The strange thing about races that don’t start at the crack of dawn is that there’s so much time to sleep in, have breakfast, several coffees and go to the toilet a lot. I mean a lot! So much so that I was surprised to find that 1 mile into the race I was eyeing up trees to jump behind!
This was not a serious race for me (do I take any of them seriously?) but what I mean is that I was intending to run it like a C race and not an A race. Get round. Don’t injure or push hard.
It was simply beautiful. I had been slightly nervous that the race would end up half way up a mountain and I would be paralysed with terror as i teetered on what would look to others like a super wide path but to me like I was on the edge of death.
Anyway, nothing like that happened and it was simply a beautiful couple of hours on the trails. Nothing too troublesome and mostly just lovely paths on the hillsides.
I enjoyed the race. I made it over the finish line exactly on 2 hours chip time. So that was great for what I wanted to do.
I found the hills did tweak my piriformis a little so I walked those. I also found that my legs were a bit whacked around 8 miles in. So hopefully that was the hills talking rather than a verdict on my fitness more generally 🤣
Really enjoyed the weekend camping too at the OMM festival in Grasmere. Though on the last night they ran out of food (other than pork pies etc) so that was great for them and it also meant that we got the opportunity to go and search for food in Grasmere itself.
We found a place called tweedies which looked posh from the outside which was a concern for some as we had been camping and looked like tramps but I said that places that look posh rarely are! And so it turned out.
Great food, despite the long wait due to football being on and half the camp site being there. We did have issues with midges though outside as it got dark so that was a little annoying. But we will remember that for ages as a result.
Have you run in the Lake District? What races do you have coming up soon? Do you enjoy races that are shorter and longer too?
The Untraining Ultrarunner 