Signing up for the Chiltern Way Ultra - 214km

I'm a glutton for punishment.

When I signed up for my first 60km ultra marathon I thought that I might one day try something really long and demanding.

I didn't expect less than a year later to be entering one of the toughest foot races in the UK.

I saw the Chiltern Way Ultra 214km advertised around February 2017 - less than a year after I ran my first 5km parkrun.

Something about it piqued my interest.

I read the reviews - they all said it was really hard.

I looked at the maps - they told me it was really long and hilly.

I thought about the training - and remembered that I was just about to have a baby.

I knew that trying to stick to a training schedule would be really tough with a newborn baby. I had to make sure I was really clever about training to maximise my chances of entering this race and realistically completing it.

So I set out a tough and demanding training schedule that fit around a baby and work.

Unfortunately a baby is very tough and demanding too. My 100km training weeks never happened - or my back-to-back long runs. In fact when August showed up I had very little base training to count on.

So I signed up anyway.