I’d factored the Hope 24 Trail Running Festival into my training. It offered hills, time on feet, and sleeplessness. All things that I’ll need to be able to deal with on the Dragon’s Back Race.
Off I headed to Newnham Park near Plymouth to meet up with my team and to join the camp which included a bunch of friendly faces from the club I used to run with, The Langport Runners.
We were vague on strategy. The concept was a five mile loop, a baton, and only one member of the team allowed on the course at any time, over 24-hours.
We made it up on the hoof. We would all run one lap, two or three times, then do a double when it got dark to give the others a chance for some sleep, and then finish off with whatever we had left.
What worked so beautifully is that as a team of four ladies, all over the age of 40, we were evenly matched and we can all run sub one-hour loops. We just kept going.
The course was beautiful. I’d say undulating, but probably most would say hilly. After the sixth lap there were parts that I was less than pleased to see again.
As I took on my first five miles of the double, at half past midnight, it became clear at mile four that I’d “misplaced” the baton. You know, the crucial thing with the timing chip in it, that would be the make or break of us getting a time at all. It had jumped out of my pack at some stage of the loop, and was nowhere to be seen.
My stomach dropped. What the hell would I tell my teammates, who were currently snoozing away, none the wiser? After deliberating and slowing considerably, I made the call to carry on and hope that the Race Director would understand my plight.
Luckily, he was sympathetic and took a note of the time, photographed my number, and asked me to find the baton on my next loop round!
And just like that, it appeared in the first mile, like a beacon!
Crisis over and approximately one-a-half hours of sleep later, I completed a total of seven laps – 35 miles, and my teammates ran a similar race. We managed to have someone running at all times throughout the day and night, so 24 loops later we were all tired but happy, and went off to collect our giant-face-sized medals and can of Erdinger.
Imagine then our surprise, when on top of all this we were hailed as the first all-women team! We’d come with no expectations and finished on a real high.
Well done to the Vegan Runners as they were strong in numbers and performance on this event, also to the lovely Vicki Trundle, who I’d met at the Hilly 50 and recommended Active Root to. She racked up 30 incredible loops, 150 miles, over 36 hours, which quite frankly blows my mind!
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