Note: You are about to read a bit of a long and winding
ramble. It might go round in circles, much like the race in question. It will
probably come across as quite negative, but I’m just being honest from my
perspective. From what I could tell, a hell of a lot of runners out there has a
fantastic time & well done to everyone who did participate. There was
definitely camaraderie going on for sure. Now, brace yourself for my undulating
bloggage...
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I love running long and I love running trails and I’m pretty
comfortable with staying awake for long periods of times and enduring bad
weather and sleeplessness. However, I also really like to go somewhere; I like
to go on a journey. I like to travel from point A – Z and end up in some place
new from where I started, knowing that I got so far away with my own two feet.
I love it. I love the adventure and above all, it’s exciting.
I think it is true to say that I have rather avoided the
whole ‘24hour race’ scenario. Like track marathons and lots of laps, this scenario
fills me with a sense of running-dread. However, I was willing to give Thunder
Run a try. The advantage of this course is that each loop is 10k in length and
on off-road trail, through grassy paths and woodland. There were also a few
hills in there, which added variety. For me personally, I need that variety.
Sure, I’ve done the Brathay 10in10 and I’ve done marathons with multiple laps,
but for a 24hour race, I wouldn’t just want to be running around a track. Hats
off to the running nutters I know out there who do amazingly at 24hour races
and just keep on and on, but I know that running around the same course repeatedly
for a full 24 hours just isn’t where my main strengths lie.
So, whilst contemplating this event, the course offered some
positive points to me. Furthermore, I was in a female pair with Sarah Aston, so
it would be a fun experience and I wouldn’t be in it alone. There was a sense
of camaraderie and ‘let’s do this, let’s go for it, rarrrgh!’ After all, there
were only a small number of female teams and we were anticipating that we could
in theory, do quite well.
We arrived on the Friday night and camped, ready to get
going at midday on Saturday. Sarah did the first lap since she had done thunder
run last year and knew how it all worked, whereas I was a bit clueless, but I
soon picked it up. You basically wait in a cordoned off ‘holding area’ and spot
your runner as they are running back in. Then, they give you the wrist band and
off you go on your lap. At first it was hard to spot your runner coming in, as
there were so many people all crowded around at the same time and lots of
hustle and bustle, but I definitely got into the swing of things.
For most of the day it was boiling hot. It was so warm out
there and we took a little longer at some loops that we had planned, but
nothing too slow and it didn’t really matter because we had a full 24hours. By
7.30pm, the weather had changed dramatically. Thunder Run was living up to its
name and there was quite a sustained thunder storm. I love thunder storms, but
I’d rather have not been out running in it. I think it must have rained for the
next 7 hours and the lightning was a little scary. Needless to say this
drastically transformed the course and pathways became flooded. It was a mud
bath out there.
You know that bit in Jurassic Park, when that big dude is
out in the rain, with that canister full of dinosaur sperm (or something like
that...) & it is pouring down with rain and he can’t see, and he loses his
glasses and then that scary dinosaur starts attacking him and all the pathways
are really muddy and rainy and scary....?! Well, that film clip kept popping
into my mind!
Ultimately, I think my main grievance was that it felt to me
that there were hundreds of different people all out there at once all running
entirely different races. Yep, it was a race, but it was more of a rush for
some than others. If you’re in a team of 8, you’re going to be able to run
faster than those in a team of 2 or a solo runner. I love running through woods
and I love the trail, but I couldn’t enjoy it. Some of the paths were very
narrow, with exposed tree roots etc. I wasn’t plodding along, I was going at a
fair speed, but obviously, teams wanted to win and were going hell for leather.
That’s fine, but I constantly felt pushed to the side and in the way. On a few occasions
I felt like I had to keep stopping to let people past me. But it’s difficult,
with there being so many different sizes of team on the same course at the same
time and I’m not sure how it could be rectified, but I just didn’t find it
enjoyable.
It got much worse later on in the day, following the mega
thunderstorm and monsoon style rain. Much of the course became a mud-bath and
flooded and tree roots became hidden, running became slippery and with the
low-light, some bits got a little treacherous out there. I don’t mind rain so
much and I did GUCR last year in the pouring rain for 40+ hours, but it started
to become dangerous in places. I was taking it easier because I couldn’t see
properly and the paths were so narrow and now very muddy, but there was still a
constant stream of speedsters itching to overtake. Again, this is all well and
good, but a few times these speedier runners were flying all over the place and
stumbling and because they were just throwing themselves about I nearly ended
up falling into bushes and tripping also.
I just got fed up.
Things came to a head for me after my double-lap, which I
finished at around 11pm-ish. All together I had run 30 miles. It was okay. Actually,
we were in second place out of five female only pairs for quite a while.
Mysteriously, during the night an extra team that had not been on there all day
appeared. I think we eventually got pushed down to fourth, but we had basically
given up by then, so all was ok. We
definitely deserved our medals though – we put in some hard work.
So, there I was after my last lap. I was soaked to the skin.
I was beyond soaked. I was shivering uncontrollably. I was so cold that my
whole body was aching, purely from shivering so violently. Stood in the food
tent, I came across some solo runner friends who had changed into normal dry
clothes. They had decided to rest and sleep until morning and then go out again
when it was daylight and hopefully no longer raining. In my mind, I knew that I
just didn’t want to go back out again. My original plan had been to run 50-60
miles, but that just wasn’t going to happen. I was running around the course,
cursing it. My mind and heart wasn’t in it and then my body followed. I started
to feel quite nauseous and whilst I was in the food tent I bought a baguette. I
forced some food down because I really didn’t feel too good. Then I summoned the
courage to walk the five minutes or so back to where we were camped. I just didn’t
want to move, and yet, I was just stood there shivering.
I got back to camp and my pop-up tent had flooded. This wasn’t
a surprise to me and fortunately Sarah had given me here car keys before she
had gone back out to run her laps. Once in the car, I just sat there, you
guessed it, shivering – shivering like a mad woman! I must have looked quite
funny and mental now I think about it. I was shaking my head and muttering to
myself that I didn’t want to go back out there.
I managed to rummage through my bag and dry myself with a towel and put
on some dry clothes. My towel was soaked. I tried to snuggle down for a snooze,
but at this point, I was still dreading the possibility that I might have to go
back out. I didn’t want to let Sarah down. Near the end of her first lap, she
came by the car, since where we were camped was on the course route, just past
the 9K mark. There was still a possibility I could have to go back out, so I
set my alarm on my phone, but deep down I knew that I really, really didn’t want
to go back out there. A little while later, Sarah came back around, on the end
of her second lap. She had some ‘bad news’, she said; she just couldn’t go back
out there, it was muddy, it was dangerous, and we just weren’t running to
anywhere in particular that would make it somehow purposeful, just running
around in muddy circles. This news was far from bad for me, I was the happiest
I had been in hours. I was so happy that the decision not to go back out was
mutual.
So, right now, I’m sat here and I’m wondering, now that I’m
writing about this around 4 days after the actual event whether or not my
opinions of this event have changed. Was it all as bad as I had thought at the
time? Could I have done more and gone on to enjoy it? Well, I guess you can
always do more. I could have run further and kept on going. But, at what cost?
I really think it got quite dangerous out there and although I had wanted to do
well, it just didn’t matter that much to me that I wanted to cause myself
serious injury. Also, a lot of it just became un-runnable, it was that muddy.
It got me thinking about GUCR in 2012 and how wet and miserable
the weather was on that weekend. I was soaked to the skin and I had to wear a
binbag and I knew from the very beginning in Birmingham that I had 145 miles
ahead of me and that those miles would likely be very wet. Yet, I was so
willing to endure this and I never once contemplated giving up. As extreme as
it sounds, I would have done anything to finish. Similarly, a few years ago, I
ran Hardmoors 55 in Yorkshire. This 55 mile trail race passes through open
moorland and pretty high ground. The terrain is very rugged and we were faced
with patches of snow, biting wind and torrential, unrelenting rain. It got so
bad that more than half the field dropped out and many ended up with hypothermia.
Yet, I was determined to finish it and indeed I did.
So, I know I have the
mentality and strength to overcome tough weather conditions and distance and
keep going. I think the difference is that on other events, I had a clearly
defined goal: to reach that finish line. Furthermore, everyone else running
those races had the same goal in some respect, to go on a journey and reach the
finish. On Thunder Run, I didn’t have that sense of purpose and I just grew frustrated,
because even though I was trying to do well, I wasn’t going anywhere and I wasn’t
going on a journey. I was running around in miserable circles. I think I’ve
learnt some valuable lessons from this event and I know now that 24 hour
thingy-magigs really aren’t my thing...
