I first heard about this on the Monday when a colleague posted it as a 10k night run on the company running chat. It looked like fun and I'd not tried a night race before so I signed up. I'd been offered a lift there and back so preparation consisted of chucking my kit in a bag. Since it's in the Forest of Dean, I figured there might be branches to duck under so, as well as the chest light as a main light, I included a beanie with a built in light to illuminate branches (plus a backup hand held torch and a backup backup torch).
The briefing was by the start and we were told that it was a 5.5 mile run. A bit of mental arithmetic during the run told me that would be 8.8k. The RD caught us out a bit by shouting “Go" with no count down. That's when I realised I'd been standing very close to the start (well, it was dark). I started off at what seemed a comfortable pace and did my best to avoid being drawn along by the faster runners going past me.
Initially, there was a short gentle climb followed by some downhill and then, well, I didn't know! With it being dark and a course I hadn't been on before I couldn't tell if it was uphill or not. All I could tell was that it wasn't particularly steep. By this time there was a gap in front of me and two runners just behind (one on the left, one on the right). As a result, it felt as though I was acting as a pacer. Not knowing the gradient, I resorted to trying to maintain a steady effort.
Looking at the elevation profile afterwards, I now know that I was on a steady climb over about 1.5k. Being unfamiliar with the surface I was on, I couldn't use pace and effort to figure out if I was climbing or not so judging by effort was the best I could do. After a while, I switched my watch to display HR to help with that.
Coming towards what turned out to be the end of the climb, the two who had been running with me had dropped away. I was approaching what I could see was a definite uphill (I now know that it was just steeper than most of the climb). Part way up this, I considered dropping back to a walk but I figured there was some downhill ahead so kept going. I figured there was a downhill because I could see most of the runners in the near distance but just the top half of those further away and they gradually disappeared, their heads going last.
By now, I was getting too hot. There weren't any overhanging branches so I took my hat off and switched off its light. It felt good to be running downhill and the surrounding forest seemed to have given way to fields meaning there was a very welcome refreshing breeze.
After the downhill, there were some shorter ups and downs (I think the variation made it easier to tell what was up and what was down as did trees being closer to the path). There were a few hairpin bends then I was on the downhill finish straight. I could hear someone running just behind me so upped my pace to avoid being overtaken at the end.
Conditions, being cool and dry, were ideal. My watch showed the distance as 8.2k. I found out from the results page that it’s listed as a 5.05 mile run. I'd maybe put in more effort than I would have done had I thought about it but I think it went well. Of the eight of us in my age category, I came second so I'm pleased with that.
