Most people will never run a marathon. It is after all a really, really long way. For many runners a full 26.2 mile race is the pinnacle of their running career, only achieved after months of dedicated training and immense personal sacrifice. For non-runners a marathon is a feat almost beyond comprehension. So if you have run one, you can feel pretty special. And yet... Sooner or later most marathon runners are going to bump into someone else who's run one. Maybe one of the ones who ran it faster than they did, or ran it dressed as a toilet or carrying a full Bergen. Not so special now, huh? It was this special-but-not-that-special status that led me to sign up for my first ultramarathon. Training for an ultra is really no different to training for a marathon. As usual when preparing for a long-distance race I tried to fit in three to four midweek runs, including a speed session, a 45 minute tempo run and of course the essential long Sunday run. And as usual, I fell woefully short of the schedule. On race day I woke at 6am to a diamond bright October morning and a cloudless blue sky. I dressed, ate a bowl of porridge topped with a sliced banana, threw down an espresso and headed out the door. At the start in Hyde Park I had the honour of being admitted to the ultra-runners' marquee with unfettered access to all manner of energy gels, drinks, the ubiquitous bananas as well as, worryingly, catering size tubs of Vaseline. And then we were off. The first 3 miles were stunning, as we ran along the south bank of the Thames, past Shakespeare's Globe, The London Eye and under Westminster Bridge. The first sign that we weren't all going to make it to the finish line came in Battersea Park. At just 8 miles in I saw the first runner call it a day. Whether she'd picked up an injury, hadn't put it the miles in training or was just beaten by the sheer magnitude of the task I can't say. As I trotted past the exhausted young women, one hand bracing herself against the sturdy trunk of a London plane tree, the other clamping a phone to her ear, I caught the main thrust of the conversation in between long gasps for air: “Dad, can you come and pick me up; there's just no way on earth I'm gonna be able to run that far. It's fucking ludicrous!” From mile 13 to mile 20 we were off the grid and into the woods. By this stage in the race each support station saw a growing number of runners who were clearly struggling. I wasn't at all sure that a few miles down the road it wasn't going to be me slumped by a table piled high with bananas and Gatorade, white drool leaking out of the side of my mouth. Things were getting serious. For most runners, somewhere around mile 18 you begin to run out of… well, pretty much everything. Energy stores are depleted, the excitement and novelty of the whole event that sustained you through the first few hours has drained away and the voice in your head that keeps telling you how nice it would be just to stop running gets louder. It's a sudden awareness that your body is simply not built for this kind of abuse, as your feet begin to throb and your hip joints feel the effects of relentlessly grinding together, hour after hour. From here on in it was going to be about pain management. That and whatever psychological ploys I could use to trick my body into ignoring all the bad shit that was happening to it. I tried counting my steps, hoping I could descend into some zen-like state of numbed mental absence. I tried tying up all conscious thought with calculation of miles into kilometres, steps into miles, average miles per hour and so on. I forced myself to recall poems once learned by rote and long since forgotten and the track listing of every Bowie album I'd ever owned. Nothing worked for long. Every part of me hurt. A measure of relief came as I ran through the 42.5km route marker; the banner stretched high above me read: Congratulations. You are now officially an ultra runner! So there it was, a marathon down, just five miles to go. When I hit the next support station I knew I was going to need assistance that went beyond a banana and a pint of Lucozade. The most pressing of the various bodily traumas I was suffering had shifted from my lower half to my upper half. There was blood and it appeared to be coming from my nipples; never a phrase you want to hear. Crossing the finish line was emotional. I can't say I cried exactly, but I certainly felt a powerful rush of emotions. I assume there is a hormonal release of some kind that triggers feelings which are hard to describe and don't seem to reflect any clear psychological gestalt. There was joy, relief, sadness, plus some inexplicable localised tingling. It was neither especially pleasant but nor was it really unpleasant. The best I can say is that it was wholly unlike anything else I'd experienced and was distinctly weird. Mostly I just felt exhausted. Go and run an ultra; you'll see what I mean.