Saturday 29 January 2011

Yorkshire Moors Frostbite Marathon 2011

I had been undecided about this race as I wasn't sure how much of it was on the Cleveland Way. For some reason the organisers would not publish the exact route until you had paid your entry fee. I had found the Cleveland Way very muddy on the Hardmoors 30 at the start of the month and if it was going to be largely the same route then I wasn't going to enter. A friend from Fetcheveryone.com came to my rescue as she had already entered and forwarded me the route. Only about 9m in total on the Cleveland Way, the first 4.5m and the last 4.5m. The rest of the route was either on old railway lines or across the moors and most of it I had done before on the Hardmoors 30 or the Smugglers Trod.
Dave ready for the off.Another friend from Fetcheveryone, Liz, who I had run with on the Hardmoors 55 last year, was also doing this race and she came and stayed last night, so we were up at 4.30 in the morning to get to Whitby for the early start.
We left the house at 5.30 after de-icing the cars and arrived in Whitby still in total darkness just before 7. We registered and stood around at 7.30 for the briefing. It was about -2 at this point. I had bought roclites and mudclaws, the latter to be used if there was any sign of mud. But no, the ground was frozen so roclites it was.
Liz and I had agreed to run together again with no time targets set. The marathon runners had a 5min start over the 50m runners and we heard their hooter as we jogged along and as one runner close to us said 'the hounds had been released' and it was true, they steadily overtook us. We trotted along taking it easy as the aim was just to finish and get some time on our feet. At one point the runners ahead were turning sharp right away from the coast and we just followed them. It took me about 100 yards to come to my senses and realise that should not have happened. So I just said out loud we have made a mistake and all the runners around us just followed us back to the coast. Quite a few were just too far ahead, but they rejoined the path about a mile ahead when they realised their error.
After that it was fairly uneventful, the path was frozen mud until we reached the correct point to turn away from the coast to an old railway line and head into Robin Hood's Bay and checkpoint 1. We had a chat with the marshalls and headed off chatting away about races and Liz's preparations for the 10 marathons in 10 days event at Windermere in May.
We reached the highest point on the route as the sun came out and had a fantastic view of Robin Hood's Bay and Ravenscar Then it was off down across the moor to the turn around point - it was an out and back for the marathon runners, the 50m runners were similar but had a loop near their half way point. So we headed back up the moor and down to Robin hood's Bay. Now the wind had picked up a little, the sun had gone in and it was getting a little cold. We returned to the Cleveland Way and it was transformed. The frozen mud and been melted by the sun into major mud, probably worse than I had experienced at the Hardmoors 30. My roclites struggled and progress was very slow, especially when we had to descend steep gullies. But we made it back very happy and got fed soup at the finish. The second half was much slower than the first and we finished in just over 7hr 20min. A lovely day out.

Saturday 1 January 2011

Hardmoors 30 2011

'Good cross country training' said one runner after this one. And he was definitely right, it turned out to be a bit of a mudfest. My Kandidas didn't cope well with that much mud and I was left regretting that I hadn't used mudclaws.
The race started by going south along the Cleveland Way from Ravenscar and that section of about 4m was fine. There was a steep descent to Hayburn Wake and out the other side where the race organiser was waiting at the first checkpoint in a field. As we left the checkpoint we had a view of the field and he was attempting to move his car and he was getting seriously stuck, so three of us went back to help him. As other runners came to the checkpoint, they came and helped as well. It took six of us fifteen minutes to get him out and in that time we all got covered in mud from spinning car wheels. A complete comedy moment, but it did relieve any concerns about the 7 hour cut off being enforced!
My expectation was about 6 hours. What I hadn't realised was that after Hayburn the railway lines climbed back to Ravenscar. That was harder than I had expected. We then went north to Robin Hood's Bay and that section was fine. Then after Robin Hood's Bay there must have been a two mile climb along the railway line with no respite. I tried to run sections but most of it was walked. Finally, the climb stopped and the descent into Whitby was lovely.
I was still on for about 6hr at this point. Found the Whitby checkpoint and had a cliffbar - these are great, I had some the at the Hardmoors 55m and haven't seen once since, I must get some.
It was fun dodging and weaving round the shoppers in Whitby and there were a few strange looks.
Once I had climbed all the steps and gone past the abbey I was back on the Cleveland Way. The wind was behind us and I was expecting to get to Robin Hood's Bay in 2 hours. It took 3 hours. It was very muddy and much more undulating than I remembered. It was also much longer than I remembered and the headland I needed to get to seemed a long way away. There were also three or four places where I was soaked by seawater even though we were 150 feet above the sea Those places were just a quagmire. About thirty minutes before Robin Hood's Bay my head torch came out. I had been expecting to run the last hour in the dark (the race didn't start until 11), but I was still 90 minutes away from the finish when I had to use the torch. This slowed me down even more.
Robin Hood's Bay to Ravenscar is only about 4 to 5 miles but I knew it was tough. The climb out of Robin Hood's Bay is hard then there are two up and downs before a long climb up to Ravenscar. The runnable parts were very muddy and it was hard to make progress, so little running was done.
Finally made it back with an elapsed time of 7 hours 6 minutes, which allowing for the mud shower at checkpoint 1, left me within the cutoff, but only just. I was 28th out of 29 finishers. The last person was over an hour after me. It was a bit of a lonely race, I had not seen anyone after mile 13!
This was more than made up for when I entered the Race HQ. There were about 25 people eating and drinking in there and they all stopped what they were doing and gave me an enormous round of applause Ultra runners are lovely and it was just what I needed after a very tough race.
Sadly Phil Owen had to pull out after 10m because of problems with his foot. Anna Seeley had a good run and was back in about 6hr 25min. Will had a fantastic run, he was third in a time of round about 4hr 40min !