Race Report: The Autumn 100
There’s a moment, somewhere between doubt and belief, where all possibilities begin to take shape.
It doesn’t arrive with clarity or confidence. It comes quietly, in the stillness before the first step, when something deep within you whispers…
Maybe.
That quiet question is what brings us to start lines.
Not because we’re sure we can do it, but because something inside us wants to find out. To test what we think we know about ourselves, and to see what’s left when we’ve had to give everything we think we have.
I’d spent over three well-documented months preparing for this race, but in truth, this was the crescendo of an entire year’s work. Nine months of preparation had led here, each preceding race designed to build on the last, distance, difficulty, resolve required.
I’d done the work. All that remained was the doing.
I’ll admit to being guilty of one of the things I often advise others not to do. When people train for a marathon or half, I tell them not to put the distance on a pedestal, don’t turn it into something to fear.
It’s still just a run, maybe longer than you’re used to, but a run all the same.
I tried to take my own advice, to trust the plan and let each training week unfold as it should, but in the tired moments I caught myself dwelling on what lay ahead…one hundred miles. One of, if not, in my opinion, thee signature ultra distance.
I’d actually signed up for this distance before. Not many people know that. But doubt got the better of me before I’d even started to prepare, and I quietly let it pass me by. That fear wasn’t the end, though. As I learned, progressed, and gained experience, I thought maybe one day.
This time, I was ready.
Saturday 18 October · 06:30 a.m.
From the fragments of a broken sleep, I rose.
Half-awake, I moved through the familiar rituals that have long since become muscle memory before every race. I’d done all the morning’s thinking the night before. Clothes laid out, drop bag packed, fuel portioned by lap, but that didn’t stop me from emptying the bag just to repack it.
Twice.
The moment I was ready to leave felt heavy, thick in the air, almost tangible. Standing in the centre of the hotel room, I knew that once that door closed behind me, I wouldn’t return until the challenge had its answer.
The short walk from the hotel to the registration hall greeted me with perfect running conditions: a still, mild morning veiled with cloud, the only disturbance, the quiet rush of the Thames.
The warmth of the Centurion team at Goring Village Hall contrasted perfectly with the cool morning air and eased the tempest of nerves building in my mind. My drop bag was tagged and handed over to the volunteers. My GPS tracker, a small orange box no bigger than a packet of matches, was taped to my shoulder. I’d beaten the queues, and now there was nothing left to do but wait.
I simply sat in the hall, watching my shoes, thinking about what they were about to endure. The trepidation meant the temptation for distraction, a cup of tea or pre-race small talk, never took hold. I just sat in those moments: the air mild, the morning quiet but for the river’s soft movement, meditating on the logistics of the road ahead.
The course was simple in theory: four out-and-back spurs, each around twenty-five miles. The first, predominantly flat; the middle two, holding the lion’s share of the elevation; the final, relatively flat again with a few sharp inclines to test what resolve remained.
The race briefing began, and I raised my hand as a first-timer. It was comforting, in a way, to feel some sense of being a beginner again. No pressure, no expectations to meet.
One last moment to feel small.
Then: tighten the watch strap, steady the breath, and prepare to go to work.
The start of an ultra is deceptive; the easiest miles are often the most dangerous. The pull of the crowd, the comfort of fresh legs, the illusion that it will always feel this easy.
I kept reminding myself: slow down. You can’t run this section easy enough.
The path hugged the river, narrow and uneven, runners stretched in single file. Every so often the sound of shoes meeting earth broke the stillness, a soft percussion that carried on the water. The footing was good, dry and firm beneath the morning’s pale light.
By the time I reached the first checkpoint, the nerves had gone. The race rhythm had found me, that quiet understanding between breath and movement when effort becomes something close to peace.
The Centurion team, at this checkpoint and every other for that matter, were exemplary: calm faces, steady hands, kindness without ceremony. Every small gesture carried more weight than it should; a refill of water, a word of encouragement, the brief meeting of eyes that says you’re doing fine.
Reaching the turning point of the first leg offered the first small victory of the day.
I came to realise that the return journey would pass a little easier than the outbound journey, partly because the terrain was now familiar, and I guess because time spend travelling home always passes quicker than the journey to a place.
Back in Goring, I felt strong. A sip of Coke, a handful of food, and I was gone again before thought could catch up. In races like this, thinking too long is never a good idea.
The second leg rose gently, then sharply, the first real climbs of the day. It suited me better. Flat ground has never felt like home; too measured, too certain. I prefer to think in gradients, in the give and take between effort and release.
Each spur offered a glimpse of what waited on the return. The same hills, the same fatigue, seen from the other side. There’s a strange comfort in that, in knowing what’s coming, in recognising the shape of the struggle before it arrives.
By the time I returned Goring again, the light had thinned to grey. Dusk has a way of drawing the life out of you, the body quietly suggesting it’s time to stop, while the mind reminds you that stopping isn’t yet the intention.
A marshal kindly fetched me a bowl of hot pasta as I absorbed the checkpoint ambience: a few quiet voices, the hum of tired conversation. As I prepared for the next leg, I relished the warmth, brief and borrowed, before the cold hours ahead.
Halfway. Headtorch on.
The third leg had always loomed largest in my mind, the steepest climbs, the deepest night, the coldest air.
I walked the first few minutes, letting the food I’d taken on settle, allowing my legs wake slowly to the idea of movement again. Despite a few extra layers, the night air began to bite. The darkness swallowed everything beyond the reach of my headtorch. The world shrank to a small circle of light, the sound of breath, and a persistence that drive me further into the night.
As we ascended, wind gathered along the ridge, a constant whisper against the ears. The temperature fell with each step, the kind of cold that feels personal, not on the skin but somewhere beneath it.
At the 100 km turn I stretched, drank some Coke, and tried to make peace with the weight of my pack pressing into my spine. The marshals had a fire burning there, a small orange glow against the black, but I didn’t dare go near it. Warmth can be dangerous when the mind is tired.
When you stop, even briefly, the cold takes its chance. Your body temperature plummets as your heart rate begins to rest. I set off again, shaking, forcing my legs to run until the tremors gave way to heat.
The returning descent was punishing. My body had begun to protest in ways no stretch could fix. Even downhill, where I’m usually strongest, took effort, the kind that asks for everything but gives nothing back.
Returning to Goring, I was determined not to let the stop last a second longer than necessary, a rule I live by in every ultra: take the time you need, but no more. Sitting in the warmth of the hall won’t make the work ahead any easier; in fact, it only makes it harder.
Another bowl of pasta. Another quiet exchange with the volunteers. The hall quieter now, fewer runners, more silence. Race numbers being handed in, faces hollowed by the acceptance that there’s always another day.
It struck me then, that finishing these races is never guaranteed. No matter the miles or victories behind you, each start line wipes the slate clean. The odds reset. And that, perhaps, is what keeps us coming back, the fragile, uncertain chance that this time, we might still be enough.
As I left the village for the final time, I was tired. I was sore. But I was steady. The strain on my mind and body meant I dared not contemplate that this was the last leg. I often find that awareness of an ending has a way of amplifying everything, the pain, the joy, the noise.
The opening climbs felt cruel, a reminder that the body still owed a debt for the easier miles already spent. Every step taken on borrowed strength. But the ground began to level, and I found short, forgiving stretches where I could run again, fragile moments of ease that never lasted long enough.
Preparation for races like this is, at its core, having a solution ready for as many potential problems as possible, and refusing to let any setback derail you. But it’s always the unexpected that lands hardest, and the more fatigue you carry, the smaller the blow required to shake your world apart.
Five kilometres from the turn on the riverside near Reading, my Garmin died. Fully charged that morning and forecast to last the duration of the race, but gone regardless.
No map. No pace. No measure of how far remained.
For a second, frustration threatened to break through, that sharp, irrational anger that only comes when the mind is stretched thin. But it passed as quickly as it rose.
It doesn’t matter, I thought. The course is simple, out and back, well-marked. I’ve spent months training by feel. If I can’t do that now, there’s something wrong.
All that matters is forward.
I’d later learn from some of the more experienced runners that resting the watch on the map screen while tracking the GPX file drains the battery faster… Lesson learned.
As I pressed on along the riverside I convinced myself, through fatigue and doubt, that I was chasing the cut-off. The panic became its own kind of fuel, pulling something from nowhere. I ran harder than I had all day, legs numb from pain, lungs raw, no room left for thought.
At the turning checkpoint, I barely paused: a glance, a nod, a refill, and back into the rising light.
The return became trance-like. The heaviest metal music you’ve never heard in my ears, body on autopilot, consciousness reduced to motion. No pain, no doubt. Just the quiet rhythm of survival.
As daylight grew, familiar ground came into view and I knew I was close to the final aid station. By now I was shattered, the broken remains of the runner I’d spent a year building cracking under my feet. At the final checkpoint I learned the truth of my miscalculation: I’d left myself almost three hours to cover seven kilometres.
And with that, came calm.
The knowing.
I would finish.
The course was determined to go down fighting though, throwing in a few late hills as a last act of defiance. It wouldn’t be enough. Regardless of the pain, I hadn’t come this far only to come this far.
The final mile stretched into eternity, each step a quiet negotiation with gravity. Time thinned, drawn out between footfalls, as if the world had slowed to watch the last of my effort unfold.
Then, at last, the bridge at Goring, the short incline to the finish line.
A ripple of applause. A few faces I half-recognised. A quiet smile I barely had the strength to return. As the tape holding the tracker to my shoulder was cut away, a finisher’s buckle was placed in my hand.
And just like that, it was over.
26 hours 46 minutes 11 seconds.
There isn’t much left to say about those twenty-seven hours, not much more that I remember anyway. The edges blur when I try to recall the memories, they’ve been replaced by something wordless, a weight that sits somewhere between exhaustion and peace.
We spend so much of life waiting for certainty… For proof that we’re capable, ready, enough.
But certainty never comes first. It waits for us on the other side of belief.
What begins as doubt becomes decision, and decision becomes faith, the quiet kind that doesn’t announce itself, that lives only in the act of showing up.
I don’t often dwell on achievements, but this one feels different.
Now, sitting at my desk, I can feel it all still in my body. The dull ache of distance, the stiffness that only effort leaves behind. A coffee sits cooling beside the buckle, a small, heavy oval of metal that means far more than it should. It’s not a symbol of victory, but of follow-through, of all the quiet days and doubts that no one saw.
What I’m proud of isn’t the finish, but the faith it took to begin, the simple belief that if I did the work, if I stayed the course, it might just be enough.
I think that’s what these journeys are: a conversation between who you were when you started and who you’ve become by the end. You don’t cross a finish line so much as return to yourself. Changed, but somehow more certain of what you’ve always known.
And in the quiet moments after it’s all over, when the noise fades and the body finally rests, belief feels less like something you found, and more like something that was waiting for you all along.
