50 miles though is a long long way. I drove to Rotherham on Friday evening and spent a night sleeping in the Van which was great. Lovely and cosy even with the frost in the morning.
Kitted in shorts and t shirt in the freezing morning air with my headtorch on - sometimes my life is bizarre and this was one of those moments.
Now all I knew about the RR50 was that so many people said it was awful. We set off pretty quickly and all was going well at about 8.ooam we started to catch up with the walkers and i remember crossing a section of fields at about 8.30 with the sun breaking through the most beautiful mist and thinking that this was a good sign and things were going to be ok!
I was following the strip maps and had indicated on them the time I would like to be at the checkpoints. I was aiming for an 8hr finish but i knew that would be optimistic especially with doing Nottingham 50k just 6 days earlier!
CP one - I was on track and pleased to see Helen just in front of me. CP 2 again still on track and I was beginning to think that 50 miles was going to be a long way.
I had a little incident before CP1 where I ran into a stile heading up to Keeper's Column, I managed to gash my forehead quite badly and was a little suprised to find quite a lot of blood dripping down my face! oh well!
I started feeling a bit low at about 20 miles but knew that I was almost half way there, the tendonitis in my foot was playing up a little so a loosened off the laces and took some Ibuprofen (For my head and my foot!) and this seemed to ease.
The 25 mile cp was a welcome site and lots of people were very kind checking if I was ok!
As usual things start to go vague here and my memories all cross and I can't remeber what happened in what order. I do remember coke being available at the CP in the park and this was wonderful. I also got chatting to someone who had set off earlier and was just getting back into Ultras. Lots of lovely people were chatting away to me all the way round. I put my ipod on a couple of times but actually found that I didn't feel that I needed it and it was more of a hinderance than a help.
I actually didn't feel too awful at any point but I did get bored of running! 6 hours and I start to need a new activity - I had broken the race down into 8 ten K races and as I got near the finish I started going into 5k mode! Anything to get the hours to go quicker.
I ate - 1 gel. about 15 jelly babies. babybel x2. tuc crackers x2. Biscuit. 2 squares of choc and a few crisps.
I also drank 2 litres of zero, 2 litres of nun - plus additional water and coke and juice!
I was so so so pleased to know when there were only 8 miles left and this last section was great as I was runing with some lovely people - none of whoose names I remember - sorry!
Finished in 8hrs 25mins
2nd lady.
