Monday 18 August 2008

A planned 45 miler that went a bit astray

This was a run that I planned myself and looked quite straight forward. The plan was a train to Felixstowe then run to Ipswich on to Hadleigh, then to Sudbury and finally home.

The distance between each town was almost 10 miles, which broke it down into manageable chunks, and there was a bus and train service from Sudbury to home in case I got into any difficulty.

The run started well and within 10 minutes I was into my stride and running comfortably. I had only a light pack on (3kg max) and had filled my camelbak and water bottle too, so was fine with what I had. The first 10 miles went fine, using back roads meant I kept away from the fumes and as it was a hot day the fumes would have been bad. Problems hit once I got to Ipswich. The signposting on one of the roads was misleading and I ended up turning of too early and losing my way, eventually doing a 4 mile loop before getting back on track. I had planned to stop after 10 miles at a petrol station, to get lunch but this had been delayed and with the additional weight in my pack as I filled up with water I started getting hungry and needed to stop. The first convenient stopping point was at about 17 miles and I took a long well earned rest, however the damage had been done and despite refuelling I couldn’t get back into my stride and had to accept that the run should stop rather than do damage continuing.

I managed to get to Hadleigh and finished there at 24 miles. Extremely disappointed but travelling back home on the bus was glad to have missed the rest of the way as the roads were very heavy with traffic and not a safe running route at all, so in hind sight a bit of a lucky escape.

Next planned activity is the Shotley Peninsular challenge on 13th September, so I will report back after that, although if BBC Essex gets back in touch soon I will be on the airwaves and discussing the whole thing with them.

More on that if and when it happens.

Safe Running All

Thursday 7 August 2008

The Forms Are Here

Big lump in the throat today as the offical e-mail arrived with the forms for regstration for the MDS next year.


Bit of confusion over some of the translations and a bit of fuss on the MDS Forum site as techno-phobes couldn't print off the forms in full page size, but i managed, Three forms we need to complete along with supplying 3 passport photo's and the medical form for me to sweet talk my GP into signing.

Hopefully now this will make it all offical and i can start really pushing sponsors etc and getting kit finalised.