Centurion Wonderland 50 mile – CW50

The Chiltern Wonderland 50 is aptly named taking in as it does the beautiful, varied terrain of the Chilterns ‘Area of Natural Beauty (AONB) to the near West of London and South East of Oxford.

I’d booked us into a great hotel in Streatly on the banks of the Thames immediately opposite the start in Goring to allow for a comfortable finish after the event. We’d driven the hour and a half to Goring on the Saturday morning to make the 8:30 start time. Vicky joined us and the girls once again made up my brilliant support team. This was, uniquely for my experience of Centurion events, a looping course starting and finishing at the same place whereas the others had all been point-to-point. This makes the logistics a lot easier and the girls were able to taken their own 9mi run after I’d set off.

I’d run my first ever trail ultra in the Chilterns in July 2019 – the Chiltern Challenge 100km/60mi and Cally and I had run our 6 of 12 (10.4mi) here in June 2021 so I felt I had a rough idea of what to expect. This was to be my third of four 50 milers in my attempted ‘grand slam’ of the Centurion Running 50’s.

The first two had gone pretty well and I’d used them as preparation for my third and finally successful attempt of the South Downs 100 miler (SWD100 2024). Following the SWD100 in June I’d let my fitness go quite considerably. Part of that was just recovering from the battering I’d taken which included bruised ribs and sprained wrist after 2 falls!! While Cally & I had maintained the streak in our two year daily run goal I allowed a lot more short running and often just walks to keep the streak going. Strava keeps a fitness graph which, while somewhat dodgy in its apparent methodology (it just gives you a huge bump when you do big runs, does provide a general sense of relative fitness levels.

The first half shows the two 50 milers and SDW100 with a steady decline into September punctuated by two half-marathon events and the beer run.

I’d started to pick things up a bit in September knowing the Autumn season held the final 2 50’s plus the Lisbon Marathon and Cape Town Trail Marathon. I’d also had Dan’s Beer Run (30mi/50km) the week before and so had some reasonable ‘time on feet’ going into CW50.

While I was pretty relaxed in the weeks leading into the event I’d also skipped my usual research and mental prep. I knew the lessons learned (the hard way) in my other 50’s and 100’s would stand me in good stead and I just leaned on that steeling myself:

1. for a tough day out and
2. believing that I would just cope with whatever comes my way.

This idea of coping with uncertainty and adversity is, I think, one of the key learnings of ultra running. Things go wrong but everything is temporary – both good and bad.

I had broken the race down into 5 x 10 mi sections. The first aid station was 10 miles in and I figured I’d take it as a nice long training run and then just repeat. There are 5 aid stations making it roughly 10miles between each one so this breakdown was logical and helped with the mental game of only focusing on the next smaller chunk. That was the plan.

The previous 2 50’s were completed in 10:10 (SDW50) and 10:14 (NDW50) and I had a rough ‘Plan A’ of trying to keep as close as possible to those times. I knew this was a stretch given my form but it was a good plan A. Plan B was just to finish. The cut-off was 13 hours, 1 hour more than the other two races, which indicated to me a tougher event.

I managed to keep a vague sense of each 10mile leg with the goal of 2 hours for each one. The maths can get tricky out on course as tiredness sets in but 5 x 10 legs is about as simple as it gets. The first stint was good and I came in bang on 2 hours. I also knew though that was billed the easiest leg so it would be unlikely that I could maintain this pace.

‘Easy’ is relative and the first 10, while pretty comfortable, would not be classed as easy. Plenty of up and down. I hoped I could hang on. The second leg proved to also be pretty steady and I was again happy with the split.

Based on some reading and YouTube videos I knew things would get tougher from around 25 miles and sure enough the hills became more pronounced. Things were starting to feel sore as they always do after 25 but energy and movement were still pretty good.

I use Tailwind pretty much exclusively for nutrition. I find that this gives me no stomach issues and keeps a steady flow of energy. Centurion provide Tailwind at aid stations which is great. However, its a fair bit weaker than the recommended level so I take sachets with me and add those to both flasks when topping up – I split one sachet between my two 500ml flasks. I found that 2 x 500ml covered me well for the spacing of the aid stations but I did have a spare in my pack in the event I found I needed more. I also tend to take a marmite sandwich at aid stations just for the joy of it and often have a cup of Coke or Squash just to vary mouth flavours.

Cally and Vix had popped up to say hi around 25 miles and then gain around 33 miles- always a brilliant boost to see them, they are such troopers!

As I got into the fourth leg after the aid station at 33 I started to revise plan B. Rather than just finishing but knowing that 10:15 ish was off I figured I would aim for sub-11. It was appealing to think that all 3 finish times would start with a ’10’.

Right, new plan. Being able to achieve this was still a bit foggy though and this is where the trail maths becomes a bit messy. I was behind in terms of each leg but I did not really know by how much and how hard I was supposed to push to beat 11 hours.

10 mile splits:

Then as my watch buzzed for 47 miles I noticed the time was 18:53. We had started at 08:30 which meant 11 hours would be a 19:30 finish. This left me 37 minutes to do 3 miles and I’d been told that this was mostly downhill, it was on!! I needed to keep each mile under 12min

Centurion always have a great finish atmosphere and here, in the village hall, were arrays of chairs with runners setting down for a well earned hot meal and cold or hot drink. I, however, had only 1 thing in mind – get back over the river to the hotel and a cold beer. This was followed by a nice hot shower and burger – perfect logistics!!!

The takeaway from this one was that my body is in good shape. I would not go so far as to say good form but I feel a bit more confident about the year end. I also know that the Wendover Woods 50, the final grand slam event in November, is going to be savage. For this one the cut off time is further extended to 15 hours. The 5 x 10 mile looping course has 10,000 ft of elevation (compared to 5,300 in CW50) – that’s a lot. The logistics of this one are event better with HQ and 1 aid station at 5miles you get to return to your drop bag each loop. This is offset though against November weather and many hours of night running with head torches. I plan to get in a bunch of hill and pole training to give myself a fighting chance if a reasonable finish.

Another interesting takeaway from the event was my position. I’ve always seen myself as mid to back of the pack runner and on this occasion I was almost perfectly middle or practically the ‘median’ to use a statistical term. I’ll take that!

Official finish Time: 10:51:31