Why running an ultramarathon is really quite relaxing

Running 28 miles of George Fisher's Tea Round in the Lake District

Jul 04, 2024

I spent five days in June co-hosting a retreat in the Yorkshire Dales that was all about pausing. We did yoga and had long lunches together. We went for cold water dips and I took some of the guests out on their first ever trail runs. We had a book club in front of the fire and spent evenings outside, drinking hot chocolate and laughing about everything and nothing. I honestly can’t remember the last time I laughed that much. There is something special, I think, about a group of complete strangers who would never normally cross paths, spending a whole week cry-laughing together.

I felt like a bit of a hypocrite though, at first, extolling the virtues of pausing when I haven’t really done any lately. The past few months have been busy, working back-to-back on events all over the world. That’s been exciting in a lot of ways obviously (I still find it so wild that I got to spend nearly three months exploring America and somebody else paid for the flights), but also hasn’t afforded a lot of balance.

Somebody made a comment about my ‘charmed life’ the other day on Instagram and although I don’t disagree, maybe I could do a better job at showing all the long days in windowless conference centres and travelling up and down the M6 and trying to sleep in a middle plane seat while the woman next to me touches my leg with her bare feet (really!) and worrying about my carbon footprint and never being quite sure what’s happening next and being a flakey friend. On Monday, I spent all morning fighting that horrible clawing feeling of anxiety in my chest - which had reared its head seemingly for no reason - then ran 19 miles through stinging nettles before travelling to Spalding (hello, old friend) to stay in a Travelodge. But how do you sound like you aren’t complaining? These aren’t even bad things (I chose my life, and I feel grateful for it) but maybe they’re a bit less ‘charmed’ than the always-up-a-mountain highlights I tend to show? Striking the balance between honesty/moaning/bragging is one I never feel like I get quite right.

That week I spent at the retreat was quite charmed though. Probably anybody who follows me on Instagram is bored of seeing smug stories about it. Chef Millie cooked us three amazing meals a day (my fruit and veg intake multiplied tenfold after a rather beige few months in America), the guests were the best group of women I could hope to spend a week with and the sun shone almost the entire time, with the forecast weather warnings never transpiring.

I realised, too, that for me pausing perhaps isn’t about sitting still, and it’s instead about doing the activities which make my not-always-happy brain be quiet for a bit. You go for a really long run and you’re busy concentrating on not falling off a ridge and making sure you aren’t lost and eating enough snacks and wondering how much water you have left and feeling the burn in your legs as you climb up yet another hill and deciding whether you should put on an extra layer now or wait a bit. That takes up a lot of thinking power and there isn’t a lot of room left to worry about, for instance, if you’re honest enough on Instagram. Jeez, in black and white that sounds like an absolutely mad thing to spend your one precious life worrying about.

So if I think about pausing in terms of that definition, as a rest for your brain from all your everyday worries rather than physically sitting still, then it made perfect sense to leave the retreat on Friday and run 28 miles on Saturday.

With the aim of doing some training for CCC, I had a weekend of running in the Lake District planned with Sophie (good friend/infinitely better runner than me). She took the train from London, I picked her up in Penrith and we headed to Keswick where we hoped a campsite would have room for us. We ate Mexican food and bought a lot of snacks and set early alarms for the next morning. Saturday came and we stirred Jetboiled water into the world’s best porridge pots (10/10 recommend, absolutely delicious, please sponsor me Wolfys), made coffee, loaded up our packs and eventually set off an hour later than planned. Why does everything take so long when you’re camping?

The plan was to attempt George Fisher’s Tea Round, a 30 mile route that takes in all the fell tops you can see from the cafe window above the George Fisher Shop. It’s also sometimes called Abraham’s Tea Round. I thought that this was because Sophie had downloaded the route from a random man called Abraham on Strava but it turns out it’s because the cafe is called Abraham’s. It’s a big day out with more than 3,500m/12,000ft of elevation gain and it’s kind of a mad route. As it’s dictated by the peaks you can visibly see from George Fisher, you go out of your way to visit some fairly obscure spots (I’m looking at you, Rowling End) while bypassing some more major summits. I sort of love the absolute pointlessness of this. Once again: what a ludicrous hobby.

I had some apprehensions about my ability to complete the full round. I’d taken a fall earlier in the week after skidding through a gravelly puddle while descending from Helvellyn and my legs were still feeling pretty bashed up. I also just feel constantly terrified right now of getting injured/overdoing it and hindering my ability to continue churning through the CCC training. So much of ultrarunning is a mental game and, safe to say, I had a seed of doubt firmly planted when we set off that day. I told Sophie I’d just be happy to do 25 miles (there were a few escape points) and have my legs feel good enough to move again the next day. I should add that Sophie’s nickname is ‘The McKeeman Regime’ after her unwavering ability to stick to a plan, and she is resolutely not a quitter. Opposites attract, I suppose.

The cloud lifted as we ran through Keswick and we stopped for a wee in the woods before heading up Catbells, our first climb of the day. I ate a Babybel and got my poles out. Somebody asked us ‘tea round?’ at the summit, and we soon realised there were a lot of other people out attempting the same thing. There was a nice cruisey descent before scrambling up Robinson, then a steep slippery downhill towards Buttermere. Here is where - in what will be a totally unsurprising turn of events if you’ve ever been for a run with me - I rolled an ankle and ended on the floor.

The skill of a serial ankle roller is becoming attuned to the seriousness of it quite quickly, I think. This one was middling: hurt quite a bit at the time, not an immediate bounce back, but didn’t feel like anything major and hadn’t swelled up like a balloon. I gingerly continued down to Buttermere, with a few tea-rounders overtaking our snail’s pace, and announced to Soph that I was going to skip the loop that took you to the western side of Buttermere and up High Stile, and head into the village to regroup instead.

Did my ankle hurt? Yes. Was I also just not fully committed to the whole 30 miles anyway? Probably. Does any of this really matter in the grand scheme of anything? Absolutely not.

Soph continued on, with the plan being that she’d find me at some point, while I shaved four miles off by skirting around the lake and went for an ice cream at Syke Farm Cafe. One scoop of passion fruit (homemade, delicious, strongly recommend to any tea-rounders), a packet of salt and vinegar crisps, a cold can of Coke and a check of the bus times later, I figured I may as well carry on. My ankle hurt to run but was fine to walk and I knew I was probably just being a bit of a wimp. It wasn’t even 11.30am yet, we were 11 miles in and there was an easier route I could take back to Keswick if I wanted. Plus, the bus takes ages.

Heading up Whiteless Pike, there were fell runners absolutely flying down at what looked like the tale end of a race. I crested the hill and started tentatively jogging down, realising that my ankle didn’t really hurt anymore. Is eating an ice cream and then stretching it out over a 700m climb a scientific cure for a mild ankle twist? Probably not, but it seemed to have worked. Or maybe my head was just back in the game.

There was an out and back up Grisedale Pike and it was coming back down from there that Sophie found me again. I’d just decided that actually this was quite a fun day out and maybe I should carry on with the intended loop, rather than take the alternative Accessible Trail back into Keswick. We decided that Soph would tick off Grisedale while I slowly continued (eating more Babybels), and she could catch me up again a little further on.

She reappeared just after the summit of Sail - 18 miles down for me (23 for Sophie) and about 10 to go back to the campsite. What followed was a trip to the top of an entirely underwhelming lump (Rowling End) and then a surprise 320m climb up Barrow, when we thought we’d already done all the ascent for the day. After this it was an easy 5km mostly on the road back into Keswick (“just a parkrun to go”) where we had a photo outside the George Fisher store and found a table outside the nearest pub. We ordered an elite buffet of chips, Coke, Appletiser and beers before completing the last mile of our personal round back to the campsite.

Things quickly took a turn for the worst when our reluctance to walk any distance led to us having truly the most bizarre dinner of our lives. It was bad in a so-awful-it’s-funny way so maybe it was worth it for the laughs but my advice would be: don’t eat at The Heights Hotel and make sure you only order bottled beer.

My day finished on 28 miles and 2,880m of elevation (I’m surely not the only British person using a weird cocktail of miles and metres?) which I don’t feel unhappy about. That night I achieved the sort of deep sleep that’s only possible on a slow-puncture air mattress after you’ve spent the best part of 12 hours outside with one of your best friends, thinking about nothing but ‘does my ankle hurt?’, ‘should I get another scoop of ice cream?’ and ‘I wonder how long ago they built this perfect switchback trail?’.

While I’m probably bothered enough about not having finished the round that I’ll go back and complete it at some point, it felt like I’d made the right call when my legs were still functioning the next day and we managed to get out and do Blencathra via Sharp Edge in the sunshine. Even if I did fall over again and have to have an ice bath in Scales Tarn.

Note to self: do some ankle strengthening over the next eight weeks.

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