2nd in the Kinder Trial - 22nd Jan

(Image - and route shown - Courtesy of Nic Barber)

Last Saturday I headed back home to run the Kinder Trial, a 12mile navigation event as much off the beaten track as possible! It took in all that Kinder has to offer, with controls spanning from Low End to The Knott via the Downfall.
Controls could be visited in any order and Andy had thrown in a nasty route choice at the bottom of Kinder river to make you think. I decided the minute I saw the map I was going anticlockwise so that I hit the tough heather running over to The Knott at the end, and essentially in the downhill direction (Route - 7, 11, 2, 5, 8, 10, 1, 6, 3, 4, 9, 12).

I set off at a comfortable pace, remembering last year when my legs gave up before the last 3 miles of running back to Hayfield. Soon I had caught the person who set off 1minute ahead of me and by low end had caught another couple of people. We formed a sort of group, with the two guys ahead of me running faster yet us all turning up at the controls at the same time, clearly I was hitting some good lines navigationally.

Just after the Downfall, Dave Ward came flying past and injected a bit of pace into the group, I took a bad route to the next control, however made up the deficit quickly, catching back up with everyone, back at a nicer pace, by Mill Hill. Half way to Mill Hill a Pennine runner came pelting past in much the same way as Dave....he then came pelting back past having missed the control by around 500m....

At Mill Hill I suddenly realised I only had 3 controls left and I was still feeling very good, I sped up a little bit through the heather, finding a good line to the Knott. After the last control I ran as hard as I could past the shooting cabin and down to Hayfield, proving in the process this is faster than the flat road running that the rest of the group took(minus Nick having recovered from his navigational blip).

I had left my watch at home by accident so it was nice to find I was back in under 2.5hrs, a feat not achieved since I was 17.....In fact it was nearly an hour faster than last year!

I finished in 25th overall, 2nd placed woman behind Kirsty Bryan Jones by 1min 11seconds (finally lost the label of eternal 4th place in that race!)..... and I could still walk afterwards which is a great improvement from last year :-) (although 3hours MTB on Sunday soon put an end to that...)

I think my winter long distance slow training is starting to pay off!