The long run
- 22 June 2023
- 4 minutes
Couch to 5k is enough for many. A 10-kilometres event? Maybe. A marathon? Possibly. For Sarah Pemberton (Education PhD 2022) the farther the better.
The possible three-week endurance challenge to run the length of Great Britain, in tandem with Ed Cator (Law 2019) while representing the University of Cambridge, will have to wait. Ed was interviewed in November about the then solo pursuit from Land's End to John O'Groats (LEJOG). The organisers are seeking funding for the now team event to take place.
The friends met in Sarah’s freshers’ week last October, their mutual enjoyment of endurance sport making them kindred spirits. Like Ed, Sarah has plenty of experience of endurance running, competing in events which are renowned in the ultra community. Her first was in Mongolia, and her most prestigious is the Four Trails in Hong Kong (more of which later). This came after an inauspicious start as an undergraduate student at Georgetown University in the United States.
“My friends and I entered a half marathon in Washington DC in April 2013. It was awful. I had not trained enough,” Sarah says.
“I got to the end and called my mum, who had done a marathon back in the day. I said ‘I don’t understand how people get to the end and do that distance again’. It blew my mind.”
Like many buoyed by passing the finishing line, with a sense of amnesia over the pain to get there, Sarah decided to enter further races.
She had planned to do a marathon, but none are held in summer in Hong Kong, where Sarah grew up and latterly worked for consultancy firm McKinsey. So she convinced her sister to join her in a 60-kilometre ultra event in the Mongolian desert. She was hooked.
“It's now been 10 years,” she says. “I’ve always chased distance over speed. I did my first 100k, and then week-long races where you carry everything you need for the week. I’ve done a few 100 milers…”
Never one to sit still for long, the postponement of the LEJOG run has seen Ed turn to a different challenge: he is a member of the Cambridge University swim team who will cross the Channel as a relay in a Varsity contest with Oxford later this month, or early in July. The exact date is determined by the tide and weather conditions, and Ed is looking forward to the prospect of plunging into the sub-20C water (no wetsuit allowed). Follow the team on Instagram. “I figured since I couldn't run across one country I might as well swim to another one,” Ed says.
Sarah has competed all over the world, but the greatest challenge (so far) has been at home: the 298-kilometres Hong Kong Four Trails Ultra Challenge (HK4TUC). Linking the four hiking trails the MacLehose, Wilson, Hong Kong and Lantau Trails, the event is not for the faint-hearted.
There is also a 60-hour cut-off point to be a “finisher” and a 72-hour cut off to be a “survivor” on the undulating route, with 14,500m of elevation. It took five years before anyone “finished” and a decade until anyone “finished” twice. Sarah took three attempts to get to the finish, becoming the youngest to complete the challenge in 2020. She features in a documentary film about it (watch the trailer: The Four Trails Film).
Sarah adds: “That type of challenge took up my whole year of running. Every race became a long training run for it, an opportunity to try out gear and food. I was consumed by that for years.”
Sarah during the Hong Kong Four Trails Ultra Challenge (photo credit - also for main image: Joshua L, HK4TUC)
The Covid-19 pandemic halted Sarah’s participation in running events, but when visiting the UK for friends’ weddings in 2022 she took the opportunity to race again. She completed the South Downs Ultra 100km event in 12 hours, her best yet. That was followed by the Ultra Trail Snowdonia, Wales where she finished third earning qualification for the world-leading Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc – Courmayeur/Champex/Chamonix event. That takes place on September 1 in France.
The oft-asked question is why do it? The answer is simple.
“I just like running,” Sarah says.
“The races I tend to have run have always been a bit of an adventure, which I love.
“Being able to run longer and longer you see so much more but you also go through a much more interesting journey. Having to be alone, you, the trails and your mind for 12 hours, 20 hours, whatever it is, I find it mostly fun.”
