Where were we? Night&Day Ultra Marathon

Okay, so enough apologising and lets get writing. Kili was awesome and so was the stag do before hand but holy moley that was nearly a year ago and I have written next to nothing on here since then.

So a quick update is due. The two key things that I should posted about are 'Night & Day Ultra Marathon and the 'Sleepless in the Saddle' mountain bike race.

Night&Day is basically 2 marathons in 24 hours and if memory serves me it was just 2 or 3 days after I returned from Kili. It was fairly local to me, in Chelmsford and work was rather hectic that Friday of the first Marathon that evening. My map for the race never turned up which meant I had to go in to town on the way to the race (which was bloody annoying), I also had to find a shop to stock up on bottles of water (which was bloody annoying) and what with work hassles all this meant I turned up just in the nick of time for the race. However, as I was so late I had to be a pain and hassle one of the organisers to mark my map with the route (which was bloody annoying and embarrassing). Basically, I turned up under trained and under prepared for a very hard race and I paid the price because I simply ran out of steam and threw the towel in at about the 20 mile mark.

I don't want to offend any of the other competitors but frankly I found it bloody soul destroying that people were cheating during the race, it was easy enough to cut chunks out of the route and unfortunately I know that some runners did just that. However, if this was a contributory factor to me quitting then the other 99% was entirely my own shortcomings. Whether or not I was fully recovered from being unwell in Africa just a few days before hand is perhaps part of it but every time I looked down at the map I was spinning out. I basically thought 'bugger this lets go see my little girl instead.' so I went back to the main road and called a cab. Owing to Kili and the stag do I had not seen my daughter for 2 weeks so there I was waiting for a cab.

Annoyingly the driver was a military man who was about to go through 'p company' (one of the armies toughest physical training courses). In spite of this I was really not too pissed off with my self for quitting which to this day I am surprised about. Anyway, I am still looking forward to doing it again properly one of these days.

I wont go in to any more details of that evening but I do remember having a burn up with an Evo 8 on the way home. That's not really anything to do with running though is it.

So, to summarise. I turned up ill prepared for a very demanding race ballsed it up as a result. Simple. Next!