Wuthering Hike

On Friday I was up in Darlington for my friends wedding (above). I left a happy Mr and Mrs Spence in the evening and headed to Leeds in preparation for Wuthering Hike, 32miles of moor and hills from Haworth. I think 3hours sleep on Thursday and copious amounts of pink champagne made for the perfect preparation!

The morning was pretty warm, as I discovered after setting off wearing far too much, and from the word go the pace was pretty fast. I tried not to dash off too much and soon settled into a comfortable pace for the 15miles across to the long causeway. This seemed easy! If it stayed like this I didn't know what all the fuss was about :-).

It didn't stay like this....there was some hard packed descent into Todmorden which my shins didn't enjoy too much and then 3 big climbs in the last 12miles. Between 17 and 22miles I seemed to go backwards through the field, but I'm not sure if that was because I was having a bad moment or if everyone suddenly sped up. Anyway, the final big climb came at about 22miles and there was no way I was walking it - would take far too long, so I settled into a trot up the track and slowly started reeling in everybody that had passed me since 17miles. I passed them all, overtaking the final 2 women at the top of the climb, turned my map over and suddenly it looked like no distance to the finish! Looking over my shoulder Stoodley Pike looked miles away - I was there an hour ago!

I suddenly found I could still run at a similar pace to the start and pushed on to the finish, finishing in 5hrs 36mins and 10th lady, just behind Helen Allison and Karen Nash who I hadn't seen since 10miles (and assumed had left me for dead...).

So here ends my 8day ultra running career....well for now anyway!