The early May bank holiday weekend saw Ellen Deighton, of Newport & District RC, making the trip down south and across the Solent to the Isle of Wight for the Ultra Challenge event. Participants were able to choose from a range of distances, with over 1,300 finishers across all the events, and Ellen chose to take on the full 106km (65 mile) route going round the whole island in one go.
Unusually for a British bank holiday, the sun was shining which made for a warm day out on the course. Runners started in Chale, on the southern coast of the island, and then set off in a clockwise direction, taking in the Needles headland before heading up the north coast. They then had to travel inland (to a less familiar Newport!) before getting back to the coast at Ryde and moving south towards Culver Down, and along the seafront through Sandown and Shanklin. The final checkpoint was in Ventnor (cruelly put down two flights of stairs, which wasn’t ideal at almost 60 miles into the race) before the final stretch back to Chale to cross the finish line.
The course was very hilly, and the terrain underfoot varied from coastal paths (including some diversions around land slips) to thick mud to long tarmac sections that felt brutal on tired feet, and from the halfway point each checkpoint saw runners having to withdraw from the event for various reasons. Ellen kept going through the night to finish in daylight again in a total time of 22 hours, 50 minutes & 7 seconds, and was thrilled to place in the top half of finishers overall, and in the top third of female participants.
Newport & District Running Club 