 I'm really, really not feeling good. I can't stop being sick. I'm struggling and I'm not going to try and get this done. It's October the 14th, start of the autumn 100. Are you feeling nervous or confident? I don't know what I'm feeling to be honest. I'm on an emotional roller coaster of excitement and utter nerves. Thames Park was mud, mud, glorious mud. South Downsway was absolutely absolutely boiling hot. North Downsway was rain, rain, rain, but it looks like today might just be a good day for running. No rain, although it has rained, it'll be wet under foot because it did rain last night very hard. But no rain for the whole race, sunshine most of the way. So yeah, it's a glorious morning, although it's cold, but I think cold makes for good running conditions. The neighbouring villages of Streetley and Goring lie on opposite sides of the River Thames in different counties. Streetley is in Berkshire and Goring in Oxfordshire. Connected by a bridge built in 1837, the villages have hosted the autumn 100, previously called the Winter 100, since 2012. The central hub is Goring Village Hall, which doubles as race HQ, and the main aid station on this race are four out and back spurs. Are you ready? Ready as I'll never get to be. So this is Goring Village Hall, everyone's getting prepared. If you have a drop bag, you will get access to it every time you come back to this village hall, because it's basically four out and backs of 25 miles or so, and every time you come back here and you can get your drop bag from there. So it's a really good race in terms of being able to get your own kit, your own stuff every 25 miles. You want it all in line, do you? Well, if it's all... I'm going to deliberately put mine at an angle just to annoy you. Every runner that is doing the Grand Slam, that is finishing the last race of the four, their number is red with a black background just so people can differentiate and maybe cheer on the Grand Slam runners a bit more. It's Martin. So we're six minutes ahead of you. No, you're six minutes ahead of me and Victoria. So we've got to catch you today. Is it going to happen? Definitely not. You've got no chance. And with that, we made our way from Oxfordshire to Berkshire over the bridge to the Morrell Room in Streetley for the start of the race. Facing St Mary's Church, Victoria and I listened to race director James Elson's briefing for the fourth time this year. So welcome to film my run for the Autumn 100. We've done the Thames Path, we've done the South Downsway, the North Downsway and here we are hoping to do the autumn. We've never done the Autumn 100 before. I've certainly never done the Ridgeway. I've run along the Thames Path, obviously. So two sections of this race are on the Thames Path. So we know that bit of the course. The first section is going to be very muddy but I've never run on the Ridgeway. So that's legs two and three are on the Ridgeway. So here we go. Any second now. Autumn 100. Three, two, one. Let's go. Let's go, guys. I'm a weird Tom. How you feeling, Rick? Okay. Time will tell. Yeah. The first section takes runners out north from Streetley on the Thames Path towards Oxford. In the Thames Path 100 event, this is about 70 miles into the race. It was quite congested for the first few miles and muddy in sections. What's your name? Michelle. Michelle. This is a bad time to film walking on the mud through the stinging nettles, isn't it? How many centurion races have you done? This is my second. Why did you decide to do 100 mile run in the first place? To see if I could. Yeah, what else are you going to do on a weekend? We've been running for 47 minutes. We are about 5.8 k in. So not far off six kilometers, four miles. Beautiful weather. Perfect conditions. A bit slippery underfoot but it's fine. Yeah, we brought our poles to deal with this mud in the first section but we haven't actually got them out yet because it's short sections of mud and then it's runnable ground again and it feels, let's just get on with it, you know. It was nice to see this section of the Thames Path during the day for once, as we've previously only run through here during the hours of darkness. Kissing gate number five and it is, for us, it really is a kissing gate. On such a beautiful morning, the river was alive with activity. Boat crews from Oxford University regularly train on this section of the river. Take three marmots, that'll be me. One of them. Jaffa cake? Jaffa cake. First aid station, this is Wallingford. We got here just at dusk in the Thames Path 100. Dawn, I mean not dusk, dawn. So we come back here in 20 kilometers time. So it's just basically out and back. Victoria's got a whole pack of crisps because she's a greedy hog. Thanks guys. See you in some time. Lovely, going the wrong way. Well then buddy, how's it going? Good, good. Well done. So we've got 6k to go to the turnaround point and the lead runner, Jeffrey Cheshire, has just passed us on his way back. Looking very jolly, I'll have to say. Yeah, although he was sweating a lot more than we are. I've done two good deeds for the day. I have held the gate open for our lead runner and I've just found somebody's mobile phone. Thankfully, we were able to reunite the phone with its owner who had backtracked along the course to find it. Well done guys. This is Ken doing his 100th 100th today. You are done, Ken. All right. I'll see you in the next one. Yes, Paul. Take care. Well done. You've been sick either. Little did we know just how much Paul's words would come back to haunt us later on. We're at our aid station. 12 and a half miles. 12 and a half miles, the turnaround point at the top of the first leg. That's all you need to know. Yeah, you can get mine out as well. Right, we've discovered, you know I sometimes drink huel, which is like this powder drink, meal in the drink. We've discovered this called This Is Food, which is nicer than huel. If you're on your last leg of the slab, why not? Try something new. We've got 5k to go to the next aid station on the way back down here. Interesting that when we left the turnaround, there were only out of the 200 and also odd runners in the race, there were only three runners behind us. How are you feeling about being pretty much at the back, Vic? Well, it's demoralising isn't it? I guess demotivating. Right, the weird thing about this race is that you do see everyone coming back on the leg, and I thought in a way that would be really good, you know, motivating. And yeah, high five. And it was nice to start with. And Vic says it was nice to start with, but yeah, after a while it was like, oh my god, there are so many runners ahead of us. We are so far behind. But then when you look at the time, you go, actually, in terms of time, we're exactly where we need to be. So let's crack on, shall we? Yeah, we'll try to. We made our way through one or two very muddy sections, past the Penny Farving and Jethro Tolgadans to Wallingford for the second time. Okay, just coming into the aid station at Wallingford again, at around 19 miles into the race. What have you got to eat, Vic? Nuts and raisins. So Victoria's got nuts and raisins. I've got a Marmite sandwich, some peanuts and some Coke, and I've filled my water bottles up. So 10k to go to get back to Goring. At this early stage, we were a little more tired than expected, and we were wondering just how much our long summer of ultras was going to affect us. It's raining. We've done 20, 21 miles in 4 hours 47 minutes, 3. something kilometers to the aid station, and it wouldn't be a centurion 100 mile without some rain, would it? It's only a light smattering of rain. We'll be gone in a minute. Beautiful. I reckon we'll have a rainbow. We felt the sun warm on our backs and the rain light on our heads as we made our way back to Goring and the end of leg one. Five hours 56 minutes at Goring aid station back at HQ. So time to get the drop bags, and Victoria's just gone to the car. She'll be back shortly. Hi, Mick. Oh, that was quick. You obviously didn't run back. So we're trying to do a quick change, but we've got so many pieces of equipment and kit and stuff that it can't be a quick change. Anyway, I'm going to change the batteries in my microphone. Victoria is packing crisps and all sorts of stuff in. It's very easy to get comfortable at an indoor checkpoint, especially when you have a bag of warm clothes and a car nearby. We tried to get out as quickly as possible. Right, we are leaving Goring, and we're heading out on leg two. 6,006 minutes, and we've done almost a marathon. Not long after leaving, we met the lead runners on their way back. Keep it strong. Right, Geoff's just told me he's knackered. He's not far ahead. So that was Rob Forbes in second place. I didn't manage to get the camera on in time to see Geoff Cheshire pass. So Rob has got about 3k to go to get to the turnaround at Goring. And we're just going out on spur two. Do we care? We're still in the game. We're enjoying ourselves. It's a beautiful day. It's just a bit more tiring than we were hoping at the moment. We are enjoying ourselves, but we are more fatigued than we really want to be at 27 miles in. I guess, though, we've had a busy year and we've recovered from Covid six weeks ago. We should be grateful that we're here. We should be grateful. We are grateful. So in third place is Pete Windross at the moment. Well done, Pete. I am not going to win M50 this year. Pete's also doing the grand slam, so he's going to be first this year in this year's grand slam results. So yeah, Pete is an M50, and he is already on his way back on the second leg in third place overall. So welcome to Pete. Leg two heads out east on arguably Britain's oldest road. The Ridgeway has been used for over 5,000 years by travellers, herdsmen and soldiers. King Alfred the Great used the Ridgeway to move troops when the Vikings invaded in the 9th century. The 87 mile route predominantly runs along the Chalk Ridge from Overton Hill in Wiltshire to Ivinghoe Beacon in Buckinghamshire and provides a dry, elevated path with good visibility adding to its strategic importance. We're doing all right. Lovely stuff. Nice one. Another grand slam rune there. Right, we're coming up to our aid station at Little Stoke, which is not quite halfway up this second leg. Right, so Little Stoke, I've just had a glass and a half of Coke. I've filled my water bottles up. I'm going to grab some Marmite sandwiches. Victoria has gone, so I'm going to catch her up. Cheers. See you later. Thanks a lot, bye. Right, first two ladies. One and two. Well done, guys. So we are seven hours 40 minutes in, nearly 52 kilometers done. All the other runners coming past us down the hill now. Got a couple of things to show you on my watch. Well done, mate. Firstly, on Strava when I set up the GPX file for this run, I did something I've not done before and I plotted the aid stations. So if you have a look on my watch here, you can see that to swim come checkpoint up ahead is 9.4 kilometers. And then you can see the next one North Stoke on the way back down to 22 kilometers away. So that's something I've not done before, which I thought was quite cool. And it seems to be working quite well. And the other thing that's worth showing you is we are currently on one of the very few inclines. Hiya. Hello. Of the run. And on my watch I've got Climb Pro activated. So you can see every single climb, how far that climb is, what elevation that climb is, and how far you've got left on that climb. So let me show you here. So currently we've got 0.99 kilometers left to go of this climb, but only 10 meters worth of elevation gain. That's quite useful to know, especially on big, long climbs, you know, in the mountains, when you've got like 800 meter, 1000 meter climbs, that's going to take you two hours to do, two and a half hours. And it's great to be able to look at the watch and go, okay, I know exactly how far I've got to go. I know how steep it's going to be for this next section. On our way up, we met Ken Fansett. Ken's first 100 mile race was in 1992. On finishing this year's autumn 100, he would complete his 100th 100 mile race, aged 74. How's it feeling, Ken? Not too bad, thanks. You're all right. Thank you very much. Well, so are you pleased with 100-100s if you get, you're going to get it done, aren't you? Well, I'd be pleased if I get there. Yeah, I think, I think you will. I think you will. You know what you're doing. You know what you're doing. Enjoy it. Thank you very much. Might see you on the next one. We've done 35, nearly 36 miles. We're quite tired, but we've still got running in us. We are about four kilometers from the next aid station of the turnaround point. Well done, guys. We're all right. The field is definitely spread out a bit more now. How are you feeling, Vic? Tired, I have to say. We're still moving, though. Just want to get it done. Well done. Hello. In my previous life as a wedding photographer, I think I did a wedding at this very church. All right, guys. Here's Tom. How's it going, Tom? Feeling good? Feeling good. Nice one. 36 miles in and I was experiencing my first low point of the race. We were slowing. I was starting to feel hungry and weak, and I was relieved when the checkpoint at Swincombe finally came into view. Okay, we've reached the turnaround point, but we are just starting to get a little bit concerned about time now. What time do you close here? Seven and a half. And you don't happen to know what the cutoff is at Goring when we get back, do you? 11 o'clock tonight. Perfect. Thank you, man. We need to get back to Goring by 11 pm tonight. Is it something past six? About 20 past six. Actually, that's not too bad. We should be able to do that, but we can't. We can't dilly-dally, basically. The sun has definitely gone down now. His head torch is on. We've got about 10k to go to the halfway aid station. Actually, it's a bit more than halfway, so once we get there, we've only got about 7k back to Goring. We're okay for time, but we're just thinking we need to make sure we're on it all the time. We're all okay, and we're feeling much better since that aid station, since we've had some food, we've got our drinks. So we're feeling okay, Victoria's just up ahead. 9 hours 52 minutes. We've covered about 64km, which is around 40 miles. Unfortunately, although I was feeling okay again, Victoria was not, and from here things started to go downhill. So we're back at a little stoke aid station. It's 8.30 in the evening. We've got four miles to go to get back to Goring. We need to get back to Goring by 11 pm. Victoria is not feeling very well. She's been sick once on the way back. You pay to go sick. Like, it's immensely sad, isn't it? It is all good. Thank you so much for your help. We've been running for 12 hours 42 minutes, so that means it is just after 20 to 10 in the evening. This aid station at Goring, the cut off here is 11 o'clock tonight for this section, so we're well in time as long as we don't spend too long in here faffing about. I've got a cup of coffee to drink. I am drinking my... This is food drink, which is really good. Victoria has had a change of clothes, have you? So now this is like the most difficult section. So section 3 in the dark with quite a bit of elevation. It's just a tricky section apparently, having never done it before. So if we get this one done, we're at 75 miles. We've broken the back of the run, and then we've got the final section on the 10's path to finish in the light. So we're going to get going any second. How are you feeling, big? I don't want to talk about it. I'm not in a good place at the moment. Okay. That was a 15 minute stop, so we're off. Thanks, Mr Spencer. Cheers, Billy. See you guys, and we're off. See you later. Thank you. Bye-bye. See you. See you later. Good luck. See you in a bit. The first six kilometres of leg 3 saw us climbing up out of Goring back onto the ridgeway, this time heading west. I managed to eat some soup on the way, but I felt terrible, and I wasn't having any luck getting my food to stay down. All I could do was try different things in the hope that something would settle on my stomach. After 10 kilometres of climbing and a big descent, we arrived at the halfway checkpoint. We're at East Ilseley Down, and it's taken us about an hour and 45 minutes an hour and 40 to get here, so that's decent enough. Can I get a cup of tea? Absolutely. Milk sugar? No sugar, I think. Thank you. I am thinking about it. Have a bit of chocolate, actually. Yeah, chocolate, yeah. Thank you. Do you mind just balancing it on the table? That's okay, my pleasure. It does stand up. Thank you. The further out we got, the colder and windier it became, and the more remote it felt, despite all the headlights coming back the other way. It was nice, though, to catch up with Tom on his third leg return. So you're having some problems? Foot hurts. Yeah. My stomach hurts. Yeah. I'll spay the details. But yeah, it's only a lap of Guernsey. Yeah, yeah. You're doing really well, Tom. Fantastic. You get this finished today? I want to see Vicki finish the... She will, she will. Yeah. There are only so many times I can show Victoria throwing up, but I think it's important to see as sometimes this is part of the reality of ultra-running. We are just 600 meters from the next aid station. Before we turn around and come back, Vick is trying so hard, but her stomach is not playing ball today. She's keeping moving. We've just arrived at Chain Hill, which is the end of the ridgeway. We've got to go 20K back. They want me to drink Ukrainian vodka with honey and chilli, or what? See the one again? Or cherry liqueurs. That's all this aid station's offering. You can go for it. Steven, go. No, I honestly, I am not touching it. Okay, Vicki's getting on her way. She is, Vicki's suffering, suffering badly. Adam, can you get the, there's a bottle in there? Yeah, I'm taking that as well. Thank you. Okay. David. Yes. Vicki said remember to bring her bottle. Yeah, I've got that bottle and that bottle. Okay, brilliant. Right, we're off. Thanks, guys. Yeah, I won't forget my tea. Paul Victoria has had just the most torrid time this race. She's just constantly throwing up. She can't keep anything down. It is 50 kilometers, which is 31 miles back to the finish. We have about nine and a half hours to do those 50K. So here we are, just arriving at the aid station with 10K to go before goreng again. Can we get Coke in that for Victoria? Yeah, sure. Please. Thank you very much. Bit later than planned, but we are here. Well inside. Yeah, I mean, we're not too bad. Hopefully we'll be all right. Guys, really appreciate your help. Thanks a lot. See you soon. Is your stomach settling at all? Final stretch now and there is, it's basically, what we've got here is 4K of ups and downs and then we've got 6K all downhill. So we should hopefully be able to make up a bit of time on the downhill section all the way into goreng. Just going to get these little hills done. It's 3.30am, by the way, 3.30 in the morning. So nine and a half hours left of the race. We have a marathon left to run. 42.2km remaining. Just over 2km left to get to goreng. It's about 5 o'clock in the morning, so from now we have 8 hours to get those 42km done. It's all flat, pretty much along the Thames path. So this is doable, but Victoria is still suffering badly. It's hard work for her tonight, today, but she's doing the best she can and she is absolutely determined to get this finished. Okay, just after quarter past five. How's it going, Paul? Let's go. Fabulous. How are you? Cheers, buddy. Thank you. Yeah, knackered. Absolutely knackered, but we'll get it done. I think we've just about got time. Cheers, Spence. Thank you very much indeed, buddy. Ready for nails? No, I'm good. I'm really, really not feeling good. I can't stop being sick. I'm struggling and I'm going to try and get this done. And with that, we set off on the final leg, this time heading south on the Thames path towards Reading. It wasn't quite as flat as we were hoping with some steep inclines through the woods on the way out. I feel like you're going to be sick again. Victoria was still struggling, but the sun was rising as Allie Bailey passed us on her way back. How's it been? The poor Janet works with. Yeah, tough. It has been tough, hasn't it? All right, take care. Minnak and January, sir. Yes, see you then. Still about five miles to go to get to Reading. At the bottom of the steps, which we usually climb up during the Thames path 100, we saw Ken Fancett for the final time before he crossed the line. To finish is 100th 100 mile there wasn't Ken. Good job, buddy. It was a spectacular morning on the Thames path, with the sun warming the river and an ethereal mist rising from the water. For a moment, it was serene and otherworldly. Good one, Dave. Great work, you guys. Yeah, we're just climbing the steps up to Reading checkpoint. Victoria is about 400 meters behind. I'm just going to get her a coke. We have 20 kilometers to go. Yeah, so it's 10 to nine, so five, 10 minutes here, and then we'll get on our way and we'll have four hours to get home. That man will not be taking us in the van. Are you okay? Yeah, good job. Right, thank you very much to the guys at Reading. Great job. 12 miles to go home. Thanks a lot. Cheers, guys. I've been feeling absolutely fine the whole race until we just arrived in Reading, and then I threw up. There wasn't very much, but yeah, so my stomach is like, you know, like that at the moment. Victoria, bless her heart, has just suffered the entire race. Nothing has gone her way today. She's not in a good mood because of it. I think she wanted a really happy race, you know, because the weather's so nice. The weather's so nice, and it's the final one before she achieves the grand slam. She wanted it to be perfect, and she's just thrown up since about mile 40, constantly through the rest of the night and into today, and I feel so bad for her, but that said, she is going to finish. And this is the beauty of ultra running. This is what makes 100 miles such an iconic distance to cover on foot. You can't be certain how it's going to turn out. Between miles one and 100, so much can happen, and you can only mitigate some of it. We were so afraid of the North Downsway 100, and it turned out to be our best race of the slam. And everyone told us the Autumn 100 would be easy. It's your victory lap, they said. Little did we know what Victoria would have to go through, and how much of a fight it would become just to keep moving forward. We are going to do this. It's been really, really hard, really hard, and I've struggled. So how have you struggled? What's been the problems? I've been vomiting since 44 miles, and I think I've been more sick than the South Downsway 100. I don't understand it, but it's not been easy by any means. I guess being a beautiful day, and being the last one in the Grand Slam you were hoping for a bit of a nicer experience, are you not in a good mood? It's been a struggle, but I want to get it done. You will get it. We're going to finish. There's no way we're not going to finish now. We've got less than 10km to go. We've got two and a half hours to do it in. We are going to finish. We could walk it in and probably still get there. So it's all good. But it is a shame that Victoria has such a torrid time. Back at Pangbourne, J. Co knew exactly what we needed. He gave Steven a pint of full fat milk, and he gave me a mug of Earl Grey tea. First we can do, there we go, bulk, two sugar, and you want a full fat pint, right? Oh, mate. There we go. How are you feeling? J. Co has got me some milk. 2023 has been an amazing year for Victoria, with three marathons in three weeks in three different countries to start the year, including Boston and London. Now she was about to complete the Centurion Grand Slam of four 100 miles in a year, having never run 100 miles before. It's a year we'll both remember for the rest of our lives. We've got a mile to go in the autumn 100. What a gorgeous day. Cold but beautiful, and we are going to finish with a smile on our face. Even Victoria is going to have a smile on her face. You will. One mile, and then we have completed the Centurion Grand Slam. If you've enjoyed the video so far, please do consider subscribing and click the like button. Also, I've one more thing to ask of you, so please stay to the end for that. J. We've done it. Autumn 100 and the Grand Slam. Right, Matt. We are finished. J. What a horrendous day. It's all over. J. Did it? Did it? J. It is. It's starting. J. And look what you've got. J. So the first point about this, and then this. J. Thank you so much. Thank you. This is what the whole year has been about. J. I'm an emotional wreck. J. So we're at the start line of the Thames Path 104, Victoria's very first 100 mile race. J. I've been inspired watching me complete the Grand Slam at the age of 50. If you have ever thought about running 100 miles, or an ultra, or even starting out with your first 5k, do it today, because today is a good day. We need more of you, particularly women, running these races, not for the medal or the t-shirt, but for the challenge, because we can achieve things we never thought possible. And you know what, if I can do it, anyone can. But there's no time to borrow. Your time is now, and the roads that lay open are many. Today is a good day to live.