Autumn 100 2026

20-24 weeks is the realistic window for a first 100-mile ultra, assuming you already have a marathon's worth of base behind you. The block that matters is back-to-back long weekends — a long run on Saturday followed by a second, slower one on Sunday — which builds time on feet and teaches you to run on tired legs without the recovery cost of one enormous day. Practise your race-day nutrition on every one of them; at this distance the stomach fails before the legs do.

This is a largely flat course, so most of your long runs can mirror that — flat and steady, building time on feet rather than hill strength.

Drop volume hard across the final three to four weeks — further out and steeper than a marathon taper, because a 30-mile training day costs weeks of recovery, not days. Keep some easy running and a little terrain-specific work in, but the goal is to reach Goring Village Hall, High Street, Goring-on-Thames, Oxfordshire RG8 9AG with fresh feet and a rested gut rather than one more long run in the bank.

Lock in your target pace using the interactive splits calculator below — no official pacers are confirmed for this event, so a pace band on your watch is the more reliable option.

Test your race-day fuel and hydration plan on your long training runs, not for the first time on race day — check the Race Day Checklist below for what's actually on this course.

Increase carbohydrate modestly across the last two or three days and keep fibre low in the final day. Sleep in the week before matters as much as anything you eat.

A 09:00 start is civilised for a hundred — eat a full carbohydrate breakfast two to three hours before, of something you have used on long runs.

Sixteen aid stations across 100 miles means one roughly every six miles, so you never need to carry much. The harder problem is the night: appetite drops sharply in the small hours, so plan real food and hot drinks at the Goring returns, and carry something you know you can still swallow at 4am.

Eat as soon as you stop, and again a few hours later. Recovery from 100 miles takes weeks; the first 24 hours of eating and sleeping set the tone.

Goring-on-Thames / Streatley

Reading

Wallingford

Goring & Streatley station is a short walk from the village hall, on the Great Western line between Reading and Oxford — one of the easiest hundred-mile races in the country to reach without a car.

No Park & Ride. Parking is local to Goring — check the current race information for what is available and where.

None — the route uses the Thames Path, the Ridgeway and other rights of way.

Goring Village Hall is the answer. Because every spur starts and ends there, supporters can see their runner four separate times from one chair, which is close to unique among British hundreds.

You do not need to. Stay at Goring. If you want a second point, Streatley and the early Thames Path are a short walk away.

Centurion run live tracking and published splits, which the four-spoke format makes unusually easy to follow — every runner returns to Goring four times.