Ascent: 3078 ft
Rucksack weight: 3kg
Calories burnt: 3526
Time: 4h57m (including 40 minutes standing around wondering where I am)
Doing this so soon after a marathon wouldn't usually be a good idea, but training for the MdS doesn't allow any let-up unfortunately. This was a LDWA Challenge event, so open to runners, and guaranteed to be tough on the legs. This event also proved that you really do smell quite bad when you get covered in cow and horse poo.
I was backwards and forwards to the car changing my kit just before the off trying to decide what to take: we were in a warm valley floor but up above in the hills it was dark, murky and wet. So I took pretty much everything.
There was no opportunity to run much of the first 3 miles as it was a stiff uphill climb into the clouds. For LDWA events your route is planned out in detail (usually!) on 2 or 3 sides of A4 paper. Guess what happens when it gets wet? My route instructions were becoming a ball of papier-mache and my hands were covered in ink. Initial panic: I'd only covered 4 miles and those people in front of me were getting further away! This meant I ended up going faster than I wanted to in order to keep up with someone who had dry instructions (I could have waited for someone to catch up with me, of course, but that didn't quite seem the thing to do).
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| Not my photo (or dog!) but the visibility says it all. The dog looks as fed up as I felt at this point on top of Pendle's Hill. |
Of course, after several days of rain in the Pennines it's a bog. This isn't ideal for wearing road running trainers, as I soon found by slipping away all over the place (I resolved to get some trail shoes).
To compound the miserableness my now soaked second shorts also started to slip and drop around my ankles: fortunately I was wearing my new Nike Dri-fit lycra shorts underneath (still chaffing-free!). I tried for quite a while to keep the second shorts on: I tucked everything in (didn't work) and jutted out my stomach to create a beer-belly (didn't work: I don't drink).
Eventually I just decided to put up with the cold and put my second shorts into my rucksack. This must have only taken a matter of seconds but didn't help the rest of my run: at this point the route split, separating those running the 20 miler from those running the shorter 11 mile route. Most of the field seemed to be on the 11 mile route which suddenly left me alone. Where had the other 20 mile runners disappeared to in a few seconds? I guessed that the route forward must be this track over here . . . and sure enough found a line of runners up ahead.
This is where I had my experiment with determining whether cow and horse poo smells. So desparate was I to catch up with anyone who had a dry set of 20 miler instructions I failed to stay upright as I ran along the steep side of a very slippy bank (the cows and horses had sensibly moved over to the opposite, drier, bank). Then I slipped and sailed down the steep bank through numerous cow pats and horse dung piles: the whole of my left side was a slick of animal poo.
I was not happy, because that also put paid to me being able to use one of my water bottles. And I really stank.
At the next checkpoint the Immutable Law of Grannies came to the fore. Seeing me completely covered one of the volunteers, a dear old lady (the others had retreated to the back of their cars looking horrified when they saw me coming), pulled out a tiny tissue from her cardigan sleeve and offered it to me:
"Ooh dear, I don't know if this will help to clear you up? I'm really sorry, I haven't got anything else."
"Don't worry, I'm fine, thank you very much anyway."
It's been many years since my Nan, long since departed, did a similar thing for me when out and about. But, satisfied that grannies the world over will still always pull out a tiny tissue from their cardigans to try and clear up any spillage of any size, I knew that all was right with the world. After cheering myself up with a couple of slices of Swiss roll and some jaffa cake I went on my way.
And got very lost. There was no-one around and I was instruction-less. Not knowing where I needed to get to for the next checkpoint made my Ordnance Survey map almost redundant, though I did know my general direction was north-west! Eventually I saw another couple of runners also struggling with a map and a GPS: they had pristine WATER-PROOF PAPER!! instructions, but the route instructions weren't very clear at this point. We decided on the likely route forward and onwards we ran.
Just before the last checkpoint was a very steep downhill. Covered in mess anyway I threw caution to the wind and flew down . . . and my left leg fell, to halfway up my thigh, into a silted quagmire of a stream. The summer's vegetation had covered it very well! My right calf muscle going into painful spasms I managed to pull my left leg out slowly from the clawing mud with a long sucking sound.
Happy that nothing was broken, I shuffled gingerly to the last checkpoint and then onwards to the event HQ to finish. Covered in mud and animal poo I didn't stay too long chatting with the other runners and instead quickly wolfed down my soup and yet more cake and drove home.
But not before calling my wife:
"Er, yep, had a fantastic day. Could you put down some newspaper in the hallway for when I get back?"
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| I smelt as bad as I look. |
"Well . . . I smell a bit, and . . ."
Once home and clean I ordered the ideal solution to disintegrating route instructions for these events (following a handy tip given by another competitor who had an intact set of instructions at the end, albeit very muddy). Useful lesson learnt!
