The Maverick Race: Peak District Ultra. A 70 km ultra-marathon on a technical course with moderate vertical height gain throughout. This was my longest ultra to date, the last one I ran being less than 60 km, so it was going to be a challenge.
As it turned out, the race wasn’t the only challenge I faced, in face, the whole weekend was an ordeal. I left work early on the Friday, so I’d get to the pre booked campsite for 6 for an early night of eating pasta and a cosy night in my van. Sadly, this wasn’t to be. As I was travelling North on the M5 having just cleared Gloucester, a warning light lit up on the dashboard and my van lost all power. I safely got into the hard shoulder and called the RAC. After a 2hr30min wait along came the late recovery wizard from the RAC.

After plugging in the diagnostic tool, the fault identified was a failed injector. Unfortunately, this was not fixable on the side of the road I was towed back to a garage in Gloucester.
Thankfully, I discovered that I had onward journey cover (thank you past Dicken) and managed to get a hire car 5 mins before they closed. If I had failed to get a replacement vehicle I would have been stuck in Gloucester. Armed with a Vauxhall Astra Turbo, I had to get back on the road to the Peak District, 5 hours after I originally left.
Next issue, now I am going to have to sleep in an Astra before running an ultra… Oh s**t… Thankfully I have some epic friends, one of whom helped me so much and booked me a hostel for me whilst I drove up. This was the journey and all before I embarked on the longest race I have ever entered. What an ordeal. So not enough sleep and my intended pre carb loading wasn’t to be.
Saturday came quickly. I had made it to the start line.

Now I needed to focus on the race. The first 42 km marathon distance passed quickly and were enjoyable. The hills were tough and the decent were leg crushing but I was feeling good.


I was keeping up with my nutrition plan was working well so I had plenty of energy. I enjoyed the first sections and then through a long, relatively flat segment I chatted with other runners along the way.

Trail runners are often in a good mood doing what they love and so there is lots of good chat to be had along the way. Part of the reason why I love it so much.
I reached around 55 km and oh boy, did the pain hit in. There was a section on a single track that weaved up and down undulating hills which made keeping a steady pace very difficult. I started to slow and the infamous “wall”. My party trick in these circumstances is to pull out a SIS Double Espresso Gel. I try not to have too many gels during a race as they can give me indigestion while running but these ones can be a real get out of jail free card.

The final 10 km had a set of difficult ascents and descents stacked tightly together.


When approaching the start of a climb, I came across a Spanish runner who I had been chatting with earlier. He was in a bad way and had been sick. I stopped to share my water and offer food. The declined the food but accepted the water and then insisted that I press on. After questioning this he shouted for me to continue, so I did.
As I reach the top of the final hill, I could see the end in sight. I could still make my target. I pushed on, trying to ignore the tightness of my legs and the fatigue so I could to finish the 70km run in sub 10hr.

I finished in9hr51min. I was elated to have overcome all the difficulties along my journey and to still achieve my sub 10-hour goal. My feet were rather unpleasant, I had rubbed through various bits of skin. As I sat basking in the sunshine, the Spanish runner can staggering across the finish line. We embraced and celebrated our achievements. I was very glad to see he had made it.

After I was very stiff, with a few new blisters and tight muscles in areas I did not know existed, but I had, and still have one monumental sense of achievement after what has been an epic weekend and a great Maverick Race.
