“I don’t feel like running at all”, I say to my new acquaintance as we’re sipping our coffees outside a small cafe in Sparta around 4 pm. I felt strangely relaxed, fully aware that I wasn’t in shape to run a good 24-hour race.
The winter in Berlin was unexpectedly cold and long. The city turned into an ice rink for weeks. Completing a decent training block to my liking was difficult, if not impossible. Besides a lack of training, I assumed I would also struggle with the sudden jump in temperature, as my body needed to acclimatize from -10°C in Berlin to running in +16°C in Sparta just 3 days later.
I also experienced a cramping and bloating gut the whole week, and didn’t ingest any calories from my dinner on Friday until the race started on Saturday at 5 pm. It was also my first 24-hour race that started late in the afternoon.
And yet, I wasn’t worried. In my mind, it was just a training race. A nice long run to prepare me mentally and physically for the hard parts of my two A-races this year – the O-See Backyard Ultra in July and the Authentic Pheidippides Run in November (a 490km journey from Athens to Sparta and back).
My First Time In Greece
I arrived on Wednesday afternoon in Athens and reached my hotel without any flight delays or other issues during the trip. In hindsight, I was lucky because the next day all flights going out from Berlin airport BER were canceled due to ice rain 🥶.
After getting some food at a shop close to the hotel, I concluded the evening by planning a quick sightseeing tour on Thursday. I decided to work on Thursday and Friday, mainly to keep me from being on my feet all day exploring Athens. In hindsight, this may have contributed to my high stress levels and resulting gut rebellion that was plaguing me during race week.
I woke up Thursday to a cloudy morning, but decided to head out for a walk before work to keep the rhythm of morning movement my body is used to.
Staying in Athens didn’t exactly help with reducing anxiety. It was loud, and navigating through the traffic was a nightmare for my country-bumpkin self. Green traffic lights for pedestrians seemed to mean very little to the right-turning traffic. Many pedestrians ignored red traffic lights and crossed the streets whenever they felt like it (or deemed safe, perhaps?). And motorbikes seemed to have their own rules altogether.
Apart from the traffic, however, I quite liked the city. And after I got thoroughly soaked by rain during my morning walk, I decided to enjoy a bit of sun later in the afternoon and visited the ancient agora, which was only a 20-minute walk from the hotel.
On Friday morning, I went to visit the National Garden — a public park of ca. 15ha in the centre of Athens with a duck pond, parts of ancient ruins, a children’s library, and a small zoo.
I hoped to get some relaxing nature to calm my nervous system, but the park couldn’t offer this. Too loud was the noise from the surrounding main roads, and the area was too small to have a long, extended walk.
My mind used Berlin’s Botanical Garden as a reference, which made the experience slightly underwhelming. But of course this was quite an unfair comparison as the Botanical Garden in Berlin is nearly three times the size of Athens’ National Garden.
My gut was very unhappy on Friday and I felt a slight panic coming on. However, I tried to calm myself down, got some food and snacks for after the race on my way back to the hotel and continued to work for the rest of the day. After an early dinner, I went to bed early to get some extra rest before the long day.
Race Day Without Nerves
To my surprise, I slept relatively well, but not as long as I had hoped. Regardless, I stayed in bed until around 06:00 am, which left me enough time to pack my bags, get dressed, and hopefully go to the toilet before I needed to leave around 09:30 for the bus to Sparta.
My gut was a cramping mess, so I decided not to eat anything and just have water. I hoped that it would calm down somewhat during the day. After all, the race would start only at 5 pm. During the 40-minute or so wait at the bus pickup location, I wondered if I would be able to get through the 3-hour bus ride without having an emergency.
I promised myself to go on a gut-healing protocol that has helped me successfully reset my gut health in the past and create a race-week nutrition plan to follow for all future races once I was back home in Berlin. After all, I didn’t want to repeat the running year 2024, where my extremely poor gut health derailed a lot of my training and every race.
A sudden “hi” and an extended hand from a stranger distracted me from my thoughts. “Nicole”, I said as I shook the hand of the friendly woman who introduced herself to me. After we found out that English would be the best way to communicate (due to my complete lack of Greek language skills and her being Greek), we chatted away. She too had signed up for the 24-hour race and she too would travel to Sparta without support. She suggested that we’d support each other and I happily agreed.
The bus ride passed uneventfully and around 1:30pm we arrived in Sparta. It was sunny, warm and windy. After I collected my race bib and starter pack, I walked around a bit and decided to find a cafe to relax and have some coffee. After all, it was still 3 hours until the gun went off. It wasn’t long before Vasiliki — my new friend — joined, and we had a nice chat until it was time to get our tables set up and get ready for the race.
What I loved the most about this race was the organization.
Before the race, the team kindly answered questions via email, and I felt confident traveling alone to the race despite not speaking a single word in Greek. The starter pack contained no useless paper adverts (which is unfortunately often the case in German races), but only the race shirt and buff. And every athlete was provided with a table and a chair in a designated area that was covered with tents. Two runners had to share 1 table, and Vasiliki and I decided to share one.
My gut was still unhappy.
Struggling From The Start
I tried to relax as the gun went off. The first half of the 800m loop was a slight downhill and after the halfway point we ran uphill again accordingly. Every 3 hours the direction would change, which was another first time experience for me.
Running felt odd. My legs lacked energy and my chest was tight. I tried to calm myself down by telling myself to go slow and that today didn’t matter. And I wanted to have a hard race after all — to prepare me mentally for the low points of my A-races this year.
After a few laps I decided to get some energy into my system and started with honey power gels. I also had some electrolyte drinks from the race’s aid station. My energy returned but my legs started to get very sore after the first few hours already. I wasn’t unfamiliar with the sensation (I’ve been running ultras for 5 years now after all…). But being this extremely sore so early on was very unusual. My mood was pretty low now and I didn’t enjoy running at all at this point. I also regretted that I wore long pants — albeit thin ones. My body not only struggled with the lack of fuel but also the heat. The latter, however, would soon resolve itself as the night was cool and we even got a bit of rain.
As the hours went by, I got more energy — I was eating raisins from the aid station and at one point started having chocolate as well, which seemed to soothe my tummy somewhat. Vasiliki asked if I wanted some coffee and, just one lap later, she had strong coffee with sugar prepared for me. This gave me a nice boost, and the next laps were fun to run.
I finally started to enjoy the race a bit.
A runner from Switzerland chatted me up, and we ran a bit together, and he told me how he was just building back up after some injuries. We talked about Sparthathlon (which he finished and described as the hardest race he had ever done), about the Mauerweglauf (which he signed up for this year), and about how ultramarathons are weird because no matter how bad you may feel there is always a chance you will feel better later on.
I was enjoying my high and wondered why I always seem to mess up race week so much that it severely limits my performance. After he excused himself for a short break, I decided to continue with my chocolate-eating strategy. Adding cookies later was probably not a great idea though…
Stomach Cramps And An Unexpected Hip Issue
Somewhen during the early morning hours running became less joyful again. My gut had been holding on by a thread the entire race, and eating cookies that probably contained some ingredients I am sensitive to pushed it over the edge.
The cramping intensified and made running almost impossible. I switched to a mix of power hiking and running to avoid aggravating things further. But the irony wasn’t lost on me: the cookies had given me a nice energy boost, but my body simply wasn’t willing to tolerate the trade-off.
And then my left hip joined the protest.
It started hurting quite badly on the downhills — a sharp, nagging pain that made me reconsider every footfall on the descent. The course being entirely on asphalt and all uphill-downhill didn’t exactly help.
I panicked a bit and made a quick calculation: this was a training race. Schwerin Seen Trail (61K) in March and Istria 110K in April were on my schedule this spring, and those mattered more to me. Pushing through and spending weeks recovering from the Sparta City Ultra wasn’t part of the plan.
When daylight finally came, I genuinely felt like I had already been running for 24 hours. The night had stretched itself into something impossibly long and the grey morning light brought very little relief. My hip was still hurting, and my gut was still cramping. From around 6 am onwards, I was mostly power hiking. At some point, even that became too much. Quite suddenly, my energy was completely zapped, and I started experiencing circulatory issues, so I dropped back to a steady walk.
The last laps I walked became a challenge and I talked myself into completing them to have at least 130km covered. It would be my worst result in a 24h race, but in my mind 130 was at least a nice round number.
I stopped at 3 pm, with 132 km covered.
Moving for another two hours to finish the full 24 didn’t make sense: I calculated that I could get 140km if I kept walking. But that wasn’t going to be a new personal best, I wasn’t competing for a podium, and I didn’t want to sacrifice my spring races for this training race. Plus, I was alone in Greece and needed to ensure I got back to the hotel and to Germany two days later.
Stopping was the smart decision, and I made it without guilt.
What happened next surprised me. I found my chair at the table in the start/finish area, sat down amongst all the chatter and the loud music, and almost instantly fell asleep.
When I woke up, I felt a quiet sense of relief.
I’ve always been a light sleeper, and the thought of managing power naps during the Backyard Ultra or the Pheidippides Run (where they will most likely be needed) had genuinely worried me. Would I even be able to sleep at all when it mattered most? Now I have my answer: if I’m exhausted enough, yes.
Once I came back to life, I changed into fresh and warmer clothes. There were no showers, but the race team kindly let me use the bathroom in their office. I had worried I’d overpacked. I hadn’t. When I came back to my table, I was dressed like it was just below 0°. However, it was late afternoon in Sparta with around 15°C.
I chatted a bit with my sister and brother and assured them I was ok. My sister agreed that I could call her when I was back in Athens. I had a 10-minute walk back from the bus to the hotel, and I wanted someone to keep me company.
A small favour, but exactly the support that matters when you’re cold and exhausted, alone and far from home.
Post-Race Reflections
Despite the low mileage I had covered in the Sparta City Ultra, I was not disappointed. I was not dissatisfied. I was extremely happy.
Sparta City Ultra was never supposed to be a good race. And in some ways, the fact that it was so difficult made it exactly the race I needed.
The combination of an unusually cold and snowy Berlin winter that made real training nearly impossible, a sudden jump from -10°C to +16°C, a gut that had been in rebellion for days, more than 24 hours without food, and a hip that decided to voice its opinion somewhere around the halfway mark — none of it was ideal. But it gave me something more valuable than a good result: a long, hard look at everything I need to fix before my A-races.
The most pressing item on that list is race-week nutrition. I’ve been here before. My gut derailed too much of my 2024 season and I can’t afford to repeat it. I made myself a promise on that bus ride back to Athens: a proper gut-healing protocol as soon as I’m home in Berlin, and a structured race-week nutrition plan that I follow without exception going forward. No more improvising. No more hoping for the best.
But Sparta was not only a painful reminder to stay focused on my overall gut health, but also a beautiful reminder that the people you meet and the moments you share along the way matter far more than any number in a race statistic.
I am grateful for meeting Vasiliki, who made me coffee mid-race and quietly pointed out the rainbow arching over the mountains in the distance as we were walking a bit together.
I am grateful for the unexpected confidence of falling asleep in a loud, chaotic race tent.
For the warmth of a well-organised race in a country I had never visited before.
And for the reminder that showing up — even on a bad day, even far from home — is always worth it.