The night before: head to my friend's house. Panic all the way that I've forgotten my map/compass/shoes/mind. Check backpack every 10 minutes. Eat salmon and sticky rice and greens and drink coconut water, like athletes. Then eat summer pudding and icecream, not like athletes. Try not to whimper when friend mentions we'll be setting out with some more of her friends, including the chap who WON this race last year.
Race day: wake up. Worry that I'm getting a cold. Worry about what to wear. Do more backpack checking. Eat porridge and drink coffee with cream in it (dunno if this is what athletes do, but heartily recommend it!). Put on visually offensive shorts and decide I'll be warm enough if I'm running hard enough. Go for hundreds of 'last wees'.
Get in friend's car and drive through heart-breaking my beautiful Welsh countryside in glorious sunshine. Birds are singing. Lambs are skipping about. We are discussing whether or not we're going to be sick.
Arrive. Get our kit checked. Moan about having to carry waterproof trousers for a marked and marshalled race on a sunny day. Faff. Go for more wees. Have dilemmas about how many layers to wear. Put fleece in boot of car. Get fleece out. Put fleece on. Take fleece off. Look at contour lines on map, which appear to have got closer together overnight. Overhear a man saying "I did it last year. I think it's alright, but there are chunks of it I can't remember so I'm not sure". Compare the runners today with the runners who came here for the 10k in November - then, I felt like a spaghetti-limbed weakling in a sea of calves-as-big-as-my-thighs. This time, there are lots more people who look like me (long bones held together with sinew and stubbornness). Formulate a theory that bulky muscles look nice and work well over shorter distances but that maybe for the long haul I'm at a natural advantage after all. Put fleece back in car.
Run. Snake through pine trees breathing balsam and woody sweetness. Watch sunlight and cloud shadows race down the valley. Sweat like a pig and stop to remove long sleeves. Run some more. Come up above the trees into rolling green hillside. And then it goes sort of blurry. There are some uphills. They are long. Some of them are so uphill you can reach out and touch the hill in front of you. I walk them. Everyone is walking them. Tantalisingly, the bilberry bushes are laden with flowers but no fruit yet. Fantasise vividly about how delicious a handful of fresh bilberries would be. There are downhills and they are bliss at first, then less so as my legs get tired. 10 miles in I've got nothing left in my legs and am running on pride and stubbornness alone. Have a little cry on the last hideous uphill. Wipe snot off face and run down on slate scree with legs that no longer do what I ask (interesting experience which would have been funny if I'd been less zombified). Then oh-dear-Lord-I-thought-it-would-never-happen the path levels out and widens and I'm jogging gently downhill and I can see the finish line and everything hurts suddenly because my mind has its teeth into the idea of not running anymore and is therefore indulging in the luxury of noticing how my body actually feels (thighs and calves crying. Bum feels like it's been cudgelled. Sunburn. Friction burns from backpack. Sweat in places I didn't know I had. Could eat a small city. If I eat one more jelly bean I will vomit from sticky sickly yuck etc etc). Engage in fierce battle with myself ("you're basically finished. Might as well ease off. You're spent." "This is what you bloody well came for! We are not easing off!" "Just a little walk. We've walked loads already. A little walk won't hurt." "We didn't come for a f*cking walk! And you're not spent because you're upright. Run! Run! There is tea and stew at the end, for goodness sake!"
I come over the finish line. I am so dazed I sort of forget to stop and have to be shouted back to collect my medal. There is tea with sugar in, and beef stew, and SITTING DOWN! I indulge in all three joyously.
Photos of river crossing (the real runners crashed through the water but I was scared of blisters). I am laughing at the photographer's motivational shouting.
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the_tea_fairy
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I really enjoyed reading that, mostly thinking 'thank goodness I didn't have to actually DO it!' It sounds absolutely awful and absolutely amazing in about equal measure.
Definitely more amazing than awful - it's an unadulterated joy to be in a landscape that gorgeous with a body that can carry you through it, and the weather was perfect. Feel very lucky to have discovered running
I think so. The event fed all finishers for free with beef and veg stew and bread and hot tea, and it was just delicious. Though I'm not sure I chewed it - just fell on it like a wolf!
what a grat post TF! you write so well, i really felt involved in the ups and downs(literally!) of your run and run prep! CONGRATULATIONS-a fab job done and you look really athletic and happy too in your photo
Congratualtions on the race, you write beautifully and look amazing - not sure what you mean about the other 'real' runners - you certainly qualify in my book!
Thanks lovely. The 'real' runners are the ones with the guts to take on the full marathon. Or (and I'm really happy with my time, and finished as 23rd woman out of 49 of us, so this isn't a down-on-myself thing) the ones who came in a whole hour before me! Really inspiring.
Well you did it and what a tough Hm!! I won't be moaning about my hills and inclines in mine again!! Congratulations and its great they give you tea and stew at the end!! Great pictures too!!
It was such a gorgeous day for weather - could see for miles. As for the legs...just attempted the stairs in my house. I have never been so glad of a bannister!!!
Cheers, though I must say your 20 miler puts my little jog in the country to shame ;). I'm thinking dangerous thoughts about the full marathon next year...
Stuck on the injury couch as I am, your post made me laugh and cry with the longing to run again! Thank you for that! And well done for conquering such a fantastic challenge and sharing it so eloquently. Truly fab!
Oh no! Hope you're mended soon. I really rate off-road running for avoiding injury, by the way. Pavement pounding has given me a bad hip and a horrible Achilles in the past. Yesterday's adventure has left me with a monster dose of DOMS but no niggles in my joints or tendons at all.
Oh Tea Fairy, that is a brilliant post! What an amazing effort for what sounds like a heady mix of a glorious and gruelling race. Fab, fab stuff
Thanks (for running, the answer is run a lot and develop unassailable pig-headedness. The writing, the answer is read a lot when you should be being useful!)
Well done TF ! That's awesome and I bow down to your fitness and stamina. That's harder than a road HM!!! Less boring though I have to add. I am with you on the faffidge. You do your own head in with the faffing don't you. I really tell myself off about it cos I take feck all with me but still faff over it. What to take/what to leave behind? Aaaaaaaaaagh. So many "what-ifs" I think on a trail though there are rather more variables.
The sweet hideous stickiness in the mouth and hands from those sweets that you never normally entertain is vile and I'm not doing it any more. I hate it. Not sure that the sweets make any difference anyway. Gonna try nuts and fruit next time then worry about sudden-onset dysentery
I hope your aching muscles soon ease and that you have enough food in the house til you can go shopping again. It's a good way of entirely clearing your cupboards of all those things you'd forgotten about as you hoover up everything in sight in pursuit of calories. Crikey knows what I'd be like if I ever ran a marathon, which given my crappy legs, is some way off.
Definitely less boring, yes! And there was a kit list to carry without which you weren't allowed to run, so that added further faffery/opportunities for panic.
Let me know how you get on with fruit - it just doesn't seem to give me enough of a boost quickly enough, but my friend swears by dates filled with almond butter.
And yeah there's a medal, but I kind of think they're ugly and I think I've bragged enough. It's buried in my backpack somewhere!
Well there's a thing. I have a box of dates and a fresh jar of almond butter, which I absolutely adore. I'll try it. When I next run any distance that is. I'm supposed to be running further but my training hit the buffers.
Thanks lovely. There's a 21 miler in the pipeline for September (eek!), then maybe the full marathon version of this one next year? Though I still can't do staircases without whimpering at the moment....
Beautifully written. I was misty-eyed by the time you crossed the finishing line. I am just about to start W5, and your post was just the sort of encouragement that I need (in a perverse way!). I live in the Peak District, and while I am plodding around my route I look up at Curbar Edge and tell myself that one day I'll be up there on the moors runnimg with the "real" runners. With that goal in mind, I'd better get my kit on and go out and tackle W5R1. Thanks for the inspiration.
I'm just a wee bit South of you in the derbyshire dales - it's a fab county to learn to run in because you sort of become a hill runner through necessity. I started c25k on a bit of flat footpath but as soon as I wanted to run a bit further I had to start doing hills, and I'm so glad I did. If you want to do off road hilly runs, hillwalking is great training as well and will build your glutes and get your thighs used to coping with the increased effort. And read Richard Askwith's book 'feet in the clouds', which is hugely inspiring.
(PS: I only graduated a year ago - keep going, it's totally doable!)
Hello again, Tea Fairy. I will have to venture out of my immediate vicinity soon, as the runs are getting longer, and it will be difficult to go very far without tackling a hill. Hill-walking is a good idea. I'll give it a try, instead of just admiring them from a distance. You've come a long way in just a year. Thanks for the advice.
Yes do! Sweaty physical contact is always better than admiration from a distance
I know you wrote this 3 months ago, (before I was on this forum!) but I've just randomly stumbled across this post and wow! This took my breath away. Fantastic.
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