimee:

I think that's mental. So we didn't know that we could do the distance, but we had got other races before it, where we were hoping we would get the 100 miles, but we didn't know, we hadn't done it. So, yeah, so we signed up in the April and then we did The Bridge, which we'll talk about in another episode, but we did The Bridge in May, 2024, and brilliantly, we both got 100 miles, so we'll go into detail about that on a different episode, but we achieved 100 miles. So we knew we could do that distance, which was a massive confidence boost. But, having said that, you cannot compare the Arc of Attrition and The Bridge.

Paul:

No, one's flat, one isn't!

Aimee:

It's not flat! The Bridge isn't flat, but with The Bridge it's more of a mental challenge. Obviously it's a physical challenge as well, but the mental challenge I think is the biggest issue with The Bridge because you are literally just running back and forth over the same bridge for 24 plus hours potentially.

Paul:

27 odd hours.

Aimee:

Don't go down that route. Yeah, you're potentially just running back and forth. That's mentally challenging. But in terms of terrain, it's not challenging. I mean, yes, it's not flat because the bridge does go up and over, so on every lap there's up and then a down, and then up and down each time, so there is elevation. But it wasn't challenging elevation, and you were always dealing with the same terrain. It was horrible, to be fair, because it was really hard, it was concrete with tarmac on top of it, so it's quite brutal on your joints, isn't it? But you're not dealing with, like, rocks and mud or anything like that.

Paul:

But we got the 100 in, haven't we? And then we did another one as well, so we got another 100 in as well. Joust.

Aimee:

Yes, in the September 24 we did The Joust, which was a loop race. So you had 24 hours to run, it was just over 5 miles a lap.

Paul:

Yep.

Aimee:

Just under 5 and a half miles. You had to do as many laps as you could in the 24 hours. Trail, it's a trail loop.

Paul:

But it was flat. Very easy track.

Aimee:

Some sections of hill, but nothing major.

Paul:

No. And that went well, so we were coming into it.

Aimee:

So yeah, we both got 100 miles there as well. But again, you can't compare The Joust and the Arc of Attrition.

Paul:

No.

Aimee:

In terms of terrain.

Paul:

So we knew then what we had to do. We had to ramp up our hill training. So we did, we changed our coach. So we went with a different coach who has got a wealth of knowledge and experience in ultra running. Done 200s, 100s, 50s. He's brilliant in what he does. So I reached out, it's a bit strange with the current world. You can go with coaches all over the world now. So our coach, Joe Corsione in Arizona. Shout out Joe, he's put together our training plan to incorporate hills. It was an eye opener for our legs, wasn't it? It was a bit

Aimee:

Yeah, we were doing hill training like we'd not done before. Like lots of hill repeats and hill strides, which were new to us.

Paul:

Yep, but we are getting stronger and stronger on hills, definitely. So yeah, we were very confident, weren't we, going into the

Aimee:

Well, I never tend to go into races particularly confident.

Paul:

I was, I was. I'm getting this no matter what. So, race day. So the whole weekend started a bit like this. We travelled down on Thursday, in a storm. The storm, whatever it was. What was that storm?

Aimee:

Yeah, Ewan, Owen.

Paul:

We had a storm. Yeah, I'm

Aimee:

with E. I can't remember.

Paul:

So there was a little bit of um-ing and ah-ing whether it was gonna go on or whether you had to have this winter kit. And yeah, so we traveled down on a Thursday in storm like weather and I liked to get there early'cause I didn't wanna be messing around. So we got to the eco Park where you have to register and go through your kit

Aimee:

on Thursday night. Thursday afternoon.

Paul:

Yep, and the kit. So the kit, again, this just caused a multitude of just drama, wasn't it? It's a lot of kit, to give you some idea.

Aimee:

It's quite a complicated kit list.

Paul:

You know it off by heart,

Aimee:

Don't know it off by heart, but it's quite a complicated kit list.

Paul:

It was a lot.

Aimee:

But it's necessary because of the nature of the race. I'm not criticising UTMB for having a kit list. You need to carry this sort of kit. It's essential. It's for if something goes wrong. So, you know, if you, some parts of that course are very remote. And if you were to twist your ankle and, you know, break it or something, or fall off a cliff. Which could happen.

Paul:

Yeah.

Aimee:

You will go cold, hypothermic, very, very quickly. And it could take hours for them to come and find you. It's not like you just ring an ambulance and it'll be there in two minutes. You needed to have stuff like the bivvy bag.

Paul:

Yep. Warm layers.

Aimee:

Well, several warm layers that had to be a certain weight. You had to have, if you weren't wearing long leggings you had to have a pair of leggings. You had to have your waterproof trousers, your waterproof coat.

Paul:

Told you she knew it. Yep.

Aimee:

You had to have two head torches with spare batteries. You had to have a buff, you had to have a hat, you had to have a beanie, a warm hat. Your back light.

Paul:

Back flashing light, yeah.

Aimee:

You had to have 800 calories worth of emergency food supply. You had to be able to carry one and a half litres of water.

Paul:

And I thought, to be honest, I thought that was an overkill. So. Until, well, we'll come on to it, but we both ran out of water. So, there was a lot of kit. But we got it all, we got it all packed up, not a problem.

Aimee:

I think the drama with the kit wasn't the kit itself, it was how they described it.

Paul:

Yeah, the description.

Aimee:

UTMB didn't word the list very well, and it was, certain aspects of it were very much open to interpretation. Like another thing was you had to have two pairs of gloves, but they had to be both warm and waterproof. So they said that you could have a warm glove with a separate waterproof overglove, but that would only count as one. So then you'd have to have another set, so you potentially needed four gloves. Or you could get away with two if they were both warm and waterproof. But the way they worded it, it just wasn't clear. And then it got really confusing, there was what was classed as'mid layer gate' as well.

Paul:

Oh yeah, yeah, different mid layers.

Aimee:

Because there was just confusion about the weights required and how many you needed, and whether or not you needed a gilet, an insulated gilet or not.

Paul:

Body warmer. Yeah.

Aimee:

Because also what they put on the Facebook page initially, then wasn't reflected in the official guide that came out, it was worded differently in the guide, so that set it all off again.

Paul:

There was three

Aimee:

So yeah, it was confusing.

Paul:

They're not out to try and catch you out, they weren't. It was, I think because UTMB is worldwide, it's their worldwide, they put stuff together, because you had a compass. You had to have a compass.

Aimee:

Yeah, you had to carry a compass, but no map.

Paul:

No map. Which was bizarre, but the compass was tiddly anyway. But it was, the kit, we managed to, after trying it about 150 attempts to try and get it into rucksack.

Aimee:

It was a lot to get into your backpack.

Paul:

Oh, man, yeah. Take it out, put it back in, take it out. What you gonna need? Do you put that there? Do you? These people, and I still to this day, there were people racing on that race. No way. Not a chance did they have all that kit in there, or if they did, they had some genius. Yeah, that was some Harry Potter wizards shit going on, getting that stuff in them packs. I'm telling you now. Yeah, it was bizarre, but we got it in. So you got there, we got there nice and early. They weren't set up. In their defense, it was pretty bad conditions.

Aimee:

Oh, the weather was horrendous.

Paul:

And they got a forklift stuck, which was funny, but we managed to get in and it did this bit, I suppose. If they look at it, I would have hoped next year they do look at the registration side. I get what they were trying to do, it was a big marquee, you kind of come in and you'd go zigzag.

Aimee:

They tried to funnel you through almost like an airport security setup, so there was different stages, you had to go through to each stage to get whatever it was.

Paul:

Airport security is less stressful than going through that, and I do not get stressed, I don't get phased and that, but bloody hell!

Aimee:

I thought I was going to have a panic attack at the end of it.

Paul:

It was rapid.

Aimee:

Because they were trying to, like, shepherd you through, like, really quickly. But you had to take all of your kit to registration, including the trainers that you were going to wear. Yeah. With hindsight, I should have just worn them. It would have been easier.

Paul:

I did tell you that!. I told you to wear everything.

Aimee:

But, yeah, you don't have your, um, kit packed in the bag, because obviously you've got to show them.

Paul:

Yeah.

Aimee:

So, say most people took it in a box, so you had all your bits loose in the box, because you had to show your race pack as well. So you had this box of stuff that you were carrying in. You had to keep putting it down to do whatever it was you were doing. No, not the microphone again. You had to put it down to, show them whatever they needed to see or whatever that particular station was all about. But then

Paul:

You have to put it on the floor because

Aimee:

There was no space like so it was difficult to find anywhere to put anything and wherever you put anything down you were in someone's way because it was so narrow everywhere wasn't it

Paul:

Yeah

Aimee:

I kept nearly dropping everything and then they kept giving you more stuff and you're like why am I gonna put this and it was just

Paul:

Because a lot of people had their race packs on as well so you were nudging people and you'd go in and the thing which I found was a bit... they said they were going to check everything and stuff and I know time permitting but they had all the trays out didn't they and it had got marked on there what you had to show them. I think each tray should have been random they should have had different items on there because it was all the same, it was a bivvy bag, your waterproof coat, torch

Aimee:

Your mid layer, your waterproof trousers.

Paul:

The body warmer. I had to show my body warmer. That was the first bit. You went, you did your kit, then you went on to get your wristband ID.

Aimee:

You had to show your QR code on your phone, so you had to be able to get your phone out and show your QR code.

Paul:

And ID.

Aimee:

Yeah, and photo ID while holding everything and they'd scan your QR code Then they gave you your wristband.

Paul:

Yeah

Aimee:

And put that on and then at the next station you had to show your wristband

Paul:

To get your number.

Aimee:

To get your bib

Paul:

Yeah, and then it was tracker

Aimee:

Then you showed your bib at the next station for them to attach your tracker to your race pack

Paul:

Yeah

Aimee:

Then you had to have your photograph taken holding your bib.

Paul:

But of course you've got all your crap with you.

Aimee:

But you're just like, where am I going to put my stuff?

Paul:

Yeah, and obviously you wanted to look quite smart, didn't you? You wanted to look a bit special, so you had to do yourself up. Because you're there, you'd have a photo just holding everything like, but, yeah.

Aimee:

Then you collected your t shirt.

Paul:

No, you had to sign, fill the back of the bloody thing in.

Aimee:

Then you had to fill in the back of your race card. It's standard for most races that you have to put your emergency details on the back of your bib. I totally get that, but they don't normally make you do it.

Paul:

No, no, no.

Aimee:

There and then at registration, but they did at this one. There was a table with pens. So you, again, you had to find somewhere to put everything, fill in the back of your bib.

Paul:

Yeah.

Aimee:

And then at the next point, you had to show that you'd filled in the back of your bib. And then they gave you your drop bag.

Paul:

Oh, drop bag, which is quite cool.

Aimee:

And the rubbish bag option.

Paul:

Yep.

Aimee:

And then the next station was T Shirts.

Paul:

T Shirts. That one.

Aimee:

This one.

Paul:

Lucky you got that one.

Aimee:

Yeah and then finally you were out. And it was, again, just like an airport. As soon as you got through that bit, you were in the shop.

Paul:

You were in Duty Free.

Aimee:

But it wasn't Duty Free.

Paul:

No.

Aimee:

Where they were selling all the UTMB merchandise.

Paul:

Yeah.

Aimee:

Which again was very small and cramped and you couldn't really look at anything properly.

Paul:

It was a small area, bearing in mind it was probably 600 odd people were going to go through that. And there was a lot. Luckily, I'm glad we got there when we did because when we got out of there, the queue was massive.

Aimee:

The queue for registration was horrendous. It was quite short because we got there so early.

Paul:

So we did, we got that knocked on the head, then got back to our AirBnB. Yeah, just had a chill, went out and had some food. Because luckily, with the hundred, it's not an early, early start.

Aimee:

No.

Paul:

You still had to be there for about eight ish, weren't it? Half eight or something?

Aimee:

But the coaches were supposed to be leaving around half nine.

Paul:

Half nine.

Aimee:

It was actually nearer half ten, wasn't it?

Paul:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we had time in the morning to get up and have breakfast.

Aimee:

Yes, we did, didn't we?

Paul:

Yep. Yep. Yep. Yeah, it's the most important meal of the day to have breakfast when you're doing an ultra. That's what I keep telling people.

Aimee:

You're such a hypocrite.

Paul:

What? I said have some breakfast, make sure you have breakfast.

Aimee:

No, he didn't say that.

Paul:

I might not have had breakfast. There was good reason for that. I didn't, no.

Aimee:

No there wasn't.

Paul:

There was. No, because what I was thinking, this was my thought pattern, was, because I had a big meal the night before, I don't necessarily need breakfast, because I'll start eating as soon as I start running, because I didn't want to be messing around with toilets all the time and worrying about that, so I skipped breakfast, which I do most days.

Aimee:

That's not true either. You're lying now.

Paul:

Oh yeah, so I didn't have breakfast. Because I did think I'd start eating on the coach, and then I'd be sound, I'd be fine.

Aimee:

Yeah, but you didn't take any food to eat on the coach.

Paul:

I did, I had one of my bars, I think.

Aimee:

No you didn't, you were stealing mine.

Paul:

Oh yeah. Yeah, so, I didn't.

Aimee:

Yeah, bizarre decision to not eat before the race, by Paul. But, anyway. Yeah, got on the bus.

Paul:

Got on the bus, the micro bus.

Aimee:

It was about an hour wasn't it, the ride to the start, which was in Coverack.

Paul:

Yep, nice area again, because we did, jumping back a little bit, we did go down and recce. So we did the first

Aimee:

After Christmas, yeah. Yeah, we went down for a weekend.

Paul:

And recce the first part of it.

Aimee:

We did, we recced the first 25 miles.

Paul:

Was it 25, 26 miles?

Aimee:

No, over the two days we did 30.

Paul:

I was going to say we did more than that.

Aimee:

Over the two days we did 30 miles. So effectively there was only a 20 mile section that we hadn't done.

Paul:

Yeah.

Aimee:

Of the 100 mile race.

Paul:

So we was quite comfortable with the start. We got there. Yeah, it was a couple of waves. So because UTMB were doing it and they doubled the numbers, it started off in two waves, didn't it? So we got there, Yeah. The blokes on this occasion had to queue for the toilets whereas the ladies

Aimee:

Yeah, this is one advantage of being a female in ultra running, it's one of the few advantages, you don't have to queue for the toilet which is such a novelty for a female.

Paul:

We did.

Aimee:

I was just so smug, I was laughing, because we were dropped at this car park which had public toilets, where the race was starting and there was a massive queue of men waiting to go to the toilet and there was me and one other woman who walked past all these men, straight into the ladies. It was brilliant.

Paul:

It wasn't

Aimee:

It was for me!

Paul:

No, but that said though,'cause we were wave two, weren't we?

Aimee:

Yes.

Paul:

So it was quite cool'cause we could see wave one go off. The only, and I, and I get it.'cause they can't, you weren't allowed, so nobody was allowed down there.

Aimee:

So no spectators

Paul:

You couldn't have any spectators down there or anything like that. So the people down there were wave two.

Aimee:

So yeah...

Paul:

And a few other people.

Aimee:

Effectively the crowd cheering on the start of wave one was wave two runners.

Paul:

Yeah, or people who lived around the area.

Aimee:

Oh yeah, a few locals, but not many people. And then staff. Or volunteers.

Paul:

Yeah.

Aimee:

For UTMB.

Paul:

So there weren't a massive,

Aimee:

So when wave one started, off they went and then pretty much most of the volunteers went as well.

Paul:

Yeah.

Aimee:

And all the official photographers went.

Paul:

That was pretty much just a, well,

Aimee:

So it kind of felt like wave two wasn't very important'cause there wasn't a crowd cheering us on. And

Paul:

Yeah

Aimee:

No photographers, no drone footage or anything. It's like we made us feel a little bit like second class citizens, but.

Paul:

It would have been nice if they I know what they're trying to do though.

Aimee:

So there's like no decent photos of the start for Wave 2,

Paul:

No.

Aimee:

There was no footage when they put out all the footage afterwards. There was no footage from Wave 2's start.

Paul:

Well to be fair, camera wise, when people were taking photos, there was hardly any. I think the media side of it was a bit rubbish really.

Aimee:

It was only the front pack.

Paul:

But even like throughout the course, there's only two

Aimee:

Yeah

Paul:

Two areas, right?

Aimee:

Yeah, the photography wasn't great.

Paul:

We've been to other races and you're going through and you're like, oh bloody hell, there's loads of pictures.

Aimee:

Well, when we did the Arc 50 the previous year, we got some really good photos.

Paul:

Yeah, yeah.

Aimee:

But the photographers were at lots of different places. And they did get some great shots, but we only saw a photographer, I think, at two locations. Across the duration of the race that we did.

Paul:

Yeah.

Aimee:

So yeah, that was a bit disappointing. But anyway, sidetracked.

Paul:

But yeah, the start, don't get me wrong, you are, you're buzzing because there was a lot of people there but, it would have been nice to have a few more people down there cheering you on.

Aimee:

Yeah.

Paul:

But yeah, it started off... Our coach said about, because we had a discussion, my philosophy was just hang back a bit, let everybody go and we'll just go out and just take it steady. Because it's a long way, 100 miles is a long way. I spoke to my coach and he said like, get up front, get up the front.

Aimee:

Yeah, but there was a reason for that though.

Paul:

Yeah, yeah.

Aimee:

We'd spoken to other runners that had done it in previous years and seen videos and everything.

Paul:

And reccied it, it was narrow.

Aimee:

And from where we reccied it, yeah. The first few miles, it's narrow.

Paul:

Really thin, yeah.

Aimee:

And you can get caught up in a bottleneck, and not able to run at the pace that you want to run at, so

Paul:

No.

Aimee:

We had this, and also the first cut off was tight, wasn't it?

Paul:

Well, when we reccied it, yeah, it was tight.

Aimee:

We were worried about getting timed out for that first section because it was notorious that the first was it the first two checkpoints?

Paul:

The first two, to Lizard.

Aimee:

Quite tight cut offs to those first two checkpoints. And we didn't want to get caught out like that because apparently in previous years people have been.

Paul:

Yeah, on the first.

Aimee:

So, with that in our mind, we'd had that discussion with our coach and he said no, I would push a little bit. Don't, like, break your necks, like, kill yourselves in the first mile. Do try and get to the front if you can.

Paul:

Yeah. Bearing in mind it goes up!

Aimee:

Just to try and not get in that bottleneck if you can avoid it.

Paul:

No, but it does, it's steep at the start..

Aimee:

So we were at the start line literally at the front, at the ribbon.

Paul:

I was on that ribbon. There was no way I was leaving that ribbon. I was in the middle and I was at the front.

Aimee:

And we did push because you come down out of this car park along the coast road a little bit and then you go up.

Paul:

Yeah.

Aimee:

Up a road. So it's all tarmac initially, but then you go up this quite steep road up onto the coastal path.

Paul:

Yeah.

Aimee:

So you, you pretty much down briefly and then climbing straight away. So it was quite hard to push on that first hill, but, but we did, didn't we?

Paul:

They changed it though, didn't they?

Aimee:

But they did take out one section that was really bottlenecked. That helped a little bit.

Paul:

It did work well.

Aimee:

But we didn't get caught up.

Paul:

No..

Aimee:

We were doing okay.

Paul:

That was the problem. You went out too hard and I had to follow you. And that's what caused me my first issue.

Aimee:

That is so not true!

Paul:

That's what caused me my first issue.

Aimee:

It's so not true.

Paul:

I knew how much energy I'd got to do the pace I wanted to go. You went out really quick.

Aimee:

Okay, now can you tell the truth?

Paul:

Which then made my energy go down.

Aimee:

And now the truth?

Paul:

Obviously my breakfast I didn't eat. Was helping me with my energy consumption. So we got going, well there's a couple of, now I look back in the cold light of day. I thought the weather was gonna be really bad, so I got my really decent waterproof on, which is heavy, and it,

Aimee:

You got too hot?

Paul:

Maybe, yeah. I maybe got quite a bit warm. Yeah, I got really hot. So I got hot, so I was losing fluids. Story of my life. Let's not go on to the chained thing. Yeah, so I got hot. Food I didn't have, but I've got food on me. But I knew we'd got the aid stations coming up and they'd got Naak products on there. Again, when I read stuff, I sort of read stuff. In the brochures when they say about things and I put extra words in there because I want to see what I want to see. So, my understanding there was going to be lots of Naak products on every single aid station. But I think that must have changed on the website after the race. But I did, calorie wise, I did, I lost a lot of calories early on.

Aimee:

And hadn't eaten in the first place, which didn't help.

Paul:

Yeah, so I was, I was playing catch up a little bit with food. So the first 25 mile

Aimee:

You struggled, didn't you?

Paul:

I did struggle, yeah. Yeah, because the pace, I ain't being funny, the pace was quite quick, though, wasn't it?

Aimee:

No.

Paul:

Oh, right. The pace was

Aimee:

We were doing OK in terms of staying ahead of the cut offs.

Paul:

Yeah.

Aimee:

But we could have been going a lot faster.

Paul:

I could have. I could have.

Aimee:

I had to keep stopping for you to catch me up. And I wasn't trying to sprint.

Paul:

No, I know.

Aimee:

But you did slow us down.

Paul:

Yeah.

Aimee:

You did.

Paul:

Yeah.

Aimee:

Sorry, but you did. In that first 25 mile section.

Paul:

I did. I did.

Aimee:

But we were okay. We were still in front of the cut offs, so we thought we were doing okay.

Paul:

Yeah. So, I tried to get food.

Aimee:

Yeah, the first aid station, he wasn't very happy because there wasn't really food. The only thing that was available was some Naak bars that they'd opened and cut up into really small chunks. That was the only food available, so it wasn't as if you could take a bar with you or anything like that. And that was it, so he was not happy about that.

Paul:

I think I was thinking that there'd be bars.

Aimee:

So from the first checkpoint to the second checkpoint, someone ended up eating my 800 calorie emergency food supply.

Paul:

Who did you give that to then?

Aimee:

I think you'll find that was you. Because he just didn't have enough food and was really struggling and starting to bonk. So he started eating my food.

Paul:

Yeah, because I was thinking liquid fluid as well, because the Naak do the liquid carbs. So I was thinking that as well. And it did, it did state, didn't it? It's not going to be as, the consistent, the,

Aimee:

It's not as concentrated.

Paul:

The mix isn't... because the one positive, I did think, right, let's start trying Naak before so I'd get used to Naak, so I can use the Naak products, because Naak sponsor the UTMB events. So I thought, get used to Naak. But, the concentrate I have for the 250 calories and the carbs, It's two scoops basically in 500ml water. Theirs was half that, so I was getting half the calories. So you're feeling like you had to drink more, plus I was sweating more. It went pear shaped. Is basically it. I messed up with my nutrition. I messed up with my nutrition, but I did sort of claw it back a bit, I did have a bit over night.

Aimee:

Yeah, because the second checkpoint was Porthleven and that's where we had the first opportunity to meet our crew.

Paul:

Got some coke down my neck, flat coke.

Aimee:

So they got more of food, so we refilled our backpacks, he downed a load of coke. Which refreshed him.

Paul:

And we got going.

Aimee:

And then I had a little bit of a downer. I'm not sure why.

Paul:

But the weather changed and you couldn't stand on your feet for half an hour.

Aimee:

Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, you're right. But as we left Porthleven, until that point the weather hadn't been too bad. It had been dry. But as we left Porthleven, you run out of the harbour, up this hill and suddenly it started raining out of nowhere so we stopped to get our waterproofs out and then carried on by the time we got up to the coast path it was hammering it down and the wind just came out of nowhere! I literally couldn't stay upright

Paul:

Because the coastal path kind of went, I think because of erosion they'd put like a fence weren't it and you went round like that up and down

Aimee:

Yeah

Paul:

We were going up the up bit, so it was inland, and

Aimee:

It was like a wind tunnel, because it was hedged one side, fence the other, and you were just in a wind tunnel.

Paul:

Yeah. I'm relatively stable on my feet, unlike somebody. I'm relatively stable, and it was knocking me about, and I was just saying to Aimee,'Hold on to the side'!

Aimee:

I did have to keep grabbing the fence, because I was like, I'm going to fall over. Well, I did fall over, didn't I? It blew me sideways at one point.

Paul:

Oh, it blew you in the hedge, didn't it? In the bramble hedge.

Aimee:

Yeah, I fell into a hedge, and whacked my knee.

Paul:

Oh, I was like, shit, I'm glad you came out because there is a story, we won't go into it, but there's a story about'Bramble Guy' in the Arc, who fell in the brambles and obviously they have you and he couldn't get out, but I saw Aimee go into this hedge.

Aimee:

I was a little bit wedged, wasn't I? My hat had got caught on the hedge, so you did have to untangle my hat.

Paul:

We got Bramble Girl' here!

Aimee:

So I think at that point I was a bit like, I can't do this, I can't do this, because it was so hard. I think that was why I had a bit of a wobble, because I was struggling to stay upright. And I was thinking, oh my goodness, we'd only just gone into the dark, hadn't we?

Paul:

Yeah.

Aimee:

Nightfall had fallen a little bit before we got to Porthleven. So we got the whole of the night to go and I was thinking if it's going to be like this all night and I can't even stay up right, then I might as well just DNF now, this is awful.

Paul:

It would have been hard.

Aimee:

I did have a bit of an'oh I can't do this'. But then it was about 20 minutes, maybe half an hour at the most, and then suddenly the wind just stopped.

Paul:

It was like somebody had turned

Aimee:

And the rain stopped as well.

Paul:

Yeah, it was like somebody had turned it on and turned it off.

Aimee:

I mean when I say stopped, there was still a little bit of gust here and there, but it wasn't anything like it had been. And we were okay again. And I perked up and

Paul:

We battled through the night, to be fair. I don't think we did too bad over the night.

Aimee:

Yeah, we did okay. I felt quite good actually. I felt quite strong. I was feeling stronger on the hills than I've ever felt. My knees weren't playing up, which for me, it's pretty impressive.

Paul:

We got into Land's End at... This is where I think it started. We thought we'd done really well, but we got into Land's End at about 5. 30 in the morning.

Aimee:

We only had half an hour.

Paul:

We had half an hour.

Aimee:

When we got into Land's End, they were saying to everybody, you've got half an hour to do your change if you're changing your trainers or whatever you're doing because Land's End was where you could pick up your drop bag wasn't it?

Paul:

Yeah, yeah.

Aimee:

And we were going to change our trainers but we ended up not because of mainly time.

Paul:

Yeah, but the trackers were, because our crew could meet us there, but the trackers were playing up a little bit because it kept saying Aimee was in the checkpoint, I was half hour behind. Because they wouldn't let your crew in unless you were there. And it was a bit It looked like we were half hour behind, didn't it?

Aimee:

Somehow they'd missed us coming in. They were there, our crew were there. It wasn't like they'd got to the wrong checkpoint or something. They were there. But for some reason they'd just not seen us come in.

Paul:

Because it was saying on the trackers we weren't there. It was saying imminent or something.

Aimee:

I think it said we were imminent, but it didn't say we'd arrived. So somehow we managed to sneak past. They didn't actually see us go into the building because it was a hotel, wasn't it?

Paul:

Yeah.

Aimee:

So we were inside the checkpoint. They weren't there. We were like, where are they? Where are they? The tracker updated to say that I'd arrived, but he was half an hour behind me or something, which wasn't true. We'd been together the whole time. So we were sort of starting to panic a little bit because all of our food that we needed to replenish our packs with was with them. And the way that UTMB and Naak had done it, It wasn't very easy to take products with you.

Paul:

No, no, no.

Aimee:

Which is not helpful.

Paul:

That aid station though, but on a positive note, the Arc Angels, I'll give them credit.

Aimee:

Oh yeah, they were good.

Paul:

You walked in, there was a geezer at the door, because that was your drop bag, what's your number, bang.

Aimee:

They literally handed you your drop bag straight away, that was very efficient.

Paul:

Straight in, and it was busy. We. I think a lady said, oh, do you want to sit down? So we kind of sat down.

Aimee:

Then they asked if we wanted anything hot.

Paul:

She goes, do you want a coffee? And I was like, oh, I can't be arsed. Because you had to, that was it, and you had to have a collapsible mug, collapsible bowl, all this crap. Not crap, but it was, and I said, oh. She goes, we've got coffee. I said, I can't get my mug out. She said, oh, we've got cups. She's a winner.

Aimee:

They brought us pizza.

Paul:

You didn't have to ask for it. You come over.

Aimee:

They took our water bottles. I was using Tailwind in my water, wasn't I? And I'd got my pouch, my sachet out and she said, Do you want me to do that? Took the sachet and my bottle off and did it for me.

Paul:

They were brilliant.

Aimee:

Couldn't fault the Arc Angels at that aid station, they were great.

Paul:

They were brilliant. And then they're like, Go! Get out! Bugger off!

Aimee:

Eventually, because we were like, what are we going to do? I was trying to work out how I could grab some of this Naak stuff and put it... I was trying to repurpose one of my waterproof bags from my pack to put food in it. Just thinking I'm going to have to take some more food and our crew aren't here. But then luckily one of our crew, Sara, she'd said to her husband Neil'You stay out there and keep an eye out for Paul' because they didn't think Paul had arrived yet, I'll just go in and see if I can find Aimee. So she came in and we spotted her so I waved her over. So then she rang Neil and he came in so then we got our food supplies so we were able to really quickly fill up our bags, but then we said to them, because they were like, what do you need? We're like, we've got to just go. We've just got to go. Because all the Arc Angels are saying, you've only got 30 minutes. You need to get back out. You need to get back out. Cause otherwise you're going to be chasing these cut offs.

Paul:

Cause that was, so that was 55 mile in, wasn't it? Roughly. I think it was about 55 mile in. And it was still, it was still pitch black, wasn't it? And I think from there, so it was half five in the morning. Half five, half six, half seven. So it was about another two and a half hours of darkness. That little bit of darkness was a bit which was it... when you get into the end of a night, if you've not done a hundred miler through the night, you do get to a point where you're like'oh sun please come up'.

Aimee:

You just want it to get light.

Paul:

Once you come into a new day it does help you're still knackered but it does help, but it kind of...

Aimee:

I find wearing a head torch for hours, it starts to give me a headache, I get like a tension headache across here and I just wanted to take the head torch off, but of course you can't while it's dark.

Paul:

Yeah, so we left there didn't we, and we were looking forward to a flat section. There was a flat section, which again, you've been doing obviously hills for the last 10, 15 hours.

Aimee:

It's the only long flat section on the course, it was about 8 miles.

Paul:

I was looking forward to that, and then, yeah, and then it just, I don't know what it was.

Aimee:

This was another frustrating section from my perspective.

Paul:

It ruined me. It ruined me.

Aimee:

I was fine on that section, and I kept saying to Paul, this is our chance to try and make up a little bit of time here. Because this is flat, let's just crack on, get it done.

Paul:

This is how bad. So I'm a heel striker and I did think, I thought on the concrete it'd be, well tarmac, it was concrete all by that rail line. I don't know what it, I think by this point, calorie wise, I was just dead. My feet were dragging that much. These were pretty much a new tread. They, I wore the sole out on the bottom of them.

Aimee:

Shuffling.

Paul:

Shuffling. I got my poles out. Man, yeah.

Aimee:

So I was, I, I found myself.

Paul:

She kept leaving me.

Aimee:

I found myself in quite a good place on that section, I'd found a stride and a pace that I was happy with and I

Paul:

It was quicker than me!

Aimee:

I was just plodding along. I wasn't running fast by any means, but it was a decent run for that far into a race, wasn't it? And I was just plodding along thinking, right, if we can just tick this section off, we'll buy some time back. Because hardly anybody was running that section. We were overtaking loads of people walking on that section.

Paul:

Yeah, we was actually. Cause they found it as hard as I did.

Aimee:

But, I kept, I'd run for a while just in my own little world thinking, yep, we're getting this done.

Paul:

I can still hear Paul shuffling!

Aimee:

And then I'd realized I couldn't hear him anymore and looked behind me and he was way back. So I'd have to stop and wait for him to catch me up. And that kept happening on that section. And it was most frustrating.

Paul:

You know what though? It, it that said though, I, I could see her up in front and I was kind of, there was a gap, but I thought, I can carry on and I can see you. So I was, I was just like, yeah, I'll shuffle along. But it was, oh man. It was just getting worse and I think with a course that difficult, you've got to eat and eat and eat. You're not too bad and at the end of the day it comes to size. I'm a bigger person, I'm burning more calories, you don't need it nowhere near as much as me.

Aimee:

No, but also I was able to just keep eating. I just kept picking, which I've learned for me, that's the best thing to do.

Paul:

Yeah, that's the right way.

Aimee:

Constantly.

Paul:

It's the right way, but once you've, and it's happened to me before, which we're going to another race, but I think once you've depleted your fluids and your calories.

Aimee:

It's hard to claw it back.

Paul:

And you're pushing yourself because you've still got to maintain your energy to keep going, trying to get it back in. It's almost like, if I now thought about it, I should have sat down earlier at one of the other ones and got a decent bit of food in, which then would have helped me moving forward, but me, I'm a stubborn bastard and I know best. Yeah, I don't know, it's twice, the last two races this has happened to me and it's grated with me! So if we come out of that, I digressed a bit there. This is when the checkpoints started flagging up. We were coming into daylight, we got through that bit, we did another checkpoint, and then we were going off, and you heard some chap speaking to a marshal or something, didn't you?

Aimee:

I heard a runner in front asking something about the cut off for the next checkpoint, well that's what I thought they were talking about, and it panicked me a little bit, because I was like... Well sorry, I thought they were talking about the cut off for the checkpoint after, not the one that was coming. I thought they were talking about St ives.

Paul:

Right.

Aimee:

But it wasn't. It turned out it wasn't. So I sort of ran ahead a little bit and said,'excuse me, did I just overhear you having a conversation about cutoffs? Like where do we stand with cutoffs at the moment?' And he said that we'd got an hour and... I think it was an hour and 15 minutes to get to the next checkpoint. It was not St Ives, which is what I thought they'd said, which really panicked me. But we'd got an hour and 15 minutes to get to, I don't know how you pronounce it, but it's Botallack.

Paul:

Yeah. And that was about three, three and a half mile, I think.

Aimee:

And the pace we were moving, I was like, oh goodness, that's going to be tight. So, I was saying to you, wasn't I, we've got to get a move on, and he wouldn't have it. He kept arguing with me, no, no, we've got loads of time, we've got loads of time. And I was like, we haven't, we need to get a move on. So I just started pushing on, and he tried to keep up with me. It made you move a bit faster because you were trying to keep up with me. So, we did really push quite a bit on that section, didn't we? We got to that Botallack aid station and it turned out, I think, I think the runner had gained the impression that we had to be there by 8:15.

Paul:

Yeah.

Aimee:

But actually it was 8:45. So when we got there, I think we'd got about 45 minutes spare. We thought we'd only got 15 minutes, but it was actually 45.

Paul:

Yeah.

Aimee:

So we were like, okay, that's not as bad as we thought. But, the people, the Arc Angels at the aid station were saying you need to get a move on because this next section is horrendous. And, you know, it's a long way, it was one of the longest sections, wasn't it? Between aid stations. And it's renowned for being horrendous, so, you know, it's going to be tight, you need to get moving. Paul still wouldn't grasp that we were cutting tight to these checkpoints.

Paul:

I think the reason... because we'd done the 50, I didn't really pay much attention to checkpoints, because we've never had to on other races. It's not really been a thing in my head. And I think, because I knew we'd got until half past midnight. So we'd got until literally midnight Saturday night to get back. And it was like, well, we're doing well. We're in the morning. So we've got 12 hours. We were getting to 70 odd miles. I'm thinking, we've got loads of time. And they were saying the cut off for St Ives was half 2. And I was like, it can't be half 2 because it was half 5 for the 50s. And they've still got, so the 50s still got the same amount of time as we have. They've got to finish at midnight. So I'm like, well why on earth would you have, why are they different? They can't be different. What's the point in that? Because if they're getting there at half five, we're getting there at half two. I just don't get it, but, yeah, it just, I was thinking, can't be right, can't be right, and then still in the morning though, because it was like we had to get there for half two, and I thought oh to be fair, we've still, we've got a fair few hours to get there, it was six odd hours or something, and it was 21k. I was thinking to be fair, we should be able to do that, but oh yeah, when you're not in the best frame of mind, and it was the hardest section.

Aimee:

That section is brutal in terms of terrain.

Paul:

It was unreal, wasn't it? We were climbing a waterfall, like water. We were going through a riverbed at that one point, it was like.

Aimee:

And some of the steps, I mean, you were having to pull me up, weren't you? Because I haven't got very long legs and some of these climbs, I couldn't get my leg high enough to then try and push myself up onto the next level. So quite a lot, you were having to go in front of me, then grab my arm and just give me that little pull.

Paul:

That's what took a lot of energy really, a lot of energy.

Aimee:

Okay.

Paul:

It

Aimee:

was a tough, tough section. It was a really tough section, so we were just going slower and slower really, weren't we?

Paul:

Yeah.

Aimee:

And then it just became apparent, we were speaking to some other runners. And eventually they were getting ahead of us, weren't they? But they were all going, it's going to be tight,

Paul:

This was when the headland kept doing that, didn't it? You'd think St Ives is just round that corner.

Aimee:

False headlands. Horrendous, absolutely horrendous. I think, because of course we had done this section when we did the 50 the year before.

Paul:

I couldn't remember that.

Aimee:

I think I'd mentally blocked that section out, to be honest. I...because I couldn't remember some of that until we got there and then I was like, oh yeah. But it had gone out of my head before the race.

Paul:

There was massive boulders over that beach, wasn't there?

Aimee:

Yeah, and it was just horrendous, some of it. Not runnable at all. Well, I say it's not runnable at all. The elites can obviously do it.

Paul:

Yeah, yeah.

Aimee:

I think they're absolutely amazing and I don't know how they do it. But they clearly, their finish time shows they must have run it.

Paul:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Aimee:

But, yeah, it wasn't runnable for us at all. And it just became apparent at a certain point. I think we were maybe three miles out approximately we thought. And we were looking at our watches going, it's not going to happen.

Paul:

Well we kept, we said that but we kept thinking.

Aimee:

We're not going to do it.

Paul:

We're going to go round this corner and it's going to be down into St Ives and it just, er, and we'd run out of water.

Aimee:

Yeah, that was the other problem, we'd both run out of water.

Paul:

And I'd, I'd had, to be fair I'd got 1.5 litres.

Aimee:

One of my biggest issues was the not being able to meet the crew I think as well. I think it would have given us a boost if we perhaps could have met our crew at maybe Botallack or something. You went a long time without seeing your crew, which didn't really make sense. Once you left St Ives, because you weren't allowed to see your crew at St Ives. Once you left St Ives, so 20 miles left. I think we could have seen our crew twice in the last 10 miles.

Paul:

It was the last two checkpoints wasn't it?

Aimee:

Which didn't really make sense but

Paul:

No, it was the last two.

Aimee:

I think it would have helped if we could have seen our... well, we can't change anything but

Paul:

No, no, no.

Aimee:

If we could have seen the crew perhaps at Botallack or something that might have helped but

Paul:

Yeah, but we did, we missed a cut off.

Aimee:

We knew we were going to get timed out because, well, it was half two and we weren't at St Ives so we just ended up walking down, didn't we? There was no point trying to kill ourselves now so we just walked down into St Ives. And, oh, it was so emotional. Because the other thing that we haven't mentioned is that last section. We were being overtaken, weren't we, by the leading 50 mile runners?

Paul:

Yeah.

Aimee:

were overtaking us. And that's another thing, I just said it wasn't runnable. They were flying past us!

Paul:

He didn't change, the guy who won it didn't change the speed he was going up and down the hills.

Aimee:

Absolutely amazing how they were doing it, but they were flying past us. So when we got down into St Ives, there were a lot of supporters there, weren't they? Who I think were supporting the 50 milers, not the hundreds, because most of the hundreds were gone. They'd already gone through. Or had been previously timed out. So we came down into St Ives. Obviously our bibs showed that we were 100 mile runners, not 50. So the crowd could see that we were 100 mile runners. And they, I don't know, from the way they were responding to us, I don't think they realised we'd been timed out. Because they were saying things like,'Oh, keep going, you've got this, you're doing amazing, you're going to get there, you're doing it. Well done, you're smashing it, wow, what an amazing distance' and all this.'You're going to do 100, wow, wow, wow'. We knew we were going to get timed out. We knew our race was over. And I don't think they did. So they were cheering us on, but we were actually thinking, Oh, well, it's over. And you started crying first, didn't you? And then that set me off. So we were just holding hands, crying, walking to the St Ives checkpoint, knowing that our race was over.

Paul:

80 miles!

Aimee:

It was bittersweet. But yeah, according to our watches, we'd done I was 79. 8 miles, I think. Officially, according to the tracker, it was 77, I think, but we say 80.

Paul:

Yeah 80 miles

Aimee:

80 miles.

Paul:

We would have had how long to do the next 20?

Aimee:

We had nine and a half hours still on the clock. At that point, and we know because we'd done the 50 before, we knew what was coming, we could have done that 20 miles in the 9 and a half hours that we had left.

Paul:

Would have done it.

Aimee:

But the rules are the rules.

Paul:

Yeah. Yeah.

Aimee:

If you don't reach the checkpoint by a cut off time, you're out.

Paul:

Yeah.

Aimee:

So yeah, we walked into the checkpoint and they cut our trackers off.

Paul:

Yeah. And then said, bye

Aimee:

Fed us. No, no, no. They were lovely. They gave us food and drink.

Paul:

Yeah. They were shutting it up though, weren't they?

Aimee:

Yeah, it was, it was gonna be closing shortly.

Paul:

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So yeah.

Aimee:

And then, yeah, we, because we knew we were gonna get timed out, when we realized it was already the cutoff time and we weren't there, we did ring our support crew, didn't we? And said, can you meet us as an Ives? So yeah, they met us there.

Paul:

Yeah. So it went

Aimee:

That was it. Race over

Paul:

It went pear shaped..

Aimee:

So we, it was our first DNF.

Paul:

It wasn't a DNF, we got timed out. Very different, timed out. DNF is we didn't finish because we pulled out. We didn't pull out because we could have carried on. We got timed out. So I look at it that way. So in conclusion, I ballsed up really. I ballsed up. The key elements. Food, drink, clothing, yet again.

Aimee:

We both need to remember, and I would give this as advice to any ultra runner, I think, even in a winter ultra, there's this mantra, isn't there, that we don't stick to, which is'be bold, start cold'. Actually you do need to do that, because otherwise you just overheat.

Paul:

And I sweat a lot, and it was, yeah, it was, the jacket I've got, you can go up Everest in it, while I was wearing that for bloody thingy, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, but, lessons learned, again, hopefully. I did, I thought I'd got this in the bag, thought I'd got it in the bag. But, I will go back, and I will do it again. We're in discussions about this at the moment. Don't get me wrong, I want to do it and I want to get my buckle because they've got some fancy ass buckles. So I do want to get a buckle, but equally, I want to do that course. I want to do it. It's just eating me inside. So my original thought pattern was after the 200 in December I've got a month, was it six weeks?

Aimee:

Six weeks.

Paul:

Six weeks break and then bang straight into it because I'll be trained really well and then just go and do the Arc in January but you're not seeing...

Aimee:

I think that's a ridiculous idea.

Paul:

She thinks that's ridiculous. Yes, yes, yes.

Aimee:

My view is... I mean, I didn't even want to do the Arc 100 in the first place. Now it's beaten me. I do want to do the Arc 100. I want to get that buckle. So that means when I do it again, and hopefully we will do it again, I want to be on that start line absolutely fighting fit. I want to be fully trained and raring to go. I want to be fully rested. Like, do the proper training leading up to it, then have a decent taper, and be ready to smash it. I want to really give it my all. I do not want to go into it having just hopefully completed a 200 mile race. I mean, I know how exhausted we were after doing the two 100 milers that we have successfully finished.

Paul:

Yeah, yeah.

Aimee:

I can't even begin to imagine how exhausted we're going to be after doing double that distance. It's going to take a good couple of months, I think, to fully recover from doing the 200 mile race.

Paul:

Yeah.

Aimee:

And I just think it would be crazy to be trying to do the Arc, which is not an easy 100 miler.

Paul:

No, no, no, it's not an easy 100.

Aimee:

At all, it's one of the hardest.

Paul:

It is, it is, so

Aimee:

So, I don't think we should sign up for the Arc in 2026. I think, I think what we need to do is focus this year on the 200 miler. Hopefully smash that. And then sign up to do the Arc of Attrition 100 miler in January 2027 and really train for it.

Paul:

It's too far away for my brain. It's too far away. So I have, I have

Aimee:

I don't want to DNF it again

Paul:

No, no, no.

Aimee:

And I think our chances of DNFing

Paul:

Time out.

Aimee:

if we do January'26 are high.

Paul:

Time out. So I've got another plan. See, I want to complete it. I want to complete the course. I want to do the course. So I have another plan. As I turn 50 in April 50 in April... we go back and we just do the course. We just go and do it. We know somebody's got trackers, so we can do the trackers. We'll have all the kit, get some crew, and just do it. I ain't gonna get a buckle. I know I ain't, but in my head, I'll know I've done it. I completed it. I did the a hundred and some odd mile and done it. That's my thought. Okay. It's not necessarily winter, It's more the course. I need to complete the course. That's what I need to do. So, that's my thought pattern. So we are working on that at the moment. We've just got to contact people. Hopefully they'll see this before we contact them and they know who it is. They know what crew it is and they might go, oh man, that means, yeah. Thing is, what else would you be doing at the Easter weekend? So we're looking at it. It's up in the air at the moment, but I do, it's one of them. You just got to keep coming back. Yeah, it was a kick in the balls really, but that is ultra running. That is ultra running. Yeah, you don't get them all right every time. And it's normally me. It's normally me, which is the stumbling block. There you go, I don't do anything easy. I always like to try the harder way.

Aimee:

Try and make it harder for yourself.

Paul:

Yeah, don't eat. Don't eat and put like a bin bag over you so you sweat.

Aimee:

Crazy.

Paul:

But bar that, yeah, it was a fantastic weekend.

Aimee:

It is a great race.

Paul:

It was a great race and you're glad you signed up for it. Very tough, very tough, but we will be back. So what we are going to do on the next episode, we are going to, boom, straight back to where we started. Yeah, yeah, and how we got from the sofa to get into this 200 mile that we're going to be taking on at the end of this year. Does sound quite scary, doesn't it? 200 miles.

Aimee:

Yes.

Paul:

I think it's about 213, actually.

Aimee:

Oh, don't tell me that. Now he tells me.

Paul:

So, if you got this far, thank you for listening.

Aimee:

Thank you.

Paul:

And we will be back to babble on. Knock microphones over. Waffle on, get sidetracked, talk about this, talk about that. And hopefully talk a little bit about the races that we've done. Thank you again and see you soon.

Aimee:

Thank you.