Published: 18th September 2025
It’s taken me a while to get around to writing this one. Endure24 was at the start of June, and it’s now mid-September… A few weeks before Endure, I was feeling in the best shape of my life. After the SDW50 race, Bornholm, then the Copenhagen marathon, and with how well they went, I had thought 100 miles wasn’t completely out of the question. I was certainly in some shape to go further than the 15 laps I completed last year…I was excited to see all the training come together. But just over a week before the race, I took a positive pregnancy test. It wasn’t a complete surprise, it was wanted, but we weren’t expecting it quite so fast. I thought I was likely to get one more good race out of the year… And so disappeared the hopes of running 100 miles, and started the frantic internet searches. Something along the lines of “can you run an ultra marathon pregnant?”, and “is it safe to run for 24-hours whilst pregnant?”. The answer: the internet doesn’t really know… The guidance on running whilst pregnant is to not do anything unfamiliar. If you’ve never run a marathon before, running one whilst pregnant probably isn’t the smartest idea. I wanted to be able to actually put some distance in on race day, or people would become suspicious. Either that or I’d have to fake an injury. I wanted to know going into the race, where should I set my limit? The conclusion I came to, (and this is by no means true for everyone, nor is it any sort of medical advice) was that I would set my limit as 80km, which is a distance I had recently run but with more than 2x the time available at Endure24 (compared to the 11 hours it took in April). I would keep on top of my hydration and nutrition, stopping regularly to rest, eat, and take stock of how I was feeling. I would stop at any sign of discomfort, and keep my heart rate in the endurance zone. Basically, I wasn’t going to push myself hard at all.
When the race weekend came around, my legs felt incredible. I felt cruisy, my fitness was good, and the temptation was there to forget my limit I’d set and just keep going whilst I felt good. I completed 8 laps before midnight, tackled in blocks with a meal between, and I felt I could comfortably keep going at the points but decided to listen to my previous logic, and save myself from any heartbreak or harm, and go to bed. It was an incredibly wet weekend, and actually once I was in my sleeping bag, I wasn’t sad of my decision. A note on the weather here – we had a little rain the first year we were there, in 2022, but the previous 2 years had been pretty warm and very dry. The rain this year was a lot, and with the very high footfall, the course was turned into a quagmire. It was slippery and disgusting. Trail shoes were not really optional, you needed the grip to deal with the inclines.
When morning came, I was cozy and dry and tempted to call it quits right then. But I also awoke hungry. Really hungry. The sort of hungry where my stomach feels like it’s digesting itself and turning inside-out. So I crept out in urgent search of a bacon sandwich. Bacon acquired, I headed out for lap 9, followed by lap 10, at which point I reluctantly called it quits. And so began the questions about why I wasn’t trying very hard… and the taunts (mainly from James). I brushed it off, saying the wet weather meant I wasn’t really “feeling it” this year, and that I’d already accomplished my ultra goals and had nothing to prove. In honesty, it killed me to lie like that. I would have been completely up for grinding myself into the mud and wringing every last bit of endurance from my legs in a quest to see how far I could go that year. But I wasn’t willing to risk putting my body through that amount of stress and possible miscarriage (the internet was quite sure that a really high level of stress is not good); I wouldn’t be selfish. Alex and I are a team, and we agreed to make sacrifices. Running isn’t everything (although it is worth a lot).
After the race, I buried my disappointments, and didn’t want to talk about Endure. But a few months on, with the first trimester firmly behind me, and some km’s once again in my legs (albeit far fewer than earlier in the year), I can reflect on how the race went. It was fine, I’m pleased I did it, but I absolutely have unfinished business. June 2026 might be too soon to tackle the 100 miles in 24 hours, but I’m certainly not removing it from my running goals. The quest continues… but for now, I’m firmly in the depths of the pregnant runner chapter. TBC…
Distinctly Average Ultra Runner 