if you’ve been reading this for a while you’ll know that last sundays race was the culmination of the past month (& more) of training. admittedly the training hasn’t always gone as planned. alot of my weeks were lower mileage than i had hoped for but i arrived on the day confident i could do 20miles without issue, knowing careful pacing could stretch that toward 30miles and the rest would have to come from mental determination.
i arrived and picked up my numbers, the weather didn’t look too great and the forecast was that the grey drizzle was here to stay. I hooked up briefly with a couple of runnersworld forumites; tim (who’s spent the last 3 months denying having entered this event) and the determined if nervous hippo! speedie steve from the tri club was also there.
quite a bit of walking about was involved to start with; from the car park to registration and back, to the finish area to deposit my crate of kit and supplies and back to the car to change and then to the start area which was half a mile in the opposite direction to the finish area.
the race began a little late as people eventually found their way to the start and was to consist of a loop round to cross the start line again before 7 full laps of the resevoir which was extremely well marked with every mile and the significant marathon and 50km distances.
i ran with tim up to the marathon point, not by design as he wasn’t meant to be there. the pace was a little quick for me somewhere under 9minute/mile pace but it felt comfortable enough.
the water stations (at the finish & halfway round each lap) were well stocked with water & high5 drink and friendly marshalls.
i haven’t any split times for the laps as i kept forgetting and then gave up! laps one and two were characterised by some impressive formation flying and landing by geese out on the resevoir, and general catching up chatter since the last time i’d seen tim (other than virtually online) was the 24hr race at tooting last october.
i paused after lap2 to ditch my windproof as it was warming up, and the sun had unexpectedly come out! i picked up a few jaffa cakes from my box and munched them on the way up the little hill after the finish area. tim had gotten away from me by this point but kindly paused to go to the loo about a mile on.
more jaffa cakes at the end of lap 4 i was starting to feel the pace, and i’m sure the hills got bigger too.
over the past few laps we had been lapped by the leaders and it was a real front row seat being able to see their speed and the gaps between. toward the end of lap 5 we were lapped again by the leader on his last lap, second place wasn’t far behind and was catching. amazingly fast these guys!
the marathon distance was a little way into lap 6 and as i crossed onto that lap i knew i was on for a significant time. approaching the marker we were lapped and i tagged on the back for a quick spurt, knowing i could get under 3hrs50. very happy with a marathon time a full 30minutes better than previously i could have stopped there with no regrets.
i dropped to a more realistic pace of around 10min/mile and let tim stride off into the distance. onto the final lap i had to drop to some walking breaks and even the running was slow but looking at my watch i knew i’d be well within my 6hr target. the few that passed me that lap were fantastically encouraging.
what was a teensie incline before the finish area by now required a real effort, and despite pushing myself on in the last half mile or so the clock just ticked past 5hrs30 as i crossed the line.
it was a well organised event that i thoroughly enjoyed. the friendliness of racers, marshalls and runnersworld peeps was most excellent.
here’s some links:
race info & results
pics (not of me luckily) & report on richk’s site
the extremely long runnersworld thread
