The St Peters Way Ultra is a 42 mile Ultra Marathon running across Essex from Chipping Ongar to the St Peters Chapel on the coast at Bradwell on Sea. It’s 42 miles of footpaths, bridleways and muddy fields.
With a generous 13 hour cut-off time and 4 well stocked checkpoints along the way it’s a great challenge for those new to Ultras as well as more seasoned runners.
A small, friendly local event with great support, pretty route steeped in history and showing off rural Essex that’s priced at £50 and includes a great medal and the option to purchase further merchandise if you want, including T-Shirts and Hoodies or a Neck Tube.
It’s been raining in the UK for what seems like forever and a day, the course was looking like it was going to be very waterlogged, wet and muddy course.
I went out to check the course on the Monday before the race to find it was indeed very muddy and the first bridge crossing was under water that was almost waist deep. With more heavy rain forecast before the race we planned a diversion to avoid the section that was the worst should the levels have risen or not dropped at all.
With concerns about the course water levels especially at the start we went down to the 1st bridge the night before the race and thankfully they had dropped significantly despite some heavy rain a few days before the race.
Happy that the course was looking better and the diversion would not be needed we started preparing for the race. Registration was from 7am with the race planned to start at 8:10. An unusual time but you cant pay for parking at the car park machines until 8am so the time allows people to pay for parking in cash or with a card just before the race.
All runners get a selection of their mandatory kit requirements checked at registration. Then they get their race number and drop of a bag of warm clothing to change into at the finish plus anything else they would like transported to the Chapel at the end.
A quick briefing at 8am then we were ready to start.
8:10 on the dot were were away, 7.9 miles to the 1st CP in Mill Green, Russel Welch and Nathan Roulson are together with Matt Gallagher only a few minutes behind them. These three would be the top three all the way through the race with a significant gap to the next fastest runners. All three have had good results in this race and were easily on for 6 hour pace despite the mud.
The weather was being kind to us with the wind and warmer temps drying out the mud much better than expected and the runners came through CP’s 1 and two much cleaner and faster than anticipated. The field started to spread out and a large gap expanded between the first 3 lead guys and the main pack with had the first three women being in the midst of that group. Susan McCartney, Claire Brewster and Ruth Havis who would pretty much be in that order for the whole race though it was much closer and fluid in the women’s race with a few swapping places as the race moved up the course.
Everything was running smoothly so I moved up to set up the finish and left the race in the teams capable hands.
The finish is such a stunning place, a historical Chapel from a time just after the Romans left Britain. It makes a very atmospheric finish especially on such a bleak and inhospitable coastline in winter.
All the finish bags were unloaded and placed along the benches on one wall, the CP at the finish was set up including stoves to heat water for hot drinks and more savoury snacks while they wait for their lift or the race bus back to the start car park.
We had warning when the leaders were through the last CP about 8 miles away so set up the finish banners, sponsors banners and race clock ready for their arrival. The wind was picking up but the rain was still holding off thankfully apart from a few light spots around lunchtime.
First Across the line was Nathan Roulsan in fantastic time of 5:57:37
Next across the line was Russ Welch a few mins later in 6:08:08
Followed shortly after by Matt Gallagher in 6:12:10
All 3 first guys together.
First Female across the line was Susan McCartney in a great time of 7:53:59
Second was Claire Brewster in a speedy 8:18:06
Third was Ruth Havis 10 mins later in 8:28:16
All 3 female finishers together.
Over next few hours finishers came over the line in a steady stream. The wind continued to pick up and by the time it got dark and we could not take anymore decent pictures it was blowing a strong wind across the runners on the last stretch of sea wall and starting to rain.
The last runners, Nicki and Anne crossed the line after 12 hours and 13 minutes closely followed by the elite sweeping team of Ian and Alan. Seen below fuelling up in a local shop along the route. Ian has done more miles along the route than anyone else with 10 finishes as sweeper!
It was a great day and some superb stories along the route although we did have our highest DNF rate ever with 6 DNF’s due to injury, just not having their best day or getting timed out at a CP due to the course being much slower this year with all that mud.
61 starters and 56 finishers – for full results click the button
Thanks to everyone that took part and especially my fantastic team of volunteers who stood out in the cold supporting the runners and making the race what it was.
Thanks to Fenix Lighting who sponsors our events and gave to x HL32R head torches worth £80 each as prizes for the first make and female. To go to the UK shop please click on the logo below and take a look at the great head torches for sale.
If you use the discount code CHALLENGE2024 you will get 15% off any purchase.
We have already set the date for next years race which will be on the 23rd of February, we have made a few changes to the event as well for next year.
- Indoor Registration Location in the village hall opposite the start car park.
- Trackers for all runners included in the cost
- Slightly later start at 8:30 to allow for tracker fitting and the same cutoff time 9pm.
- New entry system that will allow deferrals, transfers (up to 6 weeks before) and you to insure your race against last minute unforeseen reasons to withdraw like illness, injury and so on. This will mean no refunds from us if you don’t take out the insurance.
- Ability for you to change your info personally on the entry page without contacting us.
To enter please go to the website here https://challenge-running.com/st-peters-way-ultra/
There is a discount until March 1st so you only pay £40 instead of the full £50 so it’s worth entering early.
We hope to see you next year.
Lindley.