Sunday 29 June - Otley

Where's Bertie? He's in a car park in Otley, where it's free on a Sunday, then 50p per hour from 7.30 on Monday morning.

Weather: Hot and sunny,

When I said yesterday that it wasn't impossible that we might return to the Yorkshire Air Museum within the year's validity of our tickets, I didn't expect to do so quite this soon! Having surveyed the options of where to go today, and selected one of them, I realised that our onward route was going to take us past the museum. Yesterday's lunch in their cafe had been sufficiently substantial that I hadn't room for cake as well, and I thought it would be remiss to pass so close by and not take the opportunity to sample the Battenberg cake that I'd had my eye on yesterday.

 

Mick went for the TwixKat, whilst I had the Battenberg. Neither of us was disappointed.

A quick visit to a few exhibits of the museum, then back to Bertie to continue on to our next destination, on the way driving past the two other overnight options that I'd identified, having selected the furthest, here in Otley. We arrived to find that the Temporary Holiday Site we'd intended to use doesn't open until tomorrow (in my defence, when I gave the App start and end dates for our stay, I thought it would only give me options that coincided entirely with those dates, particularly as it was only two nights!). Contemplating what we could do instead, one of the possibilities was to continue down to Halifax, mow the lawns at Ma-in-Law's house (for which purpose we are currently carrying a lawn mower around in Bertie's boot. Bet there aren't many motorhomes driving around the UK so equipped!) then go on to the Peak District. That plan met a stumbling block when we realised we'd forgotten to bring keys to Ma-in-Law's house with us. We can 'borrow' a set from the estate agent, but not on a Sunday.    

In the end we popped Bertie in the far corner of one of the town's car parks and, after a look around the town (didn't take long) and a very short walk along the river (my shin is still recovering from last week), we decided we would just stay here for the night.  

Friday & Saturday 27-28 June - Melbourne, East Yorks

Where's Bertie? He's on a 5-pitch campsite a mile outside of the village of Melbourne, just SE of York, where it costs £16 per night, plus 27p per unit of electricity. 

Weather: Sunny intervals, and windy, but pleasantly warm (shorts & t-shirt without a fleece)

We were sitting at home a couple of days ago when Mick read that the engines of the Nimrod at the Yorkshire Air Museum were going to be run this weekend. "Well, let's go!" I said. We'd no reason to be at home and, in fact, there was even greater incentive to go away, as Erica broke last Monday morning and the garage couldn't fit her in until next Thursday, so we were without a car. 

Mick booked this campsite, and we drove up on Friday. It's a nice site: a flat, mown field split into five enormous pitches, each with an electric point, a tap and a waste water point. Payment for both the pitch fee and electricity use is on an honesty system. 

The downside is that it's not close to anything - although under normal circumstances I wouldn't think anything of the 1-mile walk to the village, but right now my left shin is only just starting to forgive me for the abuse I gave it last weekend.

It is, however, only a fifteen minute drive to the Air Museum, and that's where we headed this morning. 

We spent the best part of five hours there. Just before we went in search of lunch in the cafe, we nipped over to the Nimrod and chatted to one of the volunteers, whose time at RAF Kinloss coincided with Mick's. At the end of that, Mick asked if they ever had open days when you can go inside the aircraft, whereupon we were invited to hop over the rope and do so there and then. 

Mick's old office

Lunch then filled the next hour, before we returned to watch the engines be fired up, run up to 80%, and all the moving bits (rudder, flaps, bomb bay doors) get exercised. It's a process they try to do every month, to keep it as a 'live' aircraft - one of only two remaining Nimrods in that state.  

With the engine run complete, a group of people were asking questions of one of the volunteers, who in turn pointed to Mick, and said that he had first hand knowledge. There ensured a lengthy Q&A session -  Mick and one chap in particular could probably have carried on for half the afternoon!

We didn't quite see everything there was to see on the site, or at least some of it we only saw at a glance. After four and a half hours, we were flagging. However, our ticket is valid for a year so it's not impossible that we'd find ourselves nearby again during that period.    

Our intentions had been to go from there to the pub in Melbourne for tea, but it transpires that the pub changed hands in the last couple of weeks, has only just re-opened and today was their 'Midsummer festival' with live music and a barbecue. We drove past, but I declared it too busy, so we didn't trouble ourselves to find somewhere to park, instead returning straight to the campsite.  

I recorded a video of the whole engine run process, but otherwise only took these three take photos..   

Another 24-Hour Race

When I entered this race I was open about my objectives: to achieve a podium position*, and to increase my 24-hour Personal Best, which stood at 130km. As the weather forecast started trending upwards in the days before the event (the highest I saw was 32 degrees with an overnight low of 18), I moderated my expectations and decided that 100km would be a more reasonable objective.

Not only was the weather not ideal, but my state of rest wasn’t either. Friday night had been hot (29 degrees in our ill-insulated bedroom at 11pm) so it was an uncomfortable night. I woke up fully at 3.30am, got up at 5.30, and by 7 we had loaded the final few things into Erica and were off.

Emergency purchase last week – a fridge/freezer for Erica. I didn’t think the usual coolbox would cope adequately in the heat.

The camping/campervan set-up at the event has changed and whereas last year we were in a nice shady spot within paces of the start/finish area, this year we were further away and in full sunlight. We wasted no time in getting blinds onto all of Erica’s windows, then sat around for a few hours.

I’d like to say that at noon the 3-2-1-Go came, that being the start time of the race, but at noon we were called to enter the starting pen, which wasn’t a quick process with someone writing down each person’s bib number as they entered. Then, once we were all gathered there was a briefing that no-one could hear as the loudhailer broke after the first sentence. We started 15 minutes late. 

(*the day before the race I discovered that the podium at this event only comprises 2 places, making this objective a little harder to meet.) 

Lap 1 (10.55km)

Happily, there was full cloud cover at this point, so even though it was 30 degrees, we weren’t also being baked by the sun. I started near the back and after walking the first 5 minutes I proceeded at a 2:5 run:walk (as against the 3:1 I’d originally intended). That seemed manageable even in the heat, but it was early days.

To save losing time in walking to and from Erica between laps, Mick carried a chair over to the start/finish and met me with a bag full of stuff I might need. I did my first turn around in 2 minutes last year; it took 4 this year and the only extra things I did was to soak my hat and shove a bottle of frozen water down my bra for a minute (my times this year are taken from my recorded gpx track, which, with the software I’m using, only gives me a hh:mm time, so all 'in camp' times are plus or minus 59 seconds).

 

During Lap 1, still settling in and not yet questioning my life choices 

Lap 2 (21.1km)

Things started feeling hard during Lap 2 and as much as I felt like I should at least try to run some of it, I also knew that I didn’t need to run at all at this stage. It was more important to make it to the cooler hours in a fit state to go on than to get laps under my belt. In reality, Lap 2 was only 2 minutes slower than Lap 1, but I finished it feeling like I’d already done 12 laps, which really didn’t bode well for later.

Lap 3 (31.65km)

It rained! Never have so many people been so happy to have rain during a race**! It was light and intermittent, but it brought some relief from the heat.

I returned to Erica at the end of this lap to change socks and shoes. After my feet dissolved into blisters during my race in March, I bought new shoes with a massively wide toe box and I had been optimistic that they would work so well that I’d be able to wear them all race. By the end of Lap 3 I had three blisters: inside of left foot; outside of right foot (pressure against the footbed – looks like a need a wider heel for hot weather as well as a wide toe box); and outside of left big toe. As I’d walked across Scotland in warm weather without incurring a single hot spot, never mind a blister, Mick suggested maybe I should switch to those shoes, and even though they are uncushioned trail shoes, it seemed like a good suggestion. They felt comfy, so that’s what I went with.

(**This probably isn’t true, but you get the idea.) 

Lap 4 (42.2km)

By the end of Lap 3 I could see, with a sinking heart, patches of blue sky approaching and soon into Lap 4 the sky cleared. Thirty degrees now felt so much warmer, and of course it was even more humid after the rain.

I started chatting to people during this lap, and spent the second half with a woman called Katy. We distracted each other nicely and I would have happily continued with her, but she was taking a pause after that lap (her 3^rd).

Another quick start/finish line turn around, where I downed a can of ice-cold ginger beer, whilst sitting with a bottle of ice shoved down my bra, after which Mick surprised me with a Calipo ice-lolly to take on the next lap with me.

Lap 5 (52.75km)

Lap 5 was miserable. It was too hot. I was too tired. I only had a few fleeting conversations, and the second half of the lap went on for weeks. I just desperately wanted to lie down where I was for a kip and could not see any way that I could possibly even get myself to 8 laps, for a double marathon, never mind to achieve my new target of 10 laps.

The only slight ray of light was when I thought “I’ve never felt this bad at this stage of a race before”, only then to remember the hideous 10 hours of indigestion during Lakeland 50, allowing me the positive thought of: “Well, it’s not the very worst I’ve ever felt at this point in a race!”.

Messages between me and a friend during Lap 5

To add injury to insult, in the last kilometre, I developed a pain up my left shin.

I went back to Erica at the end of the lap completely dejected and Mick had to put up with even more whinging. That doubled when I accidentally tried ripping off my already bruised big toe nail (existing injury, not from this race). That pain was quite something!

Amidst my whinging (to which Mick did quite reasonably point out that I’d chosen to do this), I asked, if I wasn’t going to achieve any of my objectives - not even my reduced hot-weather one - what was the point of exhausting myself and incurring a long recovery period? Why not just go home right then and be immediately fit to go out and do other things that are on the wish list?

What I actually did was, with hindsight, exactly right: I went for a shower, tended my feet, had a big bowl of pasta, a cup of tea and a couple of salt chews, then I lay down and told Mick to wake me in an hour. About ten minutes later I got up and said we may as well get on with it (‘we’ because it was now dark and Mick was going to join me for my first night lap – after midnight I was happy to be out by myself, but not between 10pm and midnight). Despite the tiredness, I didn’t feel like I was going to manage to sleep and if I was going to get to 8 laps then the sooner I did it the better (not only from the point of view of the cooler night temperatures, but the fact that lots of people would be targeting 8 laps, and the faster I got there, the higher up the leader board I would be). 

How Lap 5 felt

Lap 6 (63.3km)

I’d like to say that Mick got to see the course that I’ve been around so many times, but it was, of course, dark – that was the whole point of Mick being with me.

We chatted our way around and saw a dozen other people – a mix of those we overtook as they were walking but slower than us, and members of the relay teams who would speed past as we called ‘well done!’ in their wake. By the end of the lap I was no longer miserable and I had a glimmer of hope that I could get to 8 laps.

Mick, of course, couldn’t be on the course with me and also preparing whatever I wanted at the end of the lap (during every other lap I called him from half way round and with <1km to go to relay what I wanted), so I grabbed water from the water station, then whilst I nipped to the loo, Mick fetched my mug, so I could make a cup of tea in the competitors’ tea tent. I then set out on Lap 7 as Mick went off to bed.

Lap 7 (73.85km)

I enjoyed Lap 7! This was the first night time lap on my own, but I was only about 500m in when I saw head torches ahead. It took me 3km to catch up with them, then I spent the next couple of km or so with company. Perhaps not the best tactical approach, but I’m generally happy to slow down to chat at the expense of faster progress, but keeping an eye on my objectives, when this pair slowed, I bade them farewell and trotted on. I’ve no idea if I saw them again, as not wanting to blind either of them with my headtorch, I didn’t see what they looked like.

I passed a few others on this lap too, and the universal topic of conversation was questioning how it could be so hot at that time of morning (1-2am).  

The only downer in this lap was the pain in my left shin.

Lap 8 (84.4km)

This one was truly solo. Three relay runners shot past me, at different points in the lap, but otherwise I saw not a soul, unless you count looking across the lake as I was finishing the lap to see a relative stream of people just coming out of camp. They’d timed themselves nicely to see sunrise across the lake; I’d missed that this year.

Whether to continue for a 9th lap? I asked the chap manning the timing mats whether there were live standings available, and he said not, but that there was a print out on a board in the main marquee. It had been published at 10pm, and the next iteration was due to go up ‘soon’. On the one hand disappointing to not know exactly where I stood, but I also couldn’t decide whether I really wanted to know.

I visited the marquee, just in case they’d already put the morning standings up, but only learnt (via a most user-unfriendly set of data) that at 10pm the leading lady had completed 6 laps, with me and one other on 5. What I didn’t know was whether: a) the leader had completed a lap a few minutes before 10pm and thus was only just ahead of me; b) they'd slept overnight; or c) they'd been out on laps at the same time as me. 

A quick trip to Erica, disturbing a slumbering Mick, I grabbed what I needed and headed back out again. 

Lap 9 (94.95km)

Absolutely nothing about this lap sticks in my mind! At the end of it, I went back to Erica, got Mick out of bed so I could access the cupboards, and made porridge and tea, tending my feet again whilst I ate. I also had a text conversation with Ali (friend and very knowledgeable retired GP) about how things were going. The general view on the shin problem was that whether it was shin splints, a stress fracture or tendinitis, I probably wouldn’t significantly affect the recovery time by doing one more lap on it.

But did I want to go back out? Given that everyone else would also have been affected by the temperature, would 9 laps be enough for second place this year? Possibly, but without seeing those standings, I couldn’t form any sort of informed view. Mick repeatedly went over to the marquee, to no avail.

Deferring the decision a little longer, I lay down and vaguely dozed for twenty minutes, then I got back up and declared that I had another lap in me.

Mick walked me to the start line, via the marquee, where the standings were just being pinned up. “There’s only one woman on the leader board, and that’s Aggie with 9 laps” I was told. “But I’ve also done 9 laps!” I said. I looked at the leader board, and sure enough, there I was, two places behind (thus she had completed her 9 faster than I had). I then scanned the full participant standings as fast as I could and confirmed that, as far as I could see, there was no other woman on 9 laps.

Lap 10 (105.5km)

The news that I was definitely in second place gave me a boost of adrenaline. My blisters stopped hurting, and I ran more of this lap than I had any since Lap 1. In fact, I finished Lap 10 only 2 minutes slower than Lap 1. Conversations were minimal – if there was another woman who could squeeze in extra laps, I wanted to get to ten before they could, to maintain second position.

Towards the end of the lap, my mind naturally turned to the potential for an eleventh lap. I’d felt so good and energised in Lap 10, that even acknowledging that I could crash and feel awful within minutes, I couldn’t see any good reason not to go for an 11th.

Foreseeing this scenario, Mick had already checked with the organisers that I had until 1215 to finish (due to the late start; last year they started 3 minutes late but finished on time), and was unsurprised when I ran over the finish line and declared my intentions. To save time, I grabbed some water and a flapjack from the adjacent water station and darted (relatively!) back out. 

 

I took advantage of every little bit of downhill on Lap 10 to get a bit of easy speed  

Lap 11 (116km)

My shin was really not happy on this lap, but my feet were still fine and whilst energy was dipping, I was still moving fine (when the now near-gale wind wasn’t in my face!).

The final 400m of the course comprises a gently downward slope, a tiny up, then flat to the finish, and I didn’t half put a sprint on during that section, for no good reason other than I could. Seeing two women ahead of me, I called “Is that Katy?”, she turned and confirmed it was, but I didn’t stop for another chat, just explaining “11!!!” over my shoulder as I passed.

Having crossed the finish line (at 11.37, so the late start didn’t come into the equation in the end), I waited for Katy to finish, to congratulate her properly and thank her again for her company way back on Lap 4. The timer chap then came over to congratulate me on what he saw as an excellent performance in the conditions. 

Overshooting the finish line

The Medal and Prize-Giving

Once you’ve finished all the laps you intend to do, you go over to the marquee, give your name and the number of laps you’ve done and they give you a medal and the appropriate pins (half marathon, marathon, ultra & double marathon) for your distance (this honesty system for pin-giving worries my sister, but the official results aren’t affected even if someone did lie to get more pins than they are due).

I discerned some excitement in the volunteers voice as she asked me for my number of laps, and when I told her, she declared “You’ve won!”.

“Really?!” I questioned. I was so sure that Aggie would have been matching me lap for lap, that I hadn’t really contemplated the possibility of having passed her, but it turned out she’d stopped at 10.

Having finished with time to spare, I had time for a quick shower before returning for prize giving.

Receiving my trophy and a bottle of bubbly that I designated as Mick’s, not just because I don’t drink, but because he deserved an award for the excellent support he’d provided

With hindsight…

It was such a good decision not to stop after 5, 8 or 10 laps!

I ended up enjoying more laps than not.

I feel like I did all the right things in terms of food, drink and rest, as well as taking time for a shower when I was wilting after Lap 5 and over all don’t think I could have done much better.

The Aftermath

An even greater surprise than winning was that I woke up on Monday morning feeling perfectly well. No post-race dehydration hangover and mental fuzziness. My body wasn’t too sore either – except for the shin, which is very sore indeed. 

 

Even though there wasn't an awful lot of running involved, there's clear evidence that had I been able to keep moving forwards at the times when I took long breaks, I could have easily fitted another two laps in. 

Incidentally, it took me over 4 hours longer to reach 81k than it did during my race in March, entirely due to the temperature. 

Let’s talk about the weather

In the lead-up to an event, I find it fun to screenshot the weather forecast each day. In my opinion, you may as well draw weather icons out of a hat as look at the BBC’s forecast 14 days out.

This is how it played out preceding my most recent event: 

Now let's look at actual recorded official Weather Station data to see how the day really planned out:

In terms of max temperature reached, Saturday was the joint hottest day of the year, tying with the previous Thursday, with both days hitting 31 degrees:

However, Saturday was the real hottest day, having more hours of high heat, as shown in this chart showing official weather station temperature data:

As these charts show, the temperature was slow to fall too, and of course, those temperatures are in the shade; in the sun it felt like a humid furnace:

24 degrees at 1.30am! That’s a nice summer’s day, yet it was the middle of the night.

It also got a bit breezy on Sunday (quite pleasant, for most of the morning), building to ‘Near Gale’ by 11am, but I was nearly done by then, so it didn’t affect me much.

All of this is to say that of all the weekends this year, Saturday at noon was not the ideal time to be setting out on a 24-hour race, coinciding exactly with the hottest 24-hour period of the year. One comforting factor was that this wasn’t the first hot weather of the year, so there had been some opportunity to acclimatise at least to the mid-twenties. I could also draw on the knowledge that I’ve coped well with hot temperatures in the past (41 degrees in the Mojave desert on the PCT; 34 degrees in the Pyrenees). And, of course, everyone else was going to be dealing with the same weather, so I could only hope that I was able to cope with the temperature better than my competition!

 

Catch-up - April to May 2025

 Just a holding post so that I don't have to remember how to slot a post in out of date order when I come to write this one.

Wednesday & Thursday 9-10 April - Llyn Celyn(ish)

Where was Erica? She spent the night in a parking area on the minor road that runs to the S of Llyn Celyn (W of Bala)

Weather: Daytime: Wall-to-wall sunshine, warm and (thankfully) the biting wind of last weekend had gone away. Night: A bit nippy. 0 degrees at 7am.

How do you get around the need to unpack at the end of a trip? You fail to pack for it in the first place!

Our failure to pack for this trip was definitely in the category of ‘pure comedy’.

In my defence: a) we’ve had a lot going on the last few weeks; and b) the main purpose of the trip was an overnight backpack for me, and had I gone by train, I wouldn’t have considered that I’d underpacked at all. With the benefit of hindsight, we should have delayed by another day, even though we’d already delayed by six, which would have given time to prepare properly.

As it was, such were the time pressures (admittedly some caused by my choice of what to do with the time I had available*), that it was gone 7pm on Tuesday before I even started packing my backpack. I figured everything else (including a couple of urgent unrelated admin tasks) could be sorted in the morning.

I woke yesterday morning and, 2.5 hours before our intended departure time, I impulsively decided not to proceed with the intended well-planned and researched trip to the W side of the Black Mountains, but instead to hastily plan something completely different. The revised plan took me about ten minutes, was entirely unresearched and was to take us to mid-Wales, W of Bala.

With admin tasks all done, I chucked a few things into a crate, failed to even glance at the Erica/Bertie packing checklist, and we were about ready to leave the house when I asked Mick if he was packing anything, suggesting that maybe he might want a pair of PJs and a pair of pants. That is literally what he picked up. This may sound scant, even for an overnight trip, but (if you ignore my backpack) it’s more than I thought about. On reflection, a change of clothes for the journey home would have been nice. As would have been a pair of PJs, as things worked out. Putting some water in Erica’s tank would have been good too. And a pillow: that would have added comfort for Mick.

A five minute detour to a Tesco to buy diesel turned into twenty-five, due to roadworks (we later passed a cheaper fuel station directly on our route). It was 1330 by the time we arrived in the layby from which I was going to be setting out.

After a spot of lunch, it was 1355 by the time I struck out up my first hill. Mick had, quite rightly, pointed out that I could do this one as an out-and-back without my pack, swinging back past Erica to pick it up before heading on to my second hill. Given the tinder-dry ground conditions, it was a comfort that in the next 1.5km I passed two streams that were running. It was false comfort, I didn’t pass another in the next 3.5 hours.

Water, water, definitely not everywhere.

On my way to my final hill of the day, I’d seen where there was water further down the valley, so having bagged that final hill, I made my way down to the river.

Getting there involved crossing some really rough ground, a barbed wire fence then some ridiculously rough ground. I finally reached the water to see that it was barely moving and looked plain nasty. Worse, there was clearly not going to be anywhere remotely campable, even by my ‘chuck the tent up wherever’ standards. Worse still, I was now faced with trying to retrace my steps, or taking a more direct line back to the track … and on the direct line route stood two rows of commercial pine plantation, each only about 10-20m deep, but still as impenetrable as these things always are. I headed to the nearest side stream, hoping there would be a way through the trees there. I suppose there was, but it was a bash and a crawl and certainly not a responsible or sensible route. 

Spot the water/pitch-seeking detour. Because I'd seen the water at that point and from afar it looked like I might find a pitch there, I hadn't even noticed that without any detour I would cross the same water further down just a few hundred metres later, although due to the farmhouse at Amnodd-bwll I wouldn't have expected a discreet pitch near there.

Predictably, within two minutes of rejoining my intended route, after the nugatory 500m/20 minute detour, I found a side stream that was trickling. I could also see what appeared to be some abandoned mine buildings further up the hill that I thought might net a pitch out of sight of the farm house just 200m away. First, though, water. Oh, the joys of a brand new water filter! Our ten year old ones were well overdue replacement!**

As I completed my water faff, I contemplated the sense of backtracking uphill in the hope of finding a pitch, and checked the map for likely spots on my onwards route. It was at this point that I noticed I was only a 7.5km walk from where Erica was parked. It was now 7pm. Being all good track, it would take me a maximum of 1.5hours to cover that distance, which would see me there in the last dregs of daylight. I could faff around looking for a good pitch or I could have a nice comfortable night with Mick. Obviously, I opted for the latter.

It turned out the farm house I’d been concerned about was derelict (but with a new roof, hence fooling me). It also turned out that there was plenty of campable ground beyond it. However, it was lowland sheep-grazing land, in lambing season, and thus a shepherd was sure to make rounds both late and early. I never want to be found pitched where I shouldn’t be … and Erica was calling.

On the walk out to the road (still on my intended route), I got enough of a phone signal to convey to Mick where I was and to expect company for the night, but not enough signal to receive news as to whether he was going to hold tight or would drive along the road to meet me.

At a fork, had I taken the lower vehicle track I would have been on the road when Mick drove by. As it was, I was on an old grassy track, up above and paralleling the road – but at least I saw him, even if he didn’t see me. I scrambled down the bank and over the fence, and thus was standing in his path when he came back.

It was a late tea, and early to bed, and a superbly quiet*** and comfortable night.

We were away from our overnight spot early, and I was on my way up my first hill, just a few miles along the road, by 7am. Down from my second hill by 1130 (carrying water off the hill with me, so we could make drinks for the journey: see earlier mention of failing to even pack enough water for this 24-hour trip), it wasn’t long before we were on our way to Montford Bridge Café (by Shrewsbury) for lunch. We’d stopped in there last July and found it to be a gem, with excellent and plentiful food for a ridiculously low price. The prices have now gone up and the quality of the food (or at least, the quality of the cooking of it) has plummeted. Disappointing!

We were home by mid-afternoon.   

(There will be more detail about the hills themselves at gayleybird.blogspot.com)

(*On the day before departure I cooked and dehydrated six meals. I hadn’t been able to find the bag of dehydrated lentils that I thought was left over from last autumn, and if I was going to have the dehydrator running, then it made sense to cook two different meals and put them all in at the same time, thus getting a head start on preparing food for the TGO Challenge next month. I then found the missing bag of dried lentils, so didn't need any of those meals after all.

**The cheapest Sawyer Mini that I’ve seen on sale in the UK are £25 each, and from a source that I would trust not to be fake goods, they’re £35 each. I imported a pack of four from the USA for £54 delivered.

***Quiet except for the incident where I woke up to the sound of voices. No idea why my phone had decided to randomly start playing an audiobook, and my earphones were right next to me.)

 

A Running Event: Part 2

Race Day

As the Race Director counted down the “3-2-1-Go” on the strike of 10am, the competitors scattered. However, there are only so many routes out of a small village and I wasn’t the only person heading north. Half way across the first field, I looked back to see how many people were behind me. None was the answer. I was already firmly bringing up the rear. Even so, I stuck to my intended pace, feeling sure that I would later pass (in distance, even if not on the same route) some of the whippets rapidly pulling away ahead of me.

Actual routes, captured after the event had finished. The green circle marks the finish line.

My confidence that my pace was right lasted until the second field, when I suddenly realised what I’d not considered. On the map snippet below, on the left, in red, is my original route from the original start point; on the right, in blue, is my actual route from the revised start point:

I knew I could cover 80km in 12 hours and my original route had been pretty straight. What I'd not considered was that all of the westerly sections at the start of my new route would allow the expanding circle to gain on me, and I hadn’t calculated whether that would require me to start faster. Would the half-hour head start be enough, or would my wiggly start see me out of the race embarrassingly early?

My heart rate had been fine until that panic set in. It then rocketed and stayed disconcertingly high for a disconcertingly long time.

As it went, I didn’t get caught by the expanding circle. I can’t remember how close it got to me, but for much of the time it was between 4 and 6km behind, and once my route straightened out and I was happy that I was safe from being caught (barring disaster!), I had a nice relaxed day.

Mick, on the other hand, had a relatively stressful day. He was meeting me on average every 7.5 kilometres, which was pleasantly often for me (most times I just grabbed food and drink and was gone again) but meant that Mick didn’t have much time to spare between getting stuff out, putting it back away, and driving to the next location.

My route proved to be a good sight-seeing tour too. The Thames Path and Oxford were particular highlights.

Disappointingly, my feet started disintegrating from about 15km in. This is mind-boggling. I cover a lot of miles on foot*, my feet are pretty tough, and except for my left little toe, I wouldn’t say that I’m prone to blisters. My longest training run (before structured training went out the window when we unexpectedly moved to Halifax a month ago) was 36km, I wore my race shoes, and didn’t get a single blister. I’d worn the same shoes in Spain in temperatures pretty similar to race day. I was wearing the same socks as usual too. So, I’ve no idea what caused not just a couple of blisters but TEN of them! (*I did 19 outings of 15k or more in training, without my feet disintegrating.)

More disappointing than the blisters was the pain that developed on the outside of my right knee from 27km in. I could walk pain-free, but as I ran the cramp-like discomfort would get progressively worse until I had to walk again. When I say ‘progressively’ it got to the point that I could manage 30 paces before it got too much. Fortunately, walking reset it, so I could walk a while then run 30 paces, and repeat. I later twigged that if I entered the Ministry of Silly Walks after 30 paces, I could up the running to 50 paces. Later still, with the assistance of paracetamol I even managed 100 paces. But, at least I could keep up a brisk walk.

This format isn’t a sociable one. I caught up with one pair and one solo in the entirety of my route (none of whom reached the finish line), which amounted to around three minutes of conversation. It turned out not to bother me in the slightest and I was perfectly happy being in a physical yet virtual real-time race.

Remember me mentioning all that time spent researching and honing my route to make it as efficient as possible? Nugatory effort! When I left the dreadful excuse for a tow path on the Oxford Canal and saw the speed of cars on the B-road I was then meant to be taking, I quickly decided to revert to the canal route, even though it was going to add a couple of kilometres. Time was then lost replanning the next support point.

By the time I got to that next support point, it had been raining for a while. The weather forecast had been for showers throughout the day, but the reality was that it was dry and warm until quarter to seven, after which it rained continuously and, for much of the final three hours, heavily. Once it was fully dark, it was irrelevant which brightness I used on the headtorch – all I could see was the light bouncing back off the rain.

Fortunately, I’d changed my shoes when Mick met me for the penultimate time before the finish line, because the rain very quickly turned the nice firm not-rained-on-for-weeks towpath into a mass of puddles with sections of slippery mud, and road shoes had gone from perfectly fine to performing like ice-skates.

Constant lightning over to the west was a cause for mild concern, but it didn’t get any nearer to me.

I took to the road for my final 4km to the finish. Turns out that my chosen finish point sits atop a tiny hill. My plotted 76km route (which became 78km with my route switch to the canal) had a mere 350m of ascent and 50m of it was in the final 3.5km.

By the time I reached the finish line I was pretty wet, with the water resistant zip on my jacket having been overwhelmed. I was also cooling down. My feet were a mass of blisters. My knee was poorly. Surely the sensible thing was to stop and not go for ‘last woman standing’. I knew I might regret stopping; I knew (due to the feet and knee) that I might regret continuing, so it wasn't an easy decision.

As I climbed into Erica and checked that my dot on the map had turned green (confirming that I had crossed the virtual finish line), I knew that I needed to make a quick decision, before I got too cold.

I dithered. I dithered some more - for twenty minutes in the end, with the expanding circle ever creeping up on me. Finally, I declared that Carole (the only other woman still going) could have it, and I was done. I typed my resignation text message to the Race Director, got my tracker out and had my finger on the power off button. Then it occurred to me that I was tied with the only other woman who had reached the finish line (all other solo women had DNFd). If I just continued a little further, I would leapfrog her. So, I told Mick to give me a ten minute head start, then come and pick me up.

Peeling off my wet waterproof, I put on two dry ones (no more rain getting through a front zip for me tonight!) and shivered off up the road. Five minutes later Mick phoned me: “Carole has stopped and turned off her tracker”.

“Oh ****! I’m going to have to continue now, aren’t I?” I said.

I wasn’t far off her crow-flies distance when I came upon a road closure (not the sort that I could ignore and nip through anyway, but major HS2 works). My phone was not enjoying the heavy rain on its screen, but between me and Mick (who was now parked just beyond the road closure) we came up with a plan. The best option we could see was to start heading ENE, which isn’t ideal when only northerly movement counts.

Stopping with only 100m more on the score board than Carole, I felt a little guilty at not making the effort to beat her more resoundingly, but equally there was no value in continuing when I knew that all other women had stopped and that I had achieved 'last woman standing'. I happily climbed into Erica, turned off my tracker and finally sent that resignation text message I'd typed a few kilometres earlier.

My final stats were 67.5km as the crow flies, and 81.5km actually covered.

The overall winner covered 107km as the crow flies and 119km real distance – outstanding route efficiency (but no way would you ever catch me on the roads he used).

(I feel that I should declare the fact that there was a disappointingly small field in the solo women category. However, I can only compete against those who turn up, so I'll happily take the win regardless!)