This was to be my ninth event running round Kielder. It is a lovely place to run, its almost all off road and the surface of the Lakeside Way is designed for mobility vehicles so it is very smooth. The route itself is very undulating with roughly 2600 ft of ascent.
Melanie and I had no designs on a fast time as we have another marathon coming along shortly, so the plan was just finish and if would be good to be under 5 hours. I hadn't looked at previous times at Kielder, but I knew there was at least one event where I had been over 5hrs and one at roughly 4h 30min when Sophster had dragged me round.
As we drove there we could look down on the valleys full of cloud, a beautiful sight. This year we were told that the parking was at the far end of the reservoir, but as we drove past the start/finish area at Leaplish we were directed there and parked very close to the start/finish, so no hanging round for a bus before or after the race :-) As usual we then enjoyed some of the home baking offered by the local village, Falstone.
The clouds burnt off and we had a bit of drizzle, but it all went away at the start. It was chip times so we started very near the back and ran up the first hill after the start. I have sometimes adopted the strategy of walking all the hills and running everything else, but this time I thought I would just run as much as I could and walk just the longer/steeper ascents.
And the miles clicked by. I took a gel from a checkpoint at one point and that seemed to help (I normally carry shot bloks, a nine bar and s-caps). At about 15m, Melanie said I was going a bit fast, so I slowed up a bit and got to the dam at 17m in pretty reasonable shape. Across the dam we were into the strengthening wind, which was harder but we were continuing to overtake people as we had done for most of the race. On to the Bull Crag promontory where I took another gel from a checkpoint. At first it seemed fine, but about two miles from the end my stomach felt pretty bad. I told Melanie to go on ahead while I took it a bit easier. I still managed to come in with my second fastest time ever at Kielder, 4hr 39min, so I was very happy with how it all went.
There were 644 finishers this year and some years there have been over 1000 so I hope this doesn't mean it is cancelled at some point.
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