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Run365 - 101/365

Decided to do the same running route today as I know it and my ankles are a mess from yesterday's mountain climb. It was a great run again and I went in the afternoon to get a slightly different perspective... But it was still the same run haha, only faster at 5:48 avg pace which I'm pleased with for a hilly run. Looking forward to tomorrow's, hope the glorious weather holds up!

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Challenge 17; The Beachy Head Marathon Completed

I can’t remember when I read about the Beachy Head Marathon. It was obviously some time last year, when planning all my challenges, and it obviously appealed to me, with it’s reputation as being both a great run and one of the toughest UK marathons. The last 3 weeks have all been spent running (no gym) to get me up to speed with the distance and talked-about hilly terrain. An email went out from the race directors a week before the start, stating ‘on average this race will add 30-40 minutes to your average marathon finishing time’. This sounded pretty serious, particularly because I have no ‘average marathon time’. I ran one seven years ago in 3:56, and more recently March this year in 3:36. That meant I should finish Beachy Head somewhere between 4:06-4:16, if I were still on the same form as I was in March.

In recent weeks (2 weeks ago to be precise) I ran a new best half marathon time of 1:39, albeit on a flat route. On this logic, I could potentially push out a 3:20ish Marathon, and so again, using impressive mathematical reasoning, a sub 4 hour (just) Beachy Head time was not an impossibility. So this was the target. It would also mean a pretty high finishing position, looking at previous years results, which I would be happy with.

Another target (or nice thought really) was to not walk any hills or hard bits of the course. Doing that on Man Vs Mountain was unavoidable given some of it’s brutal gradient, but demoralising nonetheless. This course looked hilly, but I got the impression somewhere that there would be no real hard climbs, just many general ups and downs all over.

How wrong I was.

50 meters after the start line, that pictured hill climb started. That’s also only the first part of it. It levels out for a bit, then continues. People around me were talking. ‘It’s pretty long and hard. I wouldn’t try and run it all, you’ll be knackered in the first 10 minutes’. So there it was. Walking before the end of the first climb. And that was a very fair call. It was a long hilly start, and my walking/ light running it seemed to work nicely enough.

As usual, I was stunned at the pace of other people going past me from the start. I was positioned right near the front of the start line, probably in the first 30 people, yet at a guess would say I was around 300th after the first 20 minutes. Everyone it seemed, from the most unsuspecting looking runners, were gradually moving past me. From my experience, I am a relatively slow starter to find my rhythm and flow, but I would have thought my early slower pace was still quicker than a short fat 40 something year old womans. Apparently this isn’t the case.

I was heavily sweating. Wrong choice of top? I think so. Legs feeling heavy? Heavier than I would have certainly liked, at that early stage. The course profile was also looking harder than I thought it would be. There were a lot of ups and downs, and the flats were often very uneven and lopsided. After the first hour, I had covered around 6.6 miles; just on time for a 4 hour marathon. Not what I was hoping for, having heard the end part was by far the most hilly and difficult. Still, not a killer blow yet.

Over an hour in and I was still feeling slow and not into the rhythm of things yet. I made mental notes of more obvious people going past me, to try and catch them again later. Shaven-headed man in white vest. Tall blonde in short shorts. A cow. A cow? A cow. Great. Just what I needed to see. If you’re ever planning on running an event well, the last thing you need to see overtake you is someone dressed as a cow. Motivation if I ever needed it. The pace was upped. The cow was dropped. Rhythm and flow was found, but possibly too late for the target time.

Halfway point. 13 miles. 1hr 56min. I was now about 4 minutes up on my target time. The terrain was still hard going, and I needed to pee. Conveniently, a porter loo in a car park right next to the course appeared. A quick dash off, a useful relief, and back in the action. My new Salomon backpack was proving very useful; I was carrying a litre of liquids and a bunch of energy gels. When the food and water stations appeared, I could simply sail on through and not stop. Value time saved.

3 hours in and I was feeling knackered. I was around the 19-20 mile mark, and only a couple of minutes ahead of time. I felt I was fading hard now, and the ‘hardest hills’ were still yet to come. Just after the 22 mile check point, I saw shaven-headed man in white vest again. A few hundred meters in front was also tall blonde in short shorts. I had almost caught them, and then, just like that, I hadn’t. The spoken-of Seven Sisters kicked in, and again, there was a lot of ups and downs. And they were much bigger. I had around 5km to finish, and 25 minutes to do it in. 1km every 5 minutes is a pretty standard training pace for me, and not one I’d expect to do comfortably at the end of a marathon, let alone over these hilly bitches. 4 hour target seemed hugely unlikely now, and I was just looking forwards to finishing.

Over the course of the year, my descending has improved a lot. Strangely, I think my climbing has possibly become weaker, but I felt I could really let loose on the way down hills in the Beachy Head Marathon; none more so than the Seven Sisters. They’re wide and relatively consistent, so I practically threw myself down them, to try and make up for all the walking. The walking. Surely I had walked too much? Surely others had run much more than I managed over many of the climbs? Time was still against me, and I felt I had nothing, literally nothing, left to give.

After 40km, the Seven Sisters were over, and there was around 2km left to go. The time was 3:51. I had under 9 minutes to get to the end of the course, which would have meant the 2 quickest kilometers I had ever run, back to back. However, In my previous 2 marathons, I found out something about my running in this same scenario. That is, somewhere, I can recruit hidden energy I didn’t otherwise know was there, in the dying moments of the run.

The course had leveled out, and I knew a slight descent to the finish was on the cards. On Thursday I had downloaded a new gangster rap song that had been running through my mind. I skipped to it and turned my earphone volume up to it’s max. There it was. Energy overdrive. Before I even really thought about it, I was flying. Within 2 minutes, I could see shaven-headed white vest man up ahead, right next to short shorts blonde. In less than another minute, I had sped clear past them. I was running my legs off. Could I do the time? Descent time, round a corner, through a narrow section, and straightened up. There, at the bottom of the hill, I could see the finish line. I went down faster than I have ever descended, and got over the line. 3:57. Three minutes to spare.

I was shattered. More than shattered. I stopped my running watch, only to have it reveal to me that I ran the last km in 3:44, and the last mile in 6:06; my new 2 personal bests. Both were downhill though, so does that really count? Don’t care. White vest guy and short shorts can down the hill a few minutes later, both missing the 4 hour mark by less than 1 minute. Tough break.

Later that evening I checked the official results. I had finished 116th out of 1,425. I was in the sub 4 hour club too, which contained 127 people that day. Few. I had an email from Strava awaiting me too, regarding the event. Turns out I set the 10th fastest time down that final section of the day, and I sit 14th fastest of all time on the Strava list of 686. Not too shabby.

Again, this challenge has been great. I got lucky with the weather, as I’ve heard some real horror stories regarding Beachy Head in the rain. No matter. Challenge 17, you will be one to consider again in the future. Thanks for the great run. Now on to the next challenge, another marathon......

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Just completed a 5.5 mile fell fun. The hills were PUNISHING but I feel great now.

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The Swaledale Marathon Fell Race, 9th June 2013

I’m writing this after getting back from a mint evening ride at Hamsterley in the glorious balmy sunshine!! For some reason my legs feel flippin' mint after feeling absolutely dead last week after the Swaledale. Here's how it went..... On the 9th June it was Swaledale's fell race day, when I was younger, maybe 12, maybe 13 years old or there abouts I used to come to the fell races with my parents and help out at the checkpoints. I always remember the Swaledale as being a nice summer race and promised myself that one day I would sit on the other side of the fence and race it myself. It seems a shame with the year my Dad quits racing that I picked up my trainers to compete in this one, it used to be one of his favourites.

So anyway, I entered back in January and then focused my attentions on the Allendale challenge race in March (which can be read here: The Allendale Challenge) after that I kind of stopped running. I mean with the weather improving and the evenings becoming lighter my bike started getting more use again. It wasn’t until a few weeks before the race that I remembered and then thought "Oh shit, I need to start running!". I’d left it too late though, if I started training my legs would be probably worse during the race than if I didn’t train at all therefore I didn’t bother, merely doing a four-mile run with Steve’s mum the week before as a warm up. I arrived at the village hall at Low Fremington (which is near Reeth) in North Yorkshire on the Saturday morning, got myself checked in and was happy with my race number ‘510’ (the mountain bike lot will guess why!).

The racing started at 9.30am and off I went, it started with a bloody big hill climb, it was relentless and my heart rate was off the hook! It was also the hottest day ever, with no clouds to be seen Mary (Steve’s Mum) had smothered me in sun tan lotion.

There were about 12 checkpoints altogether, it seemed to take forever to get through them all. I only had one bottle of juice and had drunk it by the first checkpoint but I knew I would be able to re-fill there. I re-filled my bottle at every checkpoint however once I hit the Gunnerside one later in the race I thought it would be a good idea add some salt to my intake as I had been getting cramp in my calves during the last few miles and knew I needed salt in the system to get rid of it. Maybe I had put in a bit too much though, with just four miles to go until the next checkpoint I was stuck with salty water which tasted disgusting! Gutted!!

Anyway, I cracked on and eventually got some fresh stuff, the last checkpoint was in view, I had just one more climb to go and then a descent the rest of the way. I seemed to get a second wind (stop that tittering at the back!) and overtook about seven people, three of them were the girls that I had been passing and being passed by from all day. No way in hell were they passing me again, I just ran through the pain and kept going!

It was coming close to the five-hour mark and I really didn’t want to go past that so turned my music up and got my head down! I came into the finish where there were loads of people waving and cheering me on, the sun was still boiling and I was sweating so much! I got 4hours 59mins!! Get in there!! Considering I'd had no training for this event I was buzzing!

Gonna train like a weapon next year and smash it out with faster time I reckon. I’m down this neck of the woods again next weekend for the ‘ArdRock Enduro’ Can’t wait!!