I was dreading this race - I had the most stressfull day I had ever had on the friday before. Maybe I should not try and move house (mortggae nightmares!), start a new business, have too much runfurther admin to do as it is the end of the year, and run the runfurther series all at the same time, oh and try and earn some money by working too! I know everyone has lots of this too but maybe they can cope better than me!
Anyway I thought I'd never sleep friday night but I did - like a log - so when at 5am the alarm went off I bounced out of bed! Unusual for me! I needed to get to Buxton in plenty of time as I also had to set up the banners and flags for the finish, sort the photographer and team vasque out and get to the start line on time. I had one minute to spare at the start line - so what was I stressing about - at last the race started and I could chill!
I had a very chilled race - I spent most of it chatting with a bloke called Jamie who used to live round the corner from me - we sorted out all the worlds eccelogical problems out, compared climbing notes on Nepal and other places, talked about jam sandwiches (he promised me jam sandwiches at a checkpoint - they weren't there!!!), running on roads compared to off-road (good conversation as this race had a lot of tarmac in it!) and a host of other subjects - it made the event go very quickly and as he'd done it before i didn't need to navigate - what a bonus! About half way round (near castleton) I had realised I had forgotton my "brufapen" tabs and my foot had started to ache well throb actually, so Jamie gave me some of his - what a star - this helped alot and I sped up while poor Jamie went a bit slower so we parted and I started to gain on friends and other runners.
The next section around Chelmorton was the dreaded road section (unfortunately for a number of runners this was their second long road section as many had taken a wrong turn for an extra 3 miles of the stuff - that may have broken me!!!), so I now realised why I was gaining on people - I wasn't getting faster at all - they were just doing extra miles! The road eventually ran out and the fields were back, phew, my ankles were getting worse and one of my shoes was too tight and even loosening it didn't relieve a tendon on top of my foot from killing, so I just ran faster - well you get to the end quicker then and you take the shoes off and ignore the pain and get home and drink wine in the bath and relax! Oh how i dreamed at this stage!
Mind you getting faster down the last technical bit of Deep Dale was a mistake as I went arse over tit whilst over taking someone - how embarrassing!!! Still I survived and intact! The next checkpoint they promised me a downhill finish! They lied - there was definately an uphill tendancy to the fields!
Oh well - push on - over take and sprint to the finish - yes I still had a sprint finish and actually have a picture of me looking alot less "duck" like - phew I even look like a runner now!
I collapsed at the finish on a much needed soft gym mat and moaned! It was a hard race for me but I loved it and I'd only lost about half a stone in liquid/sweat in the heat!!!
Jamies wife was 3rd girl (first two were team vasque Lucy Colquhoun and Racael Lawrance) and he finished about 40 mins behind me - so his brfapen tabs must have been my life savers! I had a much needed massage at the end and won the prize for the funniest faces whilst screaming in agony on the massage table! Still it helped and now only have 76 miles to go - bring them on! The bath and wine when I got homewere great but maybe should have eaten first as then nearly fainted 3 times and had to cook my food sitting on the kitchen floor so I couldn't fall any further!!!
