A Running Event: Part 1

At the end of November last year, I entered a running event. The concept:

Everyone gathers at a start point. Everyone is issued with a tracker. At 10am the Race Director counts down “3-2-1-Go” and everyone runs off in whatever direction they chose, on whatever route they’ve designed. After a half-hour head start, a circle (centred on the start point) starts expanding on the tracking map. All competitors need to stay ahead of that circle. If it overtakes them, they are out of the race. To be classed as a finisher, you have to reach 40 miles as the crow flies within 12 hours. There is then a decision: stop and be happy with just being a finisher, or carry on, still staying ahead of the ever-expanding circle, to compete for ‘last (wo)man standing’.

When I entered I had my eye on the last woman standing as my objective.

I didn’t even enter until I’d spent a couple of days plotting a route, researching it in minute detail, replanning, and honing it to make it as efficient as I could (because when being chased by an expanding circle, you want to be going in as close to a straight line as possible).

I then sat down to write myself a training plan and realised that March wasn’t as far distant as I’d thought. I set to training with gusto and even went out on New Year’s Eve to recce the canal section of my route (which in turn caused more replanning, because the Oxford canal has the worst excuse for a tow path that I’ve ever seen).

Two and a half weeks before the event, news came through that the start point had been moved. After much replanning, I concluded that there wasn’t a route from the new start point that I was happy with – I wasn’t prepared to go on busy pavementless roads, and I didn’t want to do too many field paths for fear of mud season and being slowed by navigation. Clearly, by then I didn’t have the opportunity recce any revised route. My disgruntledness was then overtaken by events and it became clear that I wouldn’t be taking part anyway.

Then Ma-in-Law died more suddenly than expected, and then there was no reason not to go along. The last month had been far from ideal from training, sleep and food points of view, but I followed my own advice: if you don’t start then it’s definite that you won’t finish, thus you may as well start. And given that I’d resigned myself to not taking part at all, my competitive ambitions had gone out the window, and thus my sub-optimal revised route didn’t seem such an issue.

Another two afternoons were lost to planning, with the end result of the first section of my route going from 13.5km to 15km. However, with some more efficiencies gained elsewhere my total distance to the notional finish line (at 64.4km as the crow flies) was still 76km (other people had far more efficient routes, but I wasn’t willing to dice with death on busy roads).

I then spent another evening producing support notes for Mick:

There were five pages like this. Did I mention that my reputation for meticulous planning is sometimes justified?

That brought us to the eve of race day. We’d only just got home from Halifax, I’d hastily thrown kit into bags, bought a bit of food and we had a Travelodge booked two-thirds of the way between home and the race start.

That reputation for organisation and planning? It’s not always justified, as evidenced by our departure from home.

As Mick released Erica’s handbrake at the start of the journey, I thought I’d best just look through the suggested kit list to check that I had everything. I was sure that I would, but no harm in checking. But by then I’d lost wifi, and there’s no mobile signal, so it was a mile and half later that I finally opened the kit list … and realised that I’d forgotten some quite important items. Erica was turned around and back home we went.

After something of a comedy of kit gathering (the first item I’d grabbed was missing by the time I closed the front door again and it took me a frustrating amount of time to relocate it), we were off again.

Except for the false start*, the journey was smooth and our Travelodge worked out fine for the night – a huge room and surprisingly quiet for the location – and I slept well.

(*In the interests of full disclosure of quite how badly organised I was for this event, I also realised half way down the motorway that the notes I’d painstakingly written to describe my route through housing estates, so I wouldn’t find myself searching around for alleyways, were still at home. I also realised on race day that I’d printed Mick’s support instructions, but failed to email it to myself, so Mick had the only copy.)