The day started early with some porridge and another drive. As usual, the older people of the population- the rellies i was staying with suggested we would need 2 hours to get to Keswick, which was 40 miles away straight up the motorway. Of course we didn't, it took us just over an hour which meant loads of time before what was a relatively small race field. We walked around the town in search of coffee and toilets, and I actually had a cappuccino from costa. This was silly, but I had chosen to take a fairly lax approach to race prep, in keeping with trail running ethos, and had even had a couple glasses of wine the night before.
When we got to race hq, the morning was really heating up, and there were numerous warnings about these not being pb conditions, and that we should ignore the king of the mountain challenge, which is cudos awarded to the person who had the fastest run up lattrig fell, this was followed by demon descent, which is the same challenge but on the way down.
I'd done a fair bit of hill running in previous months, with the Halstead and Essex marathon and my week in the Pyrenees, so I thought I'd be ok running it all, even for 22km.
The race started with a couple of laps around the field. Even then, the ups and downs were beginning to sap energy. I found a lady who seemed to be going a similar pace to me and decided to stick with her, we were doing around 9mm, however once we got out of the sun and onto the trail proper, she started pushing it to more like 8:30mm so I let her go. Lots of people overtook me in the early stages. I would see them later.
In this heat, what I was focussing on was the first water stop, which would be at 5km. The route was fairly flat until just before when an ascent brought most people to walking. I continued running at first, but my breathing and my heart rate told me to be sensible and walk it. It was a bit long for a proper attack. At the top of this mini ascent you were rewarded with water, and then the course began to slope downwards. The path started to get quite rocky, and this is where I really appreciated my trail shoes, they protected me, and I could go flying down the hill at quite a pace. I overtook lots of people here who were doing the classic braking their stride downhill.
At the end of this descent, there was a bridge to cross, a small ascent, and then the timing mats for king of the hill. On the first time around I was still running here, on the 2nd lap I didn't bother. It was a really long ascent of latrigg fell and by the time we were out in the open, everybody was walking. Some stunning views though. Got my phone out to take a pic of derwent water.
After what seemed like forever, and contemplating why I was doing the 2 lap version of this race, there was another water station and timing mats for the descent. This descent was quite scary because at this stage the elite 11km runners started to pass me, and they were going really fast and the path was very narrow. Added to which there were a few runners ahead of me blocking my path and how fast I wanted to go down hill.
Eventually I reached the bottom to begin the second lap. Was quite thirsty now, and I stopped at a high 5 station to take on a few cups of the yellow drink they were serving, then it was back to the forest trail. I had urges to walk here, my legs were getting tired, but I managed to find a lady who seemed to be going a sensible pace, I kept here about 5meters ahead of me. In doing so, I managed to pass quite a few people who had passed me in this sort of area in the first lap. I kept going and was really appreciating my endurance base at this stage. Not only was I still running, but I was already passing people at the second lap, who had gone off too fast. I kept going until that first ascent, and I stopped at the water station for quite a bit gulping down water-'was very thirsty by now.
On the second ascent of latrigg I caught up with a couple of ladies dressed as Minni mouse taking pictures of themselves-they were doing the 11km race. I offered to photograph the two of then together and managed to loose myself about 2 minutes as they were swapping cameras around, and I was pressing the wrong button! Turned out they were raising money for a charity who sends terminally ill children to Disney land. One had lost her son last year and the day after the race would have been his birthday. Wow, what an inspirational mother!
That breather had given me a second wind, I marched up the mountain, and then went flying almost all the way downhill. I was starting to feel the impact in my legs. On the final bit of the descent. My garmin was reading bellow 7mm! Very close to the end now, and on the home stretch, I saw David with the camera just as I got back to the field. There were about 200m to go and I thought I was pushing as hard as I could, I wasn't going to catch the ladies ahead so I held back, but then a man started running beside me and shouting lots of encouragement, and somewhere I found a sprint finish :-). 2:38:04
Stats:
291st overall
64th woman
115th in the 0-34 age group
King of the mountain:
Lap 1: 15:17
Lap 2: 19:44 (shouldn't have stopped to take pictures)
Average: 17:30
Demon descent:
Lap 1: 19:27
Lap 2: 17:45
Average: 18:36
Mile 1: 9:29
Mile 2: 9:16
Mile 3: 9:13
Mile 4: 11:25
Mile 5: 15:20
Mile 6: 8:54
Mile 7: 10:40
Mile 8: 9:55
Mile 9: 9:48
Mile 10: 11:49
Mile 11: 13:04
Mile 12: 19:53
Mile 13: 8:55
Mile 14: 8:29
Last 0.28 miles in 2:26 which is 8:50 pace.
No comments:
Post a Comment