Hardmoors Princess Challenge 30m 2013

The Hardmoors 30m is well established. It starts at Ravenscar, goes 4m down the lovely Cleveland Way to Hayburn Wake. There it descends to sea level and climbs back up again. At that point the race route leave the Cleveland Way and heads towards an old railway line, known as the Cinder Track. The route then heads back to Ravenscar through Robon Hood's Bay to Whitby. All on the cinder track apart from a small diversion to reach the checkpoint at Ravenscar. After going through the main tourist area of Whitby and climbing up to the abbey, the route rejoins the Cleveland Way and goes through Robin Hood's Bay back to Ravenscar.

I have done the event, which is on 1 January, twice. Each time it has been a bit of a nightmare after Whitby. There are many hills and steps, but these are to be expected on Hardmoors events. The real difficulty has been the mud. This year I wore the grippiest shoes I have, mudclaws, and it made little difference. 20m to Whitby took us 4 hours and the last ten miles took us 3 hours 15mins.

Princess Purple Bubbles has wanted to do the event but has been unable to be free on 1 January, so she decided to run the route in the summer. She then decided to run with a few friends. She then decided to to make it a race and raise money for the Scarborough and Ryedale Mountain Rescue. And the Hardmoors Princess Challenge was born

The prospect of doing the event with no mud was very enticing  Sadly Melanie had a training course to go to which involved puppets and sand trays, don't ask !

It was very cold at the start and I wore my waterproof top and even contemplated putting tights over my shorts. However, it soon warmed up and I left my tights behind when I reached the start/finish checkpoint at 8m after the south loop

Then it was the largely downhill section to Robin Hood's Bay. I tried to run this fairly hard as I knew there was a long climb after Robin Hood's Bay. I walked the long climb and then ran hard on the downhill to Whitby, Navigating round the tourists at Whitby was fun as usual, then the climb up to the Abbey. Running from there to Robin Hood's Bay was so much easier without any mud. 

The hills are still there and they keep on coming, especially after Robin Hood's Bay. There was also a new section of the Cleveland Way to go through before Ravenscar  Made it back to the Village Hall in 6hr 44mn 50sec, which is a 20min course pb 

I have found it very tough when running the route on January 1st, but today it was just lovely. A lovely cooling breeze helped as the day got warmer 

The event went very smoothly and raised at least £1K for the local Mountain Rescue, Well done to Princess Purple Bubbles, Flip and the other volunteers