Jon Ellis does it again! After winning the recent South Downs Way 50, writes Fiona Kennedy, Jon went one better and won the North Downs Way 50 with a course record time of 6:37:27.
For the first half of the race, Jon was behind the second-placed athlete, but he pulled through to win by nearly 20 minutes. As he explained afterwards:
“It’s a tougher race overall than the South Downs 50 in my opinion, and very much a race of two halves…flat and fast for the first half, then quite the opposite for the remainder. I ran very conservatively early on, partly with one eye on the challenges to come, and partly since I honestly didn’t know where my form was at after being ill recently. Either way, it turned out to be absolutely the right strategy. I managed to avoid mashing my quads this time too, which makes a huge difference”.
Where next for Jon? Apparently “there are plenty of enticing-looking ultras in the Alps…”
Ealing Tri member – and sometime ESM member – Yu Kawachi also competed in the race, finishing 143rd in a record field of 245. (Well, 245 started… there’s quite an attrition rate as you can imagine!)
You can read a full race report on the Centurion Running website, where Yu is shown in the centre of the featured photo at the top of the page.
Thanks to Stuart March Photography for kind permission to use these photos.