‘You don’t get many opportunities to live a day, or a day and a bit, like you do during a 100-miler’
How Joe Thomas went from casual runner to 100-mile hero in months - and raised £12k to combat cancer
How do you go from casual runner to 100-mile ultra marathoner in just a few months?
Inspired by a mixture of the desire to raise money for charity after his dad contracted cancer and to emulate the extreme feats of athletes like David Goggins, Joe Thomas decided to find out.
And on August 5, he succeeded by finishing the 103-mile North Downs Way 100 – a race which features a gruelling 11,000 feet of ascent – in 27 hours and 55 minutes.
Along the way, Joe battled everything from injuries to his own naivety, discovered a love for eating his way through long runs and raised more than £12,000.
His incredible journey finished with one of “the best moments ever” as he was greeted by his friends and family on completing the achievement of a lifetime.
That wonderful moment was a long way away from an horrendous year which prompted Joe to ‘do something big’.
Following the deaths of two of his grandparents in January and April 2022, Joe’s father Pete was diagnosed with Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS) – a rare form of blood cancer – last August.
He told the Running Tales Podcast: “Our family was suffering and you get to the point where you think, ‘what are we going to do about things?’
“Whether you like it or not, when you have a disease like that in the family you become part of a community and we became part of the MDS UK community, and I thought what’s a way we can contribute and what statement can we make?”
If Joe’s family circumstances prompted his leap into long-distance running, it is also true to say the exploits of the likes of retired United States Navy SEAL Goggins, whose achievements include finishing third at the Badwater 135 in Death Valley, were a major factor in his decision.
Joe had been listening to the ultra runners’ audiobook when he signed-up to the North Downs Way 100 in December.
“It’s probably the same reason all of us sign up to do these runs,” he said. “There’s something inside of you saying, ‘hey, what if I did this, could I do it?’
“It’s about potential and putting yourself out of your comfort zone.
“I spend a lot of time sat beside a desk. There is an excitement of putting yourself out there in a completely different environment where you want to push yourself.”
Incredibly, running had been a fairly minor part of Joe’s life with a few 5km races in 2018 the height of his previous competitive feats.
Even when he decided to take on the ultra distance, he had not been doing much running beyond helping a friend lose weight and prepare for a New Year’s Eve 10km.
“We started doing five minutes one Sunday and that built up to him doing a 10k run,” he said.
“I was watching my best friend transform himself due to running - and he really didn’t like it.
“When you spend every week with someone who is forcing themselves to do something they don’t want to do, it scratches your mind and you say ‘what’s my equivalent of that. I’m running within myself so what’s going to put me in a zone which says this is a challenge? What’s my equivalent of running 10k on New Year’s Eve?’
“And apparently it was 100 miles.”
Joe said he was particularly attracted by the mental challenge of running such an extreme distance: “No-one needs to run 100 miles but what kind of person can you be mentally if you can do more than just endure 100 miles?
“It’s not just about suffering, it’s how you suffer and framing yourself mentally to endure the right way so you want to keep coming back.”
The first mental – and physical – challenge Joe had to face came when he realised it was not possible to simply run a 100-mile race.
Checking the terms and conditions for the North Downs Way 100, he discovered he needed to complete a 50-mile event before he could take part. Undaunted, he quickly found one – only to find he had to tick off the marathon distance before he would be allowed to enter.
“I had to run a marathon on February 12, then a 50-miler on May 20 just to qualify me for the 100 on August 5,” he said. “In a weird way that defined the training.”
Fortunately, Joe was to make one of his best decisions soon afterwards when he hired personal trainer, Olly McCarthy, whose expertise is focused on running.
He said: “Olly was able to take out a lot of the guesswork, from a completely novice mindset of asking what kind of training do I have to be doing to all the noise around things like Googling ‘how do you do an ultra’ and getting 200 different answers.
“It was great to just have one piece of advice I could rely on.”
But despite this expert advice, Joe still manage to stumble into some of the more common pitfalls often encountered by new runners, including over-training and running too fast.
“Initially I did what everyone does,” he said, “which is run loads, ignore the pain and then get injured.
“I picked up a knee overuse injury in the first five weeks and didn’t walk for three or four weeks. But I showed up on February 12 and basically ran a marathon straight off the bat.”
As it turned out, Joe did more than simply get round the course. After adopting a ‘10k at a time’ strategy, he found himself crossing the line before he knew it – and in a sub-four hour time.
That success saw him turn his attention to tackling the 50-mile distance, with his training runs increasing in length and taking in trail routes.
“I didn’t really learn my lesson and thought it would be a good idea to run through a bit of calf pain for 30k,” he said.
“I tore my calf and had some ankle ligament damage. It was about five weeks before the 50. Again, I didn’t run after that except for one 25-minute run.
“I turned up thinking I would do 10k and ended up completing the thing.”
Also on Running Tales:
Long, slow runs and bike work followed as he started to think about how he would get through the 100-mile race.
“In my head I was almost playing this mind game with myself where I was just trying to stay ahead of some of the thoughts that say this is hurting or my knee doesn’t feel right or I’m getting tired now.
“I was constantly playing this game of what is a better question to ask myself and why do I want to keep going.
“There were moments where a run was great from the start, but sometimes it would be a slog and it would take me three-and-half-hours to crack the code of ‘this is it, I’m here now and I want to stay in the game’.
“It was about realising that the process of a long run is not linear, that it’s not going to get worse and worse. Realising this is going to come in waves and finding this mental gear. That I loved.”
Another thing Joe discovered was the benefits of walking when covering huge distances.
“When I turned up to the 50 miler, I hadn’t really done what typical ultra marathoners do,” he said. “I was running and then people just started walking up hills. I’d obviously heard about this and thought, ‘yeah, this is how it works’.
“That changed a lot of what I was doing. It was still a lot of running, but on steeper hills I was building in hiking and walking. That’s where you can haemorrhage times on those longer distances. If you walk at a normal pace you can really lose a lot of time, but if you can keep the pressure on and keep hiking, that’s going to keep you in the game over the course of 50 or 100 miles.”
If factoring in walking was a bonus, the introduction of food while out on a run was a whole new ball game.
“The food is the best part of an ultra,” Joe said. “You can eat whatever you like. I’ve got a big sweet tooth, but I’ve had to suppress it to avoid weight gain so it was a real pleasure to indulge that.
“The aid stations on the 50 or 100 were just full of sweets. My personal trainer said before the 100 that it was just as much an eating challenge as a running one.
“He said, ‘that is literally your fuel, you are going to burn 1,000s upon 1,000s upon 1,000s of calories, you need to be eating’.
“I went in thinking what if I’m not hungry anymore, but that never went away. I just kept eating and eating and eating - it was brilliant.”
As Joe approached the day of the North Downs Way 100, he flirted once more with injury – badly hurting a toe while learning to surf. As it began to swell up and turn purple, he wondered if the whole adventure had been scuppered.
Fortunately, as the race got closer and closer, the injury cleared up and he was increasingly inspired by the generosity of people donating large sums of money to his fundraising cause.
“I’m so grateful for all the people who have donated,” he said. “Possibly everyone I’ve ever met personally and professionally knew I was doing this, so that added a layer of pressure.
“I was thinking, ‘I know I’m going to give this a shot but what if I twist an ankle after mile one, and only make it two miles - how embarrassing would that be.’
“You have all these thoughts and no idea how your body is going to break down as you are going twice as far as you have gone before.
“But the overriding sense is you don’t get many opportunities to live a day, or a day and a bit, like you would with 100 miles. That was really exciting. It was a day I was really looking forward to, and one I’ve missed now it has gone off the calendar.”
When that big day finally arrived, it came complete with fierce conditions, courtesy of Storm Antoni. It was a shock to Joe, who stung by a hard training run in the heat of Italy had been training by running in extra clothing and taking saunas in case of more hot weather.
But his training, both physical and mental, came to the fore.
“You know at some point you are going to start breaking down physically and the distance is going to become enormous,” he said.
“I did a lot of thinking about what was going to come up mentally and how I was going to handle it. I knew when I started to feel tired what I had to be thinking about.
“The hardest point is knowing you have so far to go and at any moment something could blow up. If your quads start hurting, you are thinking is this going to get me? My ankle is hurting, is that going to get me?
“But you’ve done enough runs to know your ankle has hurt before and it goes away.”
As well as using the own techniques to get through the tough moments, Joe was boosted by the help of his friends who took on the role of pacers in the second half of the event.
“They had never run on trails before, they had zero experience but you don’t need trail runners, you need people who know you well enough in your tough moments, to know when to be quiet, when to push you, when to pull something out of you that you don’t know is there. That’s exactly what they did.
“You just have to find a better quality of thought. Fortunately, I had so many going in. I had my dad to think about and the people supporting me.
“And I’d also had this crazy year where I spent 30 to 40% of it injured. I was thinking, ‘I have no right to be here, I could have been injured for any one of those races but I’m still out here, I have a chance and as long as I put one foot in front of the other I can give this a go - and just imagine if I pulled it off’.”
As he got closer to completing the incredible, the almost impossible, Joe‘s thoughts increasingly turned to his dad whose cancer diagnosis was so pivotal to the whole run.
“I was thinking about that moment of seeing my dad at the finish line a lot throughout the race.
“I was tearing up with about 15 miles to go, thinking about what it was going to be like to see my dad and give him that hug.
“Then I got to the finish line and everyone was so happy I completely forgot. Seeing everyone who has supported you throughout the whole time, it was almost the opposite.
“It was the biggest high seeing everyone. I don’t think I could ever have a highlight like that again where you’ve completed the hardest thing you’ve ever done, and everyone that cares about you has stayed on and they’re really happy and you are really happy.
“It was honestly one of the best moments ever. I will never forget that.”
The how of going from casual runner to ultra marathoner in a matter of months may be a tough and rewarding rollercoaster, but it’s the why that really shines through.
Thanks as ever for reading and listening to Running Tales. We couldn’t do this without your support - please back us to keep going by…
Amazing post! So cool to see what we are capable of when we ask that question of "what if."