Escape from Meriden

Pain, discomfort, hallucinations, tiredness and hunger. Am I selling this race to you yet?

It wasn’t all bad, honest.

It was an amazing experience and I learnt so much about myself.

So the concept of the race.

As a team (we were a 3, Laura, Sean and myself) we would be chained together and we had 36 hours to run/walk as far as we could. We came up with the team name ‘ A rose between 2 thorns’.

The start was in Meriden, the centre of England. The finish? Where ever we ended up. We had to plot our own route, hopefully as straight as possible. As the idea was to try and cross virtual lines of certain distances ‘as the crow flies’. The first was 30 miles, the second 60 miles, after that 130.

We targeted 60 miles, we could do that easily, …….surely. Couldn’t we?

On the afternoon of Friday 15th November, we set off traveling down by hire car to Birmingham Airport. A few hours later we were there.

Now just a short bus trip to the village. The first bus didn’t turn up, the second bus didn’t turn up. Well this was a good start. It was too cold to hang around. Taxi!

Time for some food, you could say the last supper. Some lovely food and a chill out in the pub before heading to the Church Hall to register for the race.

This was it, no going back now. Orange boiler suits on, chained up and tracker checked. There was an official tracking website where friends and family could follow our progress.

After chatting with fellow competitors, we made our way into the centre of the village to the cross marking the centre of England.

The countdown was on. On the stroke of midnight we were off.

Off into the darkness, the 3 of us bound together for the next 36 hours.

We used the first few hours to get used to moving down country lanes chained together and of course the tricky toilet stops.

We made good progress, checking our route at every junction and using bus stops for quick breaks.

As the sky started to turn brighter we had our first target, breakfast. Surely we would pass somewhere or enter a town where we could get something. The search was turning fruitless. We spotted a Co-op store in a village and hoped to get at least a warm drink. Closed, opens in 5 minutes, we waited. A fresh brew was a lovely pick me up.

A few more miles and still no brekkie. We were getting tired and hungry. Googling cafes and garden centres we found somewhere not far off our route. 10.30am and we were sitting down for breakfast. A dodgy looking garden centre where we felt we were intruding, and not the best food but we needed something.

It was so nice to kick our shoes off and get some air on them. But we had to set off again.

More and more miles. Hills and more hills. It was time to just dig in and grind it out.

We had an offer of support from a fellow running club member who has done ultras them self. He was going to bring his van down for shelter and a possible sleep. Plus personal supplies and food. We were starting to make plans to meet up.

Our next target was the first ‘As The Crow Flies’ distance of 30 miles.

As the sun started to set, we knew we were only a few miles from the virtual line.

A woman on a bike pulled up next to us and said she had been tracking us and thought she would come out to see us. We were a little taken aback but it was nice to have a chat with someone else who knew about the race.

We discussed our route and she told us about a path in the town we were going to take was closed for repairs.

We headed off on a new path and soon the virtual 30 mile line was close. We crossed over a motorway via a bridge and it seemed quite symbolic as we stepped off it into the park and achieved the 30 miles as the crow flies.

On the other side of the park was a pub and it seemed only right to celebrate our achievement with a pint.

Probably wasn’t the best idea to sit down but it was so nice. A comfy seat in the warm and a well earned drink.

Some people in the pub were asking about the challenge and even asked for a picture. It was like being a celebrity.

But no rest for the wicked or the chained. We moved on so we could meet up with our support crew.

It was great to see the van pull up and be greeted by a couple of friendly familiar faces.

Rodger is a experienced ultra runner and was happy to help us. The other crew member was Toby, Rodger’s dog. Well, sometimes all you need is a hairy hug and a face lick.

A cuppa and some food before a change of some of our clothes, always nice to have some fresh undies on.

We decided to try and get some sleep on the makeshift bed in the back on the van. Not sure about the others but I’d been struggling with tiredness. At times I’m sure I’d been plodding along with my eyes closed.

We set an alarm so we only got a couple of hours sleep, not that we thought we would though. Waking up about an hour and a half later I felt like I’d slept for 8 hours. I felt so refreshed and ready to go again.

Trainers on and we were off again. Oh, ahh, oh, ahh. It was hard to get the legs going again. But by the time we were out of the town and into the full darkness of the country lanes again, we were in full flow.

We decided to try and set a good pace and tick off some good miles while we felt good, as we knew we would tire later on anyway.

The hours pasted by and we were soon into Sunday. 24 hours done, just another 12 to go.

Our planned route was to stay on roads or footpaths but there was one section we would have to cross some fields to try and keep the route as straight as possible. We knew this section was coming up and we weren’t looking forward to it.

I mentioned we kept hallucinating and this was mainly at night. The darkness along with the lack of sleep played games with your mind. I kept seeing black cats, I don’t know why.

We had always kept checking our planned route but somehow we had missed a turn. We worked out we could get back on our original path by continuing on the road we were on, it wouldn’t add much unwanted distance to our total. The one saving grace we thought was that the section we missed was the part across the fields.

Not much later we met up with the support vehicle again and it nice to sit down and have a warm cuppa.

As we exited the village we were in, we soon realised we hadn’t missed the field section. A gravel bridlepath turned into a grass path and then mud or should I say ploughed field. We tried to pick a path through the muddy ruts and puddles but it was impossible. The path seemed to go on forever, field after field. It was good to finally get back onto solid road again.

The time and miles were starting to take their toll now. We were in the early hours of Sunday morning. Cold, tired and hungry and on the longest bypass road know to man! We brought our next planned support stop forward a bit and phoned to put an order in for a McDonald’s breakfast.

Sat in the van. Heater on full, cuppa tea in one hand and a bacon & egg muffin in the other. It was bliss. Even if I did have Toby the dog staring at me trying to get some of the muffin.

It was getting harder to start moving again but we set off. More and more miles ticked off, getting closer to our target.

It seemed to take along time for the sun to break through the mist and we were really starting to struggle now. Personally it felt like my body was giving up. I was in constant pain with my feet. My legs were stiffening up and I was questioning why I was still going. At one point I would’ve been happy to stop and just curl up on the grass verge and go to sleep.

We kept trying to encourage each other to keep going but it was getting harder.

We knew the next virtual ‘as the crow flies’ 60 miles line was getting closer though and we started to see signs for Newark, the town we were heading for.

We turned off the road onto a path which used to be the old railway line into the town. It was straight and flat but about 5 miles long.

The realisation that the end was, well not in sight but not too far away seemed to give us a big lift. The weather had been good for us but even as the rain started and got heavy, it didn’t seem to effect us. We were flying down the path, the fastest we had moved for hours.

Our next support stop was planned for the edge of the town at the end of the path. A final cuppa to get us to the finish.

We had one of our strangest hallucinations as we ran down the old railway line path. Both me and Sean saw what we both thought was a dog in the distance. Maybe it was Toby coming to see us with Rodger. But no one was in sight. As we got closer we realised it wasn’t Toby but I could see something moving and it was blue. Very strange. Sean agreed, it was blue and moving. As we got close, we saw what it was. A tuff of green grass in the middle of the path. Our minds really had gone.

A much needed final cuppa with Rodger at the end of the path before we heading off into town for the final few miles.

As the rain eased we checked our route again, as we weren’t entirely sure how to get through the town.

Sean’s phone had been vital. It had our route on it and we relied on it greatly. But it started to lose power and with the wet weather it was struggling to charge. Oh no, the panic set in.

My phone was running out of power too but I managed to plot a route on it. But it was struggling to power up off the charger too. We thought or more like hoped, the virtual 60 miles line was only a mile and a bit away but it wasn’t. The phone was saying 3.8 miles. It wasn’t what we wanted to see. Plus our expected arrived time was 11.30am. Too close to the noon finish time for us we felt. What if we took a wrong turn and ran out of time? Let’s go and get this done.

We saw more and more runners out for a Sunday morning run. They all looked fresh and bouncing along as we looked like the walking dead!

We got to the end of a road and there was a cycle path sign for where we were going but it was heading in the opposite direction to our map. We decided to take a chance as the cycle path looked straight and shorter when we saw it on the phone.

As the heavy rain started again we pushed on. The tracker on the planned route was recalculating all the time as we continued on the cycle path. The distance dropped from 3.2 miles down to 1.6, our little gamble paid off.

We passed right through the town and we heading out again on a country lane. We planned with Rodger and the support vehicle to meet us at the finish. But we still couldn’t see it. We must be close. We turned the corner and saw it. As we reached the van we asked if we had made it, had we crossed the virtual line? Our phones were now dead so we didn’t know.

A check on the official tracking website on Rodger’s phone and we got the answer we didn’t want to hear. We were still half a mile short. We continued on up the road. Stopping in a lay-by, we’d done it. Our dot (587) was over the 60 miles ‘as the crow flies’ line.

Finishing on the side of the road, in the rain, no cheering crowds, no medal or goodie bag, it did seem a bit of an anticlimax to what we had just achieved.

Were we bothered? No. We just wanted to get out of the rain and sit down. We were done. Physically and mentally.

I took my trainers off and my feet were steaming. I got changed out of my wet clothes and sat down to enjoy a can of Pepsi. My little treat at the finish to myself. With a bit of charge now in my phone, I went through the congratulations message from friends and family who had been tracking our little dot for the past 36 hours. It was so nice throughout the challenge to see messages of support and well done messages at the end.

The clock ticked over to 12 o’clock. That was it, challenge officially over.

We headed to a nearby pub for lunch and a celebration pint. We were meeting Laura’s husband and daughter there too as they were taking us home.

Sean put our activity on Strava to see the mileage we had actually covered. 80.1 miles covered to achieve the ‘as the crow flies’ 60 miles in 35 hours and 8 minutes.

A massive thank you has to go to Sean and Laura. We had many laughs throughout the weekend. And although there was times we struggled, our teamwork and support for each other helped pull us through.

It was an amazing achievement and one I’m very proud of. When I said I would do Escape From Merdian I didn’t think, well I knew, I didn’t fully understand how hard it would be.

Yes I knew my body would hurt but not to the extent of which it did. Painful blisters, cramping legs, back pain and battered feet.

The mental battles were massive too. The number of times I wanted to stop and go home or sleep were too many to count. But I don’t know what made me carry on. Determination? Stubbornness? I don’t know. I do know that I had to dig deep so many times and believe my previous battles with my mental health have help me with this.

It was the most bizarre but amazing challenge I’ve done. I never thought I’d do an ultra. But I said the same about doing a marathon. I certainly didn’t think I would do them only a few weeks apart.

I’ve taken many opportunities this year and had many amazing adventures along the way.

So what’s next? I don’t know. I’m certainly not ruling anything out.