The One Where I’m Given a Place and I’m Still in Shock
There are a few films which document a certain race – The Dragon’s Back. It spans from Conwy to Cardiff in Wales, and it takes in all the spiky, spiny, mountainy bits. It’s 236 miles, and if you like nicely rounded numbers, 380km; oh and it ascends 17,400metres.
The aim is for participants to run it in six days, and about two year’s ago I watched a film about it, saw its brutality, and turned to my husband vowing I’d never even consider doing a run like that – it looked to be certain death.
Fast forward to right now, and I find myself in a strange predicament where I’m preparing to run this beast, and I’m feeling nervous mostly, but also strangely excited about doing something that’s so extraordinarily far out of my comfort zone.
How on earth did this happen, you may ask. Well, I chanced my arm and wrote to my editor at Women’s Running Magazine if I could ask for a press pass to run the Ourea Events race, the Cape Wrath Ultra. She’s lovely, so she said to go for it, but what happened was that the media passes had already gone for that particular run. Instead, they asked, would I be interested in running Dragon’s Back Race?
I said yes. I flipping said yes. It just happened. I couldn’t stop myself, I turned the negatives around and figured it would be an immensely fun challenge, one that wouldn’t be without a hell of a lot of ups and downs (yeah, bad pun I know).
They say do one thing every day that scares you, so I suppose this ticks the boxes for six days in September.
I’ve got to do some serious prep now. I need to get acquainted far more with mountains. I need to up my navigation game and I have to find myself some shoes that will keep me upright – not allowed to run the Dragon’s Back barefoot!
I need all the help I can get here. I’ve booked onto two recce events on the mountains with RAW Adventures and I’ve tapped up a local Mountain Leader for some navigation training.
Next thing to do is run. A lot. A hell of a lot.
Watch out peeps – Dragon in Training!
Vegan Fitness Runner 