Having finished and completed the short tour I thought this year I would go back and have a crack at the long tour. The short tour works out at approx 17 miles, this year’s long tour would come in at approx 35 miles.
So being a creature of habit off Nikki and I and the bear went to the same little camp site as last year. Parked up on the Friday night and snuggled in with some more carb loading (yes chips are carbs they are potato after all) off to sleep I went.
I was awoken at about 05-00 by the most horrendous wind, no not Tara but the wind outside the van was pretty much turning us over. From this moment I knew things were going to be tough. At about 7-30 I packed my gear including all my FRA equipment list for the race and headed to the start. Once at the start I had a dilemma, What shoes? As some of you may know, I have been particularly fond of my Hoka trail shoes of late and find they give me a great deal of comfort. However, they do blister my big toe slightly and the terrain for this race as I know from last year is very variable with some tough rocky descents that can be very slippery, and what my Hoka’s make up in comfort they lose big time in grip. I therefore opted for my Fellaisers from Solomons. The problem with these is that they offer unbelievable grip but the comfort past 15 miles is tough especially as there was such a mix of terrain.
Armed with a map and a chance to test my recently acquired skills from the FRA navigational course that Matt Simister and I undertook I got on my way with Jackie opting for the GPS unit and imputed course. As we set off it was evident that this was a quick field with no tourists or fun runners just experienced fell runners/racers and the field was approximately about 80. This could be that they could only find 80 people
stupid enough to take this event on, or it could be that it’s a low key affair.
The route would involve 6400 ft of climb or over 2000 meters in new money and I therefore knew that however many times I ran up Mill hill lane this wouldn’t suffice. The other thing bothering me was that it had been over 5 weeks since my last big run (the Rhyl Marathon) and even longer since I had done this sort of distance with any climb at all. However, I am training for a monster event and the best way to train is to take these things on.
As the route set off along past the cement works we began our first climb, up towards old moor to join the limestone way. At this time I did not require my map as I knew the route as it formed part of the short tour of Bradwell route. This was followed by a rocky descent down in to the small but picturesque town of Castleton and the first water stop. With fuel on board we shortly began the next climb up towards Hollins cross. I would love to go through the whole route but it would just take to long and bore you all, the route is available on the Wolfspit fell race website but basically it went something along the lines of if you saw a hill you ran up it until you can run no longer and then you came down it at the steepest part of the descent.
The highlights for me were definitely Stanage edge which was spectacular Winn Hill was thrown in for good measure offering fantastic views over the Lady Bower reservoir.
At approximately 9 miles the terrain had started to rub the skin off my feet, this pretty much continued to the end making things more and more difficult to keep going. The choice of shoes had been the right one but it would appear I had put the wrong feet on. Despite copulous amounts of Vaseline the blistering just kept getting worse and worse slowing my already dodgy pace in to a slow grind full of determination to avoid another DNF.
The first cut off time was to be at 5 hours. I managed to make this at 4-38 which was slightly slower than I would of liked but going with the problems I was experiencing the heat and the terrain I was happy to make it at all. The cut off was at about 18 miles, and the final finish had to be completed by 10 hours. As I continued from that point I just thought the worst must be behind me and things would now be ok. That was of course before I entered the long hard climb to the top of Stanage edge. This slog really hurt but the view from the top made it worthwhile. As I dropped off and down to Burbage I used my real map reading skills to take one of 3 routes available opting to go down the left side to the “toads Mouth” believing that this would in fact be a more stable path for my already dead feet.
Eventually with my feet screaming at me to stop I realised to finish within the cut off time I would have to put some effort in. With Jackie still with me and helping me keep going we started to up the pace and found a lost soul who we towed in to the finish. We did at one point take a slight detour around about the Bole hill area due to a path just disappearing and appearing covered by rock. This though was the only time when I went slightly wrong and it was noticed immediately and simply put right.
As i powered down the last hill and keeping a close eye on the time I eventually hit the road for the short run back to the start. Coming in at 9hrs 48 was not what I had planned. I anticipated on 8 hours but to be honest I was just glad this was over.
For more information visit the Long Tour of Bradwell website.
Paul N.