After Tuesday's tempo run I did a club session on Wednesday night. This involved 800 metres run followed by 6 hill repeats and then another 800 metres. Then we did the whole thing again. Tearing up that hill was great fun!
After a 12 miler on Thursday morning and 5 miles recovery yesterday I was partly tapered for today's 30K.
This was my first trail race and boy was it different to road running! Most of the course was either climbing or descending, the terrain varied from road to muddy, rocky paths by a stream and I lost count of the number of stiles we had to cross.
The first mile was pretty flat and after going around an industrial estate to break the field up a bit we headed out into the countryside. After crossing the river we got to the first queue where the path narrows as it cuts down to the river. Less than a mile later there was a really long queue at the first stile. It was pretty weird queuing for a couple of minutes in a race. If you wanted to do this course in a good time you would have to start fast enough to be in front of the pack for the first queue.
There was a really steep climb in the second mile and combining that with the queue for the stile I took almost 13 minutes on that stretch! My slowest mile ever by a large margin.
After another hill on mile 4 the route is then downhill for a couple of miles. At this point I got my second wind and running on a wide path through the forest with a big group of runners was an awesome experience.
At the start of mile 7 the hill of death starts - 3 miles of incline with a very steep start. After a slow 7th mile the gradient eased and I managed to keep up a reasonable pace and overtake quite a few people.
The big hill ended at the 9 mile point and from there it is mainly downhill for 5 miles. This would be great except often the gradient was too steep and the path too uneven to take advantage of gravity.
There is another nasty hill on the 14th mile which really seemed to break a lot of people. I managed to keep going and then ran the last, flattish section at about 7.45 min/mile pace.
My finishing time of 2:39:22 was nothing special but good enough for about 85th place out of about 350 runners. Not a particularly high placing percentage wise but then this run is mainly undertaken by serious runners - no charity runners here!
Overall I enjoyed it and was happy to finish strongly. I will probably do it again next year although it is a bit of a drive for me.
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