Friday 6 April 2012

Ultra no 10. Haworth hobble aka Wuthering Hike

Ultra no 10 was the 32 mile Haworth hobble. The Hobble is the first race in the 2012 runfurther series starts in the West Yorkshire town of Haworth. I had first ran the event in 2011 in 5 hrs 32 mins (  this year as things were going 2011's time would be a tall order to match)
The Friday night before the Saturday race I had driven from York to Sheffield to meet John Vernon and then go on together to see top fell runner 'Angela Mudge' talk about the book ' the 'Worlds Ultimate Running races' ( hardmoors is in the book :0) ) firstly I was hoping to see 'Unbreakable' ( the story of the 2010 western states 100 race) but alas I had no ticket. John and I had waited to see if they would let me in but no such look the film was sold out. After a long but good night I arrived back home at 0300 in the morning. Time for 2 hours sleep then up to prepare for the Howarth Hobble, yep!! great prep I know!!

I picked David Cremmins up on route (David is planning on completing his 100th marathon this year, so he can join the 100 club, at last count he is on 77, a lot of the qualifying events he has completed are trail ultras rather than road marathons, as David cycles but doesn't drive he often gets a lift with me and we split fuel)
Arriving at Haworth we join the mega long ques for the toilets ( outside portaloos ) Come to mention portaloos, I forgot to mention in my last blog  about arriving late for Ultra no 9 and having to jump in a portaloo minutes before the start of the 'Golden Fleece' while a couple of hundred walkers and runners waited  for the off!  I stepped out of the loo and everybody was really quiet?, I then realised this wasn't just a race brief but also a few words about the past Scout leader who had recently died and  the event was in memory of, and of course I had flushed the chain just at the wrong moment .

I chatted to a few familiar faces including Nick Ham, Daniel Aldus, Mark Dalton, Martin Dietrich and John Vernon and then it was time to gather for the mass start.  I said a quick hello to Richard Webster and Ross Moreland and then we where off. Not a huge amount to say about my performance only it was pretty dire. I pushed on at the start but quickly felt shattered. After awhile I caught up with Nick Ham exchanged pleasantries and pushed on, David was running with me, I knew I was holding him up but he was pretty happy at the pace I was running. The lack of sleep the night had affected my energy levels. I knew I wouldn't come anywhere near my 2011 time so gave myself another target to catch Mark and Danny up. Studley Pike eventually appeared and played havoc with my average pace, I decided to take a very steep shorter route up the hillside and suffered for it, my legs filling up with lactic acid within seconds and fellow competitors who were 5 mins or so behind me at the start of the climb had already summitted the hill and were descending the other side.

Switch forward an hour or so and more suffering was to be had, a combination of a bad headache and a lack of carbs  = one hell of a bonk,  anyway enough of my misery, coming up to the last 100 metres and my body decided to wake up and manage a sprint to hopefully come in under 6hrs. Well it sprinted but failed to come in under 6 hours by a minute or so. Mark and Danny came in after myself and David, they had been behind us all the time. As I recovered again I got to chat to Martin D, John V, Mark and Danny, Nic Ham. Karen and others, sometimes the best thing about a run is the finish!! the chance to chat to such great people made all the suffering well worth it!! cheers guys.

1 comment:

  1. Hi John, all things considered you did well on this one. And I'm not sure what my excuse was for trailing in 30minutes later :) The loo flushing story at Golden fleece has reasserted my commitment to try and get to these events earlier too.

    ReplyDelete