Curry ?……..and Long Distance Running? …….Yes!
After running 108 miles of The Greensand Way last year over the jubilee weekend (and raising £4000 for charity) we were looking for something new this year as a running challenge. When the chance to do 2.5 marathons over terrain with more climbing than Ben Nevis and Snowdon combined…..we thought about it……………when we heard they cooked Gurkha curry on the route…………. we signed up.
We’ve all maintained good fitness over the winter. Claire (hashing name Scrum Muffin) and I (hashing name Little Pecker) have done a lot of hashing, and an epic run from London recently which was in the previous blog post. Dave has had to rest following spinal surgery to make him a more socially acceptable height, so with the emergence of the bluebells it was time to focus our minds on the next challenge by attending a pre-event briefing at Queen Elizabeth Country Park on Sunday (where the Trailwalker event starts in July). Dave, however, turned up a day early delirious from painkillers and did a 14 mile run on his own without us…..in the wrong direction.
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| Dave – A day early and 6 inches shorter on the South Downs Way |
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| Pete ‘EPIC RUNNING’ up Harting Down on the South Downs Way |
No matter how experienced you are in long distance running, you can always learn something new. Most of the the 550 teams will be walking the 60 miles of Trailwalker in 24 to 30 hours, Some, like us, have chosen to run it instead. The event has its origins from about ten years ago when Gurkhas would use the Petersfield to Brighton route as a training run. Their record for this event is a morale-sapping 9 hours 40 minutes.
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| World War 2 German Pilot memorial on the South Downs Way |
There were lots of hints and tips for us during the briefing and we got to meet some Gurkhas who had actually run it. After the briefing we chose to run from South Harting to checkpoint 2 on the route at Cocking. We met up with Pete who is joining us this year in our four person team named ‘Three and a Half Hashers’ We hadn’t seen Pete (Hashing name Gimme Head) since he got a job at Southampton Uni playing video games.
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| photo by Karen Robinson |
We parked in East Harting and ran up Cross Dykes to get up on the Harting Downs. The South Downs Way skirts round Beacon Hill and heads out east towards Treyford Hill.
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| Claire and Pete running along The Devils Jumps on the South Downs Way |
As we ran along Treyford Hill we saw ‘The Devils Jumps’ These are 5 bronze age burial mounds that are aligned with the sunset on midsummers day.
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| Pete jumps on Lees hand on the South Downs Way |
We also began introducing Pete to our various photographic running traditions which include ‘big doody’ pictures and trig point planking, although we didn’t get a chance to show him a topless ‘smack’ picture.
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| Pete knows Big Doody on the South Downs Way |
The Trailwalker course is broken down into 10 sections with checkpoints roughly every 10 kms. between now and July we will make sure we have run each section at least once so we are familiar with the terrain and route which can help enormously when we come to actually running the event.
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| Claire and Pete running up Beacon Hill on the South Downs Way |
The run on Sunday took us up to where Checkpoint 2 would be near Cocking. Claire and I are used to running long distances with around 10kg rucksacks containing all our camping gear and food etc. For Trailwalker we will have a support crew (our running friend Amerbob!) so these training runs on the South Downs way will be about reconfiguring our kit to be as minimal as possible and only see us through 10km stages before being replenished. This means cutting down a huge 35L rucksack to literally a camelback with pouches.
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| Pete and Claire running up Beacon Hill on the South Downs Way |
The terrain on the South Downs Way was subtly different to what we are used to on the Greensand Way. Firstly the hills are more ‘open’ with less trees so the views are much better more often, also the chalky soil makes for a thick slippy white shiggy (mud) which is very tough to run in when it’s been raining. I also missed the Type 22 Pillboxes you get on the North Downs Way and Greensand Way.
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| Lee and Pete achieve a two way trig point plank on the south downs way |
We turned round at around the 6 mile mark and ran back towards where we had parked the cars. The total time for the run that day was about 3 hours.
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| Cross Dykes on the South Downs Way |
Over the next few blogs I (with some guest bloggers) will tell you more about the two charities we are supporting this year –
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| No shortcuts on the South Downs Way |
Our goal is to fundraise £1500 towards these two charities and as well as the actual run we plan to do some fun fundraising events on the way which we will blog about.
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| ‘Sharting’ Please follow through carefully |
Getting back to the car felt good for lots of reasons. Having spent a winter in a holding pattern with our running (except for our epic London to West Byfleet run) the run that day and the presentation we had seen had given us a massive boost to ‘get ready’ for Trailwalker. We’ve got lots to do between now and then. To begin with we need to get Dave running eastward which he has never done before.
Our sponsorship donation page can be found here:
how to join this training?