The Ponton Plod 27m 2017

This is an event I have been planning to for a number of years, but something always seems to happen which prevents me from doing it. This year I made it ! The cost is only £14 which is just crazily cheap for what you get. Toast and marmalade and Coffee or tea before the start, four checkpoints laden with home made cakes, sandwiches, rice pudding, fruit and at the finish this was what we could choose from (click to enlarge)

and these were just some of the food at the checkpoints (there were other tables)

Melanie is trying to complete all the Wainwright hills, but because the forecast for the Lakes was bad, she opted to join me even though she had done very little long distance running since the Elsecar Skelter in July. However, she has been walking up lots of hills which clearly helped today. It was lovely to have her company and she checked the route instructions while I followed the route on my Garmin and working that way helped us with the navigation - the route was also very well signed and the route description was excellent.

The weather was very misty initially and the forecast was for it to burn off very quickly and then be white cloud. It didn't work out quite that way, the mist lasted until half way and then we had bright sunshine for the second half.

The event started at the Village Hall in Great Ponton

The field was small about 46 for the 27m route and double that for the 17m route. There was a 12m route starting an hour later

Great Ponton is just to the east of the A1 (not far south from Grantham) and 99% of the route is to the west of the A1 so soon after the start we crossed the A1 by footbridge and were soon on an undulating path towards Stoke Newington and its attractive parkland

Then into the village itself

This road section lasted for about one and half miles. All the roads were very quiet apart from one which had a footpath.

On through Skillington - there were lots of attractive villages on this route and via farm tracks to the first checkpoint at 6.25, followed by Buckminster with his large houses.

Soon after that the terrain changed and we were crossing ploughed fields for a while

Luckily in spite of the heavy rain yesterday, they weren't very muddy. Finally we made it Croxton Kerrial checkpoint at halfway. We now knew some of the route and the checkpoint from the Belvoir Challenge event. The food at this checkpoint was very good ! Then onward

Soon after the reservoir we were off the Belvoir route and we made our way to Harlaxton. The checkpoint here was even better as there was rice pudding and tinned fruit. We probably stayed too long here, but we were in no rush. Shortly before the final checkpoint we pass this country house, Hungerton Hall

The final checkpoint was about 4m from the end and we made good progress back to the Village Hall and the amazing array of cakes, soup and puddings !

Soon after we left Great Ponton, we went through some very heavy rainfall. We were pleased we had missed that !

Hardmoors Rosedale 2017

"Welcome to the Hardmoors Rosedale marathon. There are two things wrong there, you won't be going into Rosedale and it's not a marathon". This was how Jon, the race director, started the race briefing. Hardmoors events are famous for giving you 'extra miles' at no extra cost....

I have done this event three times before. The first two years the route didn't change too much and it was the easiest of the Hardmoors marathons in my view. In 2016 Jon had to make a radical change to the route just a few days before the event and for the marathon this meant two laps of a route round Farndale which was a tougher route.

This year there was a more radical change and it is now longer than the original (most people measured it as 29.1m) with significantly more ascent (4500 feet approximately). The weather was hot, up to about 20 degrees at times. There was also some mud.

I was running this one with Sara and we started at the back as we knew there would be hold up at the first gate - the first 1.5m was the same as it always had been. Once through the three gates, we ran down the side of a wheat field.

and up into the lovely village of Gillamoor

where there was a lovely surprise view

We ran past the SportsSunday photographers

A few field edges and woods

The bracken was high in places (thanks to Sara for this photo)

and then onto some moors

Churches in the middle of nowhere

We were making reasonable progress, walking the many hills trying to preserve our energy in the heat. We had mainly be heading west, but finally we turned west with lovely views of the purple heather

There was a lot of steep descents into attractive dales (the route was very well marked with tape)

but inevitably there were steep ascents out of these dales. We past an interesting abandoned farm

We had a bit of a long road section with a descent into Bransdale, 

 before a climb and a descent into the lovely Farndale

Then onto the popular daffodil walk between High Mill and Low Mill, which was relatively quiet, before a big climb out of Farndale

and the inevitable descent back into Farndale. There were some lovely woods and this photo doesn't really do it justice

Then it was a relatively simple, but hilly section to the finish. At the start Ashley had taken a photo of the Elvet Striders running the marathon (thanks for the photo Ashley)

Suffice to say, I didn't look quite so happy at the end. It had been a hot, tough day on a beautiful route. Thanks to Sara for her company 😀

2016 blog