Left at 7 to get to Arkholme, the start of the Lunesdale Walk, a long distance walking association event which welcomed runners. There were three routes: 6m, 17m and 28m. The last two started at the same time and the first 15m were the same. Got there in plenty of time, registered, had a lovely cup of tea. As my race number was 15, I wasn't expecting a big field - about 45 althogether with about 15 runners and 30 walkers, but it wasn't possible to tell who was doing 17m and who was doing 28m - you could make your mind up at the 15m checkpoint.
Started at 8.30. I thought it would be good to get under 6hr for this one. It was my first run that I would have to navigate. There was a route description and a map, but with my eyes, the map was too small, so I had built a much better one, but it consisted of 22 A4 pages!
I thought I might try and count the number of stiles and gates. Last week at the Belvoir Challenge 26 I reckoned there were about 27. I soon gave up. There must have been on average about 3 or 4 per mile. A different scale altogether.
Soon after the start I was last but one of the runners, but this was great, I could just follow everybody else ! The leaders made an error and those behind went another way and I reckoned they must know what they are doing and followed them. Soon after this I fell. I had just come off a stile and I was on a wooden very wet boardwalk and just lost my footing. I was lucky that I was at the end of the broadwalk and fell onto the grass as I smacked my head and banged my leg. Took a minute and decided to carry on and although my leg was a bit stiff climbing stiles, I had no after effects.
The route was not marked at all, but we were following footpaths and there were little arrows at each stile telling you the direction (but they weren't always accurate). Between the stiles (and you couldn't always see the next one) there was often no path at all, you were just running across muddy fields, grassland, very rutted fields where you coudn't run or sometimes a very muddy path, where it was very hard to run at all.
Inevitably the field spread out but there was one guy ahead of me who I kept in sight for most of the first 11m. We had a chat at one point when we weren't sure where to go, but he pulled ahead. At which point I got went off route for the first time. Managed to get back on track without too much of a diversion and approached the 15m point - decision time!
I was tempted, very tempted to do just 17m, but the weather was still cloudy and dry and I felt I could do more so I went on. Of course about 1m after that decision, the weather broke. It got windy and the rain started to come across horizontally ! I made my second navigational error and ended up trudging across a very muddy field, but got back on track. Soon after another error - I climbed a hill and then had to come back down!
After yet another minor error, I made it to checkpoint 3, 23m - Wray, the only place I had been before - to their scarecrow festival when they hold a 10K, a lovely event. The checkpoints were like last week - amazing, cakes, drinks, just lovely. And they told me I was 9th (out of 19 doing the long route and of course everybody behind me was walking, although because of the weather and the even more difficult terrain in the second half, I was walking most of the time) ! I hadn't seen anybody else since 11m and I didn't see anybody before the end either.
Finally got back. 6hr 47min ! An hour longer than I have ever been out before. Still I am glad I did it - a whole new experience having to navigate and the weather was as a fellow runner put it 'character building'.
The meal afterwards was excellent: soup, baked potato with cheese, beans and coleslaw, followed by tea and cake. Total cost of the event was 6 pounds!
