British 50k Trail Running Championships: Recap

The British 50k trail championships delivered everything you’d expect from the Lake District: tough terrain, brutal weather and a relentless race. After an early fall left me battling knee pain, the race became about digging in and finding a way to keep moving all the way to the finish line.

The Morning of the Race

Race morning began with a reasonable 5:30am wake-up in our lovely little Airbnb, hidden somewhere in the fields near Keswick in the Lake District.

Today was the British 50k Trail Championships, which also served as the trial race for an opportunity to qualify for the 2026 European Off-Road Championships in Slovenia with Team GB. A pretty big deal for the top end of the field. The start list was stacked, with some of the biggest names in British trail running on both the men’s and women’s sides.

For competitive amateurs like me, races like this are interesting because they offer a chance to measure yourself against the very best in the country and see where you really stand.

We arrived at the race registration at around 7am and were greeted by properly grim weather: cold, wet and windy. Basically the full Lake District package. We picked up our bibs, then headed back to the car to stay warm for as long as possible, sort out the final bits of kit, take a shot of caffeine and squeeze in a quick 10-minute warm-up before the start.

At 8:00am, we were off.

Finding the Right Rhythm

The front of the race went out hard, and within a few minutes they were already disappearing into the distance. The opening section was a long 16km stretch of relatively flat running by trail standards, so getting the pacing right early on felt important.

The plan was simple: settle into a strong rhythm, but do not get carried away too soon. If I wanted to run well, I needed to stay in control and avoid doing anything stupid in the first hour. I found myself in a small group of runners moving at roughly the pace I had in mind, with splits around 4:15/km. It felt honest, maybe slightly pushy, but still comfortably under control. Exactly where I wanted to be.

Proile of the race: 48km with 2250m of elevation gain.

My nutrition plan was straightforward: 90g of carbs per hour, from gels and fruit paste. I had exacltly what I needed to keep going for 5 hours. I started eating early and stayed on top of it, with my 30-minute alarm on my watch there to remind me in case race brain took over. The rhythm in our little group stayed steady, we flew through CP1 and reached CP2 at 16km more or less together.

A few runners stopped there to refill water and grab food from support crews waiting for them. I kept moving. I had everything I needed on me, and no one waiting on the sidelines anyway.

The Fall

After CP2 came the first real climb of the day: 3.5km with around 350m of elevation gain. Nothing outrageous, but enough to start making the race feel more serious. I climbed well, felt in control and reached the top ready to attack the descent.

Early on the downhill, one guy came past me. He looked smooth and comfortable and my immediate thought was: right, try to stay with him if you can.

So I pushed.

He was maybe 25 metres ahead, and I was fully locked in, trying to hold the gap.

Then, out of nowhere: boom.

I went flying and hit the ground hard.

For a moment, everything stopped. My knee lit up instantly with a sharp, nasty pain. I got back up and tried to run, but I couldn’t. I sat there for a few seconds, trying to work out how bad it was. Two guys came past and checked if I was okay. And in that moment, I genuinely thought: that’s it. My first DNF.

The problem was that I was in the middle of the mountains, so whether I liked it or not, I still had to get myself to the next aid station.

So I tried to stay calm. Ate something. Took a breath. Refocused. The pain was bad, but I could at least move. I wobbled my way down the descent, then started trying to run again once the ground flattened out. It wasn’t pretty, and it definitely wasn’t fast, but at least I was moving forward.

My knee at the end ot the race.

Settling Back Into the Race

At CP3, 24km in the race, I stopped briefly to refill my water and retie my shoes a bit tighter. The knee was still painful, but it felt manageable enough that I could at least keep racing properly. There were about 2 kilometres of runnable terrain before the next climb, which rose for another 500m. I could see a woman starting to catch me from behind. She looked strong, and I figured that if I could keep her behind me, that would probably be a sign that I was still moving well.

Even better, I could now see one of the two guys who had passed me after my fall. So despite the crash and the knee pain, it was very much still game on.

I know people say you should run your own race, not someone else’s pace. And in theory, I agree. But in practice, when you don’t have a huge amount of racing experience (like me), the runners around you can be useful reference points that give you a rough sense of what the effort should feel like.

By the top of that next climb, I had managed to move back past him. The woman behind me, meanwhile, absolutely launched herself down the descent. It was impressive running given how technical the terrain was. She was super stable, picking the perfect lines, basically floating over the ground.

I tried not to let her get too far away, but my knee kept reminding me that I probably couldn’t afford another fall. So I had to be just aggressive enough without tipping over the edge again.

Then came another climb, this one with around 320m of elevation gain. By now there were more runners spread out around me, some ahead, some behind. The woman had become my point of reference, but she was slowly pulling away, which I knew probably wasn’t a great sign. By the time I reached the top, she disappeared into the distance and I never saw her again.

That woman, it turned out, was Eve Pannone, who would go on to finish second in the women’s race.

In the (Knee) Pain Cave

At the top, there was a flat section of about 1km across the plateau, during which I felt absolutely cooked. The terrain was technical, there was still some snow lying around, it was cold and concentrating was becoming hard. I found myself running near another guy and tried hard to stick with him.

At this point I was moaning in French (putain!) which, honestly, felt necessary. At the same time, I was trying to stay focused on where my feet were landing and not do anything stupid again.

Then came a long, very runnable descent, and finally a chance to get back into some kind of flow. We found a decent rhythm, and I used that section to force some more food down. My knee was really hurting by then, and I could feel every impact sending little shockwaves through it, but I knew I had to make the most of the terrain while I still could.

We reached CP4 at the Slate Mine, around the 33km mark where I stopped for a minute or two to refill water and get a grip on myself. As soon as I set off again, a few runners came past looking much more comfortable than I felt. I tried to respond on what remained of the downhill before the final climb, but I just didn’t have the same speed.

That was frustrating. Yes, the knee hurt, but that wasn’t the only reason they were moving faster than me. It’s easy to blame a bad patch on something external, especially a fall, but sometimes the reality is simpler: other runners are just stronger. And accepting that is part of racing too.

The final climb

At around 36km, the final climb of the day started: another 500m of elevation gain. This was also the point where the 50k course rejoined the 23k race, so suddenly there were runners everywhere.

I found myself alongside another guy from the 50k who looked strong and in good spirits. He set a solid tempo on the climb, so I decided to stay with him and hang on for as long as I could. I was fighting pretty hard at this point, averaging around 170bpm on the climb, but I felt like it was still just about sustainable. Or at least I told myself it was.

Heart rate analysis of the race.

There’s always that balance I find tricky in races: pushing hard enough that you leave everything out there, but not so hard that you blow up and ruin the end of your race.

By the time we reached the top, he was moving away and I found myself as the lone 50k runner again. There were loads of runners from the 23k around me, most of them moving more slowly, and I used that as motivation. I started picking them off one by one, just trying to keep pressing forward.

It didn’t really mean anything in terms of my position in the 50k, or about how well I was really doing, but at that point it didn’t matter. Sometimes, anything that occupies your mind, distracts you from the suffering, and keeps you moving forward is worth it.

The last descent of the race.

One final push

At the bottom of that descent came the final 3km flat stretch to the finish. I looked down at my watch and saw that my average pace was sitting at 6:07/km. That immediately gave me a new target: try to get it under 6:00/km by the finish line.

So I pushed.

I managed to find some decent speed again right at the end, including a final kilometre in 4:17/km, which I was pretty pleased with given how cooked I felt not so long ago and how much the knee was complaining.

I crossed the line in 4:49:50, finishing 28th overall, 23rd man, and 17th in my category.

All in all, I was pretty happy with that.

Not perfect, obviously. The fall changed the race quite a bit, and I’m left wondering what might have been without it. But it was still a solid result in a very strong field, and overall an encouraging one ahead of the next race: the GB Ultras 50 Mile in Scotland on 6 June.