Living a few hundred metres away from the start I couldn't resist the opportunity to do the Long Tour of Bradwell, but at 31 miles it was to be the longest distance I had run in a day. I have run lots of mountain marathons, but involving rougher ground and steeper hills, that are usually walked up, the actual distances are less. Being an obviously very runnable course, for the majority, I was keen not to set off too fast. And I had a new toy- a GPS watch and heart rate monitor. As a medic, with an interest in sports science, I had volunteered to be a guinea pig 6 months earlier for a research project and had my serum lactates measured at increasing levels of intensity on a treadmill. From this I knew that somewhere between a heart rate of 140 and 147 I start to go anaearobic (clearly a bad idea in a long race).

Luckily the slow pace everyone set off at was not taking me above a heart rate of 141. There were a group of half a dozen or so of us all close to the front, including Adam Perry, who at 21 was half my age, and Allen Smalls who has represented GB for ultras and won a couple of the runfurther races this year. We pretty much stayed together for the first couple of hours, spreading out in the very rough bracken descent from Druids Stone on Kinder. Adam was strong going up Back Tor with Allen close behind. So by the half way point by the Ladybower dam at Yorkshire Bridge, where my kids resupplied me with jelly babies, we were all 3 together.

However we all missed the checkpoint below Stanage, probably losing 15 mins in the process, but luckily so did the others in 4th-6th places. I was on super familiar territory now, and strode out for the next hour or so, ignoring my heart rate, creeping up in to the high 140s. It was exciting to be alone out front for half an hour or so, but Allen caught me by the top of Padley Gorge and we ran the rest of the race together. I was slightly disarmed by the ease at which he was able to hold conversation. Very disarmed by tales of his needing to get big mileage in before long events, and running all night in a training run, before doing a days work immediately on finishing...

From Abney onwards it was ground I had been on hundreds of times, but I was paying for my speedy section along Stanage and now it was hard to get the heart rate up to 140. But it was new to Allen, so I led us down through the steep descent to Bradwell, legging it down the main street afterwards. He didn't know quite how spent I was, so I was
totally delighted when he agreed to my suggestion of coming in together. A complete result for the worlds worst sprinter, who loves doing lots of races, but is too lazy to train between them! Think I had better start doing some training though- I am doing the Elite OMM with Al Powell in October. Recalibrate the pain meter...

So a great introduction for me to Ultras, and a huge thanks to Rich Patton for putting on such a great race, and to Sam, Joe and Rosie for the jelly babies! "

The view coming off Bradwell Edge - the last downhill back to the village and the finish