Belvoir Challenge 26m 2015

My fifth Belvoir Challenge and Melanie's second. What makes this event attractive is the variety of routes they come up given they have to use some village halls as checkpoints. Also it is a very friendly laid back event with proceeds going to the local primary school. The children from the school design the excellent finishing certificates.

The other big bonus is the home made cakes at the checkpoints :-) The scenery is also good without being spectacular.

It can be muddy and this year it was very muddy.

The weather can also be unpredictable in February and this year we were pretty lucky. Grey and a little drizzle to start and the wind picked up a little but nothing too bad.

It is three months since Meanie did a marathon and I did the Hardmoors Osmotherley less than two weeks ago so neither of us felt very confident. Melanie wasn't sure she had enough recent training and I was concerned I might not have recovered.

The start was busier than usual and the start was delayed by fifteen minutes. There seemed to be lots of people opting for the shorter distance (17m). We had already been waiting for a while so we decided to do something different - start before everybody else. I had seen people do this at this event before so I knew it would be fine. We left eighteen minutes before everybody else.

We soon discovered the first muddy section. It was very, very muddy but it wasn't too long before underfoot conditions improved a bit. But that was only temporary and mud soon returned and it was pretty muddy for the remainder of the route.

The faster runners caught us up well before the first checkpoint and we eventually overtook other people who must have started very early. The first checkpoint was just water, but after that the checkpoints were laden with food and drink.

Melanie was feeling a bit tired from the start, but I was fine until halfway when I realised that I was still tired from Osmotherley. Melanie kept up the same pace, but I slowed a bit. At 21m Melanie went on ahead and finished about 15 minutes ahead of me. I ran along the escarpment and had some good views before I descended and had some more mud to run through (and what was almost a small pond)

The course was superbly marked. We also had maps and a GPS trace on our watches provided so there was no danger of getting lost. We had seen a course marker running round the route checking everything on the way to the start, so the organisers had done their usual excellent job.

After finishing we had the usual soup and dessert provided which filled us up nicely. Melanie's 40th marathon/ultra which is some going since her first one was July 2012.