Saturday 4 July 2009

Osmotherley Phoenix 33m 2009

This is a lovely race with three options: 17m, 26m or 33m and you can decide part way round the course which one you want to do. I got to Osmotherley in plenty of time for the 9.00 start and realised I had parked two cars away from a friend from Fetch. We had parked in the race car park which was about 1K from the centre of the village. There was a bit of a queue for the shuttle bus so we walked to the centre.
Phil was doing this one and so of course the weather was sunny with a slight cooling breeze. After a briefing, which included a request that if anybody die, they should ensure they fell on to their back with their tally showing so it could read by a helicopter. Great !
The route followed the Cleveland Way for the first 13m. That included some reasonable climbs and some fairly steep ones, but I was walking most of them even at this stage. Just before the Clay Bank checkpoint I made a minor error with locating the checkpoint, then we started the big pull up to the Botton Head trig point and a self clip checkpoint. The checkpoints, apart from the self clips, all had plenty of drinks and cake !
Then it was off the Cleveland Way and off to Chop Gate where I caught up with Phil who had an upset stomach and said he was going to take the option of doing the 26m route at the next checkpoint. He did amazingly well to finish that considering how ill he was. Out of Chop Gate was the biggest hill on the route, very tough.
On the descent to the Wheat Beck checkpoint, my hamstring started to play up, so I walked down. I still had the option of doing 26m from Wheat Beck, but walking was not painful and although I was only at the 21m point, I knew I could walk the rest of the 33m route and still make the 10hr cut off time.
So after saying goodbye to Phil, I carried on walking. This part of the route was a bit navigationally challenging (hardly any of the route was marked), but there were a few of us and we worked it out as we crossed fields, walked through woods and past abandoned farmhouses.The scenery on the route was amazing. Found the last manned checkpoint in a valley which was 8m from the finish. Of course we had to climb out of the valley and it was steep again. Just before checkpoint, I tried running again and to my surprise there was no pain from my hamstring ! However, it was all uphill for 3m after the checkpoint to rejoin the Cleveland Way 5m south of Osmotherley. At this junction there was another self clip and water to help ourselves to. All day it had been sunny and hot and I was drinking loads !
Once the Cleveland Way started to descend I started to run again and it felt fine. Made another navigational error just at the finish but made it back in 8hr 8min. Cooled down by using the hosepipe which had been set up for that purpose. Two cups of tea, a pint and a coke disappeared down me without touching the sides. The shuttle bus back to the car park has stopped running so it was a long slow and slightly painful walk back to the car.


Looking at my stats, I didn't do a single mile in less than 10min and the mile after Chop Gate took me about 20min !! Very pleased to have finished. Would I do it again - give me a few days to think about it.
Photos: https://picasaweb.google.com/105792896882008304219/OsmotherleyPhoenix33m2009