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| Bolton Hill Marathon |
It all started a few months ago when I booked the Bolton Hill Marathon. This is billed as
one of the UK's toughest marathons and was due to take place on Sunday 10th March. The Bolton Hill Marathon route follows trails and country roads along the West Pennine Moors taking you up and over Winter Hill (the hill where all the North West's television comes from), past Rivington Pike and Barn through Barrow Bridge village and down the famous miners 63 steps where 200 years earlier miners had climbed from the village to the mines and quarries on the moor. Then past White Coppice and along the famous Anglezarke Reservoir.
Nothing so stupid at the moment, right? Well I was due to work 11pm to 7am immediately before the marathon, meaning I'd have to leave work and drive straight to the start-line but that's not too bad, people go running after work all the time. Indeed I've already done that before on two other marathons this year.
Now as the race date got closer I started to see more updates on my Facebook from Denzil from the Church of Denzil Running Club who having enjoyed the Crewe Déjà vu 1 and 2 so much had decided to organise his own "Groundhog Day" track marathon for Saturday 9th. I like Denzil's races. They are low key, friendly affairs with good chat, food and a nice memento when it's all over.
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| Groundhog Day Track Marathon |
Naturally my mind started pondering on whether I could squeeze this event into the weekend's activities and before I knew what I was doing I'd emailed him to see if there was any last-minute places available. There was. And I was in. So, it was now two marathons in two days. With an 11pm to 7am night shift in-between. Oh and a 7pm to 7am night shift on the Friday night before the track marathon.
Margaret Thatcher once said that "sleep was for wimps". That was one of many stupid things to come out of her mouth. As the weekend loomed closer the realisation of what I was going to do to myself became more apparent. Still, I was thinking it would make good training for the 24 hour Thunder Run in June that Giles and I (and hopefully Chris B) will be running.
Denzil had scheduled his track marathon to start at 10am at Telford Athletics Track a couple of miles out of town.
This meant only one thing.
I had time to squeeze Telford parkrun in at 9am first.
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| Telford Parkrun |
All this means that I don't have much room here to write about what the actual races were like. Well, to be honest, that's no great problem. I've written up a report on the inaugural Telford parkrun a few weeks earlier. The Groundhog Day track marathon was 105.5 laps of a track. Not quite as good as the Crewe Déjà vu, but then i would say that wouldn't I? :D The Bolton Hill Marathon was cold. And hilly. And hopefully, another Strider will write it up a bit more thoroughly.
Telford parkrun
Groundhog Day track marathon
Bolton hill marathon
Michael
Madness personified
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