The Rotorua Running Festival on November 24th was a debut event from Event Promotions, and it provided a nice grassroots contrast with my only other previous 50k, the behemoth that is the Tarawera Ultramarathon. Where Tarawera had a multi-day expo and a stacked field of world-class athletes, the RRF had a quiet check-in in a hotel lobby. Where thousands ran in Tarawera, hundreds ran in the RRF.

I think there’s space for both kinds of events. I was certainly enchanted by the magical atmosphere at Tarawera, but as the organiser of a tiny grassroots event myself, I really loved the vibe at the RRF. It felt like what it was – a group of passionate events organisers hosting an event for a group of passionate athletes. Aside from some lucrative spot prizes from event sponsors, it all felt pretty lowkey.

Nonetheless, the race had been at the forefront of my mind for a few months. Having struggled with the ultra distances for years I knew that it had the potential to be a real game-changer for me, if only I nailed my training and ran to the best of my ability.

This is my ‘boy scout’ look.

After weeks of niggles and ‘maybes’ I elected to bite the bullet and set myself a challenge, running or cycling up Mount Eden every day in October. This turned out to be one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in terms of my running, and I showed up to the start line of the Rotorua Running Festival 50k fairly confident that things would go well.

I had done some back-of-the-envelope calculations of potential splits, and came out with a time of 5:18 which seemed, to me, too ambitious, given my last 50k time. Admittedly this race had a less vert, but it still felt too fast. I decided to adopt sub-5:30 as an A goal, sub-6 hours as a B-goal, and just a strong finish as my C-goal.

Kit

The Race

The day before the race; this swan was definitely trying to communicate the seriousness of the situation.

The race started with around 3 kilometres of road through the centre of Rotorua and out towards the trails. It was flat, easy running, and I elected to take it nice and gentle at around a 5:30/km pace. I let several runners pass me and kept myself on the leash, reminding myself just how far we had to go.

When we hit the 5km mark, I glanced down at my watch, and I was pleased to find my pacing was pretty much bang-on. I felt calm and collected and like I could run all day, although I had stopped to pee once which definitely annoyed me more than it should have.

The race had aid stations pretty much every 5km, so I elected to run the first 10km with only half a bottle full of water in my pack. At the second aid station, I filled up my other bottle, which had a Nuun tab already pre-loaded. From there on, I pretty much alternated between my two bottles, popping a Nuun tab in each in between aid stations, so that I was only ever running with a maximum of 1 litre of water on me. This definitely helped conserve energy and I never felt like I was running with much weighing me down.

We arrived at the first moderate climb, and I decided to run it rather than walk, and see how my legs felt. They felt fantastic. I passed one or two runners who were huffing and puffing, but I still felt like I was running easy. All those hours spent hauling myself up Mount Eden were paying off, it seemed.

This proved to be an emerging theme throughout the day – I would run in a pack on the flats, and then quietly but confidently leave my newfound comrades behind on each climb. I was never running hard, but my climbing legs just seemed to hold out where other people were fading. I was working, but it felt manageable.

We’ll call it carbo-loading, sure.

At around the halfway point, I remember glancing at my watch and seeing the time – 2:20. I was 25 minutes ahead of my A-goal schedule, despite having stopped to pee twice and having to take a shoe off at one point after getting a stone in it. And I felt fine. I felt better than fine – I felt great.

Until I didn’t.

Coming out of the blue lake aid station, my stomach started playing up. I think it probably had something to do with the rate at which I was ingesting Nuun tabs – in training, I never had more than one every hour and a half, but I was getting through more than one an hour and they were fizzing up in my stomach. Weirdly, my gut calmed down on each climb, but on the flats and downhills I had to adopt a pretty full-on burping strategy to ensure that it never bubbled over into a disaster. I was able to maintain a decent pace nonetheless.

On the longest and last major climb at around the 32k mark, I passed four or five runners, and arrived at the aid station at the top of the hill pretty pleased with how it had gone. The folks at the aid station looked excited for me, and as they filled up my water bottle I was informed that two guys were just ahead of me, and I was looking stronger than both of them.

I’m not sure how my maths worked out, but in the moment I interpreted that as, “You’re in third place, and you’re looking the strongest.” Had I done some reflecting, I would’ve realised that this was impossible – I had passed maybe six or seven runners in the past 20k, but there were many more who had shot out of sight in the early stages of the race.

Still, it proved to be fuel to my fire, and I finally felt safe to push a little bit as I entered the last third of the race. The next five kilometres were a long steady downhill on a dusty gravel road, and I let myself roll down them at a decent kick. I had never felt this good late in a race. Even the passing buses ferrying mountain bikers to the top and kicking dust up in my face couldn’t dissuade me.

The race soon rejoined the route taken by the half marathon runners, and I found myself suddenly sharing the trail after spending the previous few hours more or less alone. I spotted a lone ultra runner up ahead and clocked that he was one of the guys I had been chasing; I surged a bit, but then realised we still had around 12 kilometres to go, and if I pushed now I ran the risk of blowing up. It was getting seriously hot, and the last few kilometres of the race I knew to be very exposed.

Instead, I hung on his tail, literally running 3 or 4 feet behind him for a good 5 or 10 minutes. I’m not sure he knew I was there, as there were so many half marathon runners about. Eventually, as we hit another small incline, he slowed and I elected to play some mind games, pushing a little bit up the hill and trying to look as strong as possible. In hindsight, I don’t think he was interested in racing, but the encounter certainly pushed me to run faster than I would have. I rolled through the marathon point in just under 4 hours.

The last few kilometres took a similar winding route through the smelly Rotorua geyser fields as the Tarawera 50k, and I kept reminding myself that this seemingly inconspicuous section was in fact likely to be longer than it looked on the map. I wasn’t wrong – it felt like it was just going on and on. I had to keep reminding myself to sip my electrolytes despite my stomach continuing to protest, as I didn’t want to bonk or suddenly hit a wall.

Eventually, after countless twists and turns, I rounded a corner and saw a fellow 50k runner clad dressed as a $100 bill cheering me on from the sidelines. He had clearly finished a while before, and in that moment I realised I wasn’t as near the top as I had thought. His support helped, though, and I sprinted the final few hundred metres and crossed the finish line in 4:38:28, a full 40 minutes faster than the 5:18 I had previously believed to be overly ambitious. I was 13th overall, 12th man, and 6th in my age group.

My partner Emily smashing the half-marathon finish.

In a strange kind of way, it felt like an anti-climax. I think that’s because I had come to associate ultramarathons with ‘intense hardship’ and ’emotional rawness’. Sure, it had been hard, and in the last few kilometres I definitely found myself swearing I would never do this again (Ha!), but it wasn’t the sufferfest I had prepared myself for. I had run 50 kilometres without stopping to walk once. Admittedly, the race was universally described by all those I spoke to as being not as hilly as advertised – but I had nonetheless run a full 16km further and with 200m more climbing than my longest training run, half an hour faster.

I learnt a great deal from this race. I learnt that I truly do have the potential to run ultras, and to run them at a half-decent pace. If I put the training in, I am confident I can run smaller races like the RRF50k at a competitive level.

The winner, Carl Read, ran the astonishing time of 3:30:46, and was in the M35-44 age category. As a 26-year-old, I’m still a complete newbie to this sport, and I’m excited to see where my legs will take me, now that I have finally nailed an ultramarathon.

Official results

Strava activity