OK, so the race was meant to start at 8.15am. This was cool but there was a little bit of apprehension about the fact that normally before I run these big distances I eat my Brekky and I am gone. This time I knew that I would be waiting around 2 hours from Breakfast to start line. It turned out the race was delayed and I had a 3 hour period without food before the start. This was annoying because after 30 minutes of running I was hungry and decided to stop to get food in early, whilst this meant that running out of food became a possibility i gambled on the fact that there would be food at the checkpoint to offset this problem.
Aside from feeling hungry and need to stop for a pee, the first ten miles literally flew by. This was due in no small part to the fact that I was running with a great bunch of blokes, I believe a couple of them had military backgrounds so the humour was down to earth and the conversation was great. Thanks Gents. I actually dropped back from them after about 10 minutes because I was worried about the energy of the start pushing us off to quickly but I ended up catching them up a few minutes later and decided the benefits from running with a group were worth having, besides I was not running beyond my self anyway.
Somewhere around the 12-15 mile mark I needed to stop for a comfort beak and I never saw the group again after that but I trust they did well and perhaps I will bump into them at some point in the future. I hope so.
The The next thing worth mentioning after that was the fact that some idiot dog owner did not have suitable control of his animals and whilst I dodged one of them, the next one stood statue like right in my way and the resulting knee to its head must of hurt it. It certainly hurt me and my vicious response of 'For f**ks sake' aimed at the selfish owner was fairly simple and to the point. However, the bang to the side of the knee completely seized it up for a few seconds and whilst I stretched it out I wondered if a less reasonable man would of gone and thrown the owner in to the canal.I am sure you getting the idea that it was the last thing I needed at the 20mile mark. Probably best I don't even get on the subject of dog turds along the canal. Bloody disgrace.
No sooner had I got moving again, I met up with a couple of friends, Helen and Kirsten and they ran with me for a while which was great. I did make me realise though that I had ran the first 20 miles quite quickly because although the race was delayed by 45 minutes I pretty much reached them at the same time we agreed before knowing about the delay. This was probably not sensible and I knew I should take it easy if I was to keep my chances of finishing favourable.
Within a mile the girls dropping back another Friend, Greg joined me and for a jog, again it was great company but unfortunately it was at around this point that I discovered that the CP's did have food and I grabbed a Pain au Chocolate. God it tasted good but it did not really work well once it was inside. Lesson learned stick to what you know.
Greg and the girls met me a further 3 times between them and I cant overstate how cool this was of them. A lot of work went in to driving around the various unfamiliar villages in order to cheer me on and I am very grateful. Thanks again.
A couple of these ambushes overlapped with me falling in to step with another runner called Sonia. It was at a bridge that was almost exactly 26 miles in, that I turned around and said to her: 'well that's a marathon done I am going to have a snack to celebrate'. We ran the remaining 19 miles together and it was wonderful, we both agreed that its very unusual to find someone of such similar ability and we had both lucked out.
Well, just for the record; the hardest parts were between 19miles and 26miles. Some pretty tough moments in there and there I focused on 35 miles and not 45 miles fir a lot of this time. I wont bang on about the final ten but suffice to say they passed quicker than I thought they would. One funny memory of the final ten was when Sonia would bump into me, or more likely me bumping into her we were so British about the whole thing! 'sorry', then the reply would come from the other; 'no, my fault'.
OK pretty lame report but, I want to make a note for myself that the terrain was more punishing than I had anticipated. I had never really planned for a trail race with the extra toll that takes on the ankles but oh well done it now! So I am obviously pretty hardcore!
I will no doubt make reference to the race many times in future posts but a couple of things worth mentioning now are that I miss it. I feel like I should still be at the canal. It felt right and it kind of made sense. I knew why I was doing it-but don't ask me to explain that.
A friend of mine said to me today that I was now part of an elite group because I had run an Ultra. All I could say was that I honestly did not feel like that, I feel like I have done something for the right reasons and I got high doing it. It makes other things seem a little clearer at the moment but it certainly does not make me an elite athlete. I think you could even argue over the 'athlete' bit. Please don't mistake this as me being harsh on my self like people have after the previous T2T post (thanks for reading), I just feel like its something I should be doing, something we should all be doing. I have put my money where my mouth is and it feels great!
Thanks for reading and congrats to everyone who finished and also to everyone who even had the balls to turn up and have a go. I enjoyed meeting so many of you but I feel I need to make a special mention of a man who finished about 90 minutes after me and walked directly from the finish to the bar and ordered a pint of Stella, then another and so on.......heroic stuff. He was there until at least 10.30pm and drank a good 5/6 pints of STELLA. How? Why? Even my running partner Sonia had a pint of Guinness in front of her in the pub. Impressive stuff. I started on the fruit juice but at about 10pm My good friend Max and I decided to blaze up a couple of Montecristo No.3 and whilst lager is not the ideal paring it seemed wrong to drink anything stronger.
Another guy was keeling over whilst turning green and Greg found two others being sick in the toilets. I know that at least one guy was hospitalised through dehydration. I have read his post on the forum. He was sure he was being sensible with fluids but after the race he could not hold any food or fluids down and eventually A+E was the only way forward. 2L of saline drips and drugs to stop future vomiting sorted him out but it goes to show even in a British January you can get your self in trouble.
Raw data:
- Approx number of starters: 140
- Number of finishers: 83
- My time: 8 hrs 41 mins 48 secs
- My Position: 41st
A letter dropped on my door matt this morning (spooky timing) reminding me that if i wanted to row the Atlantic at the end of the year then I had to pay a deposit before the end of the Feb. Any one up for it? Let me know if you are.
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