Forest and Moors marathon 2019

Today I leant that I should not book a marathon the day after two busy Open Days at work. Open Days are busy, I was giving short speeches and talking to lots of people. I love Open Days but there is no getting away from it, they are very tiring.

We have done the Forest and Moors twice before so last year we thought, yes, lets do that again, it was lovely. Then a week ago we had a more closer look at the details and saw there was a six hour time limit and a couple of intermediate cut offs, one at Levisham Elbow (just over six miles) of 1.5 hours and Ellerbeck (19.5 miles) of 4.5 hours. We looked at what we had done last year 5hrs 55min.... hmmmm, we couldn't dawdle then. We aren't too keen on having pressure in our events, but there wasn't much we could do about it, but give it a good try.

The start is in Adderstone Field in Dalby Forest. There is plenty of parking and we met up with Jon and Shirley, the organisers of the Hardmoors events. Thanks for Shirley for these pictures

As you can see it was quite warm even at 9.00. Rain had been forecast but none arrived and it remained quite hot all day even when the sun was in. Hardly any wind and only occasional mud. Pretty perfect running conditions.

We had seen a lovely sunrise on the way down

A couple of other photos, one that Jon took at the start and one that Melanie took

It was a quiter start this year as the half marathon was staring 30 minutes later than the marathon runners. The usual start, an average firtst mile then a the fastest mile of the event as you plunge downhill and then a steep climb up to the Fox and Hounds and and another descent to the railway line.

Today we were lucky enough to see a steam train although we were a little too far away

Then we came to the one place which wasn't marked as to which way to go. I guess tape could have been moved and we had to call back four runners who made the wrong choice. We followed the railway line for a while - thanks to Melanie for some of these photos

and after a bit of a climb,

we made it Levisham Elbow in 1hr 15min beating the cut off by 15 min. Not much considering it was early in the event. Here the marathon and half diverged - we had been overtaken by three half runners by this stage. We went down the road to Levisham station

and another climb through fields

and into woods and into a forest. This section along forest roads seem to last a long time, but finally we reached the checkpoint which is the start of the moors section (no cut off here) and it was halfway which we reached in 2hr 45. Okay if we could keep up that pace ! Spoiler - I couldn't.

Onto the moors

and then down to Wheeldale Stepping Stones

and then a long climb up to Simon Howe. I started to tire quite badly here and it looked increasingly unlikely that we would reach Ellerbeck in four hours which had been our target so that we could take it easy for the last seven miles. Even on the descent to Ellerbeck I was struggling and I know we had been able to fly down there in previous year. We made Ellerbeck in 4hr 20min, 10min inside the cut off, but we had to keep pushing if we were going to beat the final cut off.

We started round Fylindales and this is mainly uphill, but when it flattened out I was struggling to run. So we took the decision that Melanie should go on and ensure she met the cut off (this was her seventy fifth marathon and she wanted to reach that number today rather than postpone it). I tried to do a little running, but I was just too tired, nothing left at all. I just had to hope they would not time me out at the end.

I passed the lovely Malo Cross

which looks more likely to fall over every time I see it.

Even the next downhill section I hardly ran, this wasn't good.....

Then the nasty steep hill up to the Old Wives Way and the final checkpoint. Here I heard there were about thirteen runners behind me and I thought this probably increased the chances of us not being timed out.

I teamed up with another runner who was struggling with his back and we chatted all the way to the finish which made it go very quickly.

My time was 6hr 21min but I wasn't timed out - phew ! And I got a medal

Melanie had pushed hard and made it in 5hr 58min which was a fantastic effort, but she said she would rather have dawdled in with me if we had known that we wouldn't be cut off.