Two Decades of Trail Running Wisdom from James Elson

After more than two decades of trail running and countless miles on some of the world's toughest courses, Centurion Race Director James Elson has learned a thing or two. From fuelling and training consistency to choosing the right kit, we caught up with James to hear the lessons he wishes he'd known from the very beginning.

Take us back to before Centurion, to the start of your trail running journey. What was that, and what things do you wish you'd known then that you know now from your experience of being so embedded in it?

I got started because I was interested in travel and adventure. So a race called the Marathon Des Sables came up, which is a desert multi-day race. And a friend of mine said, “Why don't we just go for it?” And it was 18 months until the race, so we signed up, as you could back then, and just dived in with both feet.

And for the first three or four years, it was really for me more about the travel than the running part. So I guess I started in some ways on the right foot in that my intentions were very different then, but were good. I still have fond memories of all those trips. But as I became more interested in the competitive side and trying to complete more and more difficult races, I guess three things that I wish I'd known more about were fueling. So my stomach, particularly. I just didn't eat enough. I don't think anybody really did back then, and we know so much more now. But that would often lead to long death marches, you know? And the knock-on effects from that are blisters, muscle fatigue, and poor recovery. Those are all way less for me now that I know how to fuel properly. So fueling would be one.

The second would be just consistency in training. I was somebody who would run relatively infrequently but quite long miles. So I would run three times a week, but each run would be quite long. Whereas these days I'm far better off being consistent running six, seven days a week, but less at any one time and just building that consistency week after week, month after month, year after year. That is definitely the most sustainable option for me.

And the third thing would just be around kit and understanding what a difference having good kit can make, and understanding that carrying an awful lot of stuff that wasn't very lightweight and largely redundant was actually making life very difficult. So just fine-tuning gear, I suppose. They would be three key things for me.

Sometimes it takes learning the hard way, or for something unwanted to happen, before we take kit choices seriously, hey?

Yeah, I think that's right. And I think it took me a long time to learn how important it was to understand gear. And you sort of take it for granted now, you know, 10, 15, 20 years down the line, you look at what you've learned, and you take for granted those little things over time, that knowledge that you accrue.

With our coaching business we try and cut the learning curve a bit for people because there is so much to learn and understand. and with the shop as well, really our main intention is talking to customers and helping them understand what the kit is for, rather than just buying a mandatory kit list just to tick the box and not understanding actually what purpose like most of those things have. And that’s one of the reasons why we feel so aligned with what Harrier is doing for their community.

What's been your most memorable trail running moment?

Wow. That's such a hard one to answer. You know, my instinct is to go to the bigger races and the moment where you realise you're going to finish and you've been out on the trail for days at a time. Like right at the end of the Spine race or Tor des Géants, especially if I'm on my own. At the end of the spine last year, I was by myself and I had that hour before I finished where I knew I was going to finish. You kind of drop down onto the road, and you kind of can really just take the time to soak it in. So those are really memorable moments. But one that stands out is not trail racing as such, but I did the Wainwrights by myself a long time ago now. But finishing them up over a couple of days, you know, the little pockets of hills that I had left outstanding, and then coming to the kind of final summit and thinking back to what a journey that had been over lots of years of just chipping away at them, and just the experiences that I'd had along the way.

I could pick so many. It's hard. But there are two that definitely immediately spring to mind.

Talking of big challenges, are you training for anything at the moment?

Yeah, so I I've got a place at Tor des Géants again, which is a two-hundred-miler in the Italian Alps in September. So that'll be my fourth time there. And that really, you know, with kids who are sort of coming up on teenage years and being really busy with family and work and stuff, I find that if I just concentrate on two or three bigger, longer races a year and really invest heavily in them, and then be away for a week at a time, it feels like I can make the most of everything without being away a lot for lots of shorter races. So that's the next one for me.

Do you have any goals relative to the last time you did it?

Yeah, definitely actually. So I DNF’d last year, our entire household got sick, and no one made it past the first checkpoint. I think we had COVID in hindsight. There were four of us and everyone was sick. So that was seriously frustrating. The exact same group is going back this time. So I'd like, as a group, for us to have a better experience.

For me personally, I ran the race in 2022 and finished in 105 hours. So I guess I'm hoping to come in under a hundred hours, that’s a meaningful target. It's only five per cent, but I'm pretty sure I can find that five per cent. But it's by no means an easy task. So that'd be my goal.

Have you approached training differently, or has your training style changed since then? What’s giving you the edge to do it faster this time?

Since then, I've done two Spine races and another Tour and a Coast to Coast. So my experience of dealing with sleep deprivation and aid station efficiency has really improved. I didn't know any of those things the first time around, so we got ourselves in a sleep black hole and just kept trying to catnap on the trail. It sort of became about just trying to survive on as little sleep as possible, which isn't actually a very good tactic. So I learned a lot there in race management terms. 

Training-wise, I always look to learn from previous blocks. So I've already looked back at what I did last time and will have a much more structured approach this time. So I'm confident that I can make quite an improvement in my training. 

What's your sleep strategy gonna be this time?

I guess I've now hit upon a kind of happy middle ground of trying to go a long way without sleep to begin with, without building too much of a deficit. So the first thirty-six hours, I will try to go kind of nonstop. If I need a ten-minute power nap in the middle of that first night, that's fine. But otherwise, you know, it starts on the Sunday, and I'll probably go through to Monday evening without sleep.

At that point, I'll try and find a refuge which has a decent accommodation option and get say an hour to ninety minutes sleep, and then look at the overall race flow from there and aim for a similar amount each day. And then, you know, have a cat nap as and when I need to. But I think if I can finish it in four days, I could look at doing it on around five hours of sleep, being relatively a really good sort of outcome.

The faster you go, the less sleep you require, obviously. And therefore, there's a real trade-off between stopping to sleep for a long time, which is gonna drag my overall race out, and then just pushing too far the other way and trying not to sleep at all and then fading really badly.

It's always different as well, weather-dependent. If it's hot, it will really mean being more efficient with that sleep strategy.

What about bucket list races? Are there any you've not ticked off yet that you’ve got your eye on?

The one that's always been top of my list that I just haven't been lucky enough to get pulled out of the lottery for is Hardrock, which is a US 100. And the Tor is a qualifier. So I hope to go back into that again. Mount Fuji 100 is high up on my list. And maybe some Arctic stuff, you know, like the Iditarod type races where you can bike, ski, or run. They'd be more expedition-type races I might look at five, six, seven years down the line. But there are still some great races in Europe I'd love to have a go at as well.