This weeks run has guest blogger Pete taking over.
Hello! I’m Pete, and on Sunday morning whilst I was admiring the views of Windmills at Jack and Jill… this happened:
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| Infinite Hashers! |
These two pesky buggers, Scrum Muffin and Little Pecker come running down the path kidnap me and make me join in on their 40 mile run (Thankfully they’d already done 5)!
The plan they told me, was They’re going to run 30 miles and I’ll run 23. Well that was the plan until the night before when we discover the TrailWalker handbook has the distances wrong! So they’ll be doing 40 and I’ll be doing 30, I’m sure it’ll be fine for someone who ran 20 miles ago a long time ago and the only running I’d done recently was joining them for the Ultra training last weekend. Thankfully I keep myself active through lots of other things. Lee’s plan was to break me; he wanted to know what would fall off when I passed 30 miles, only then can I be classified as an ultra runner.
They have a quick refuel at my car, and then head up towards Ditchling Beacon, where we need to run across a road full of “DING! DINGS!”, or bikes as they’re known to boring folk. It’s Bikeaggedon as everyone and their giraffe are cycling from London to Brighton! We Dib Dib the scouts, run past loos and many ice cream vans to continue our journey, no time for stopping, we’ve got a checkpoint to find, and they’ll be here when we get back
Lee’s naving, he tells us to go right, then go left. I’m enjoying the fact I’m not naving. Although something feels wrong, I bring out my tattered trailwalker guide from my shorts, take a wild stab at where we are and continue. We turn right, I know it’s wrong, we’re meant to turn right just before a prison and should have passed some houses first (my catching features). I stop and try and relocate myself on a tiny OS map, realise where we are and call them back. This is a bit of a wahli!
wah·li
Noun
- An action or judgment that leads to something bad: “Ooo that’s quite a long way from where we are! That’s quite a wahli”
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The good news is, due to the wahli, we got to run through a field of yellow grassey things so we re-created scenes from Gladiator!
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| My name is Scruminus Ultramus Muffinius, commander of the Ukejams of the South, Hasher Extra-ordinaire, runnering partner of Littleist Peckerus, mother to a murdered son, wife to a murdered husband, so I called. Claims Direct |
This leads us to the road, where we can make up some time and rejoin the route just before Checkpoint 9! Awesome, that was until we made a few more wahlis, and ended up running down a fast dual carriage way the wrong way, before jumping over the hedge, into a horse sand school (a manage so I’m told) and finding…
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| Free Doodie! |
Well that was quite a bit of a clusterwahli
clus·ter·wah·li
Noun
- A series of wahlis that lead to a rather scary detour. “These cars are moving very fast and very close to us, we may be in clusterwahli territory now”
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With a bit of help from a farmer, we’re running up to Checkpoint 9! Another Windmill; the Dutch will be be jealous!
We run up a very steep hill and to try and find the Trailwalker waterstop, which is half a kilometer wide covering important detail on the map, and at a different location on the two maps it’s on.
We think it’s going to be in an abandoned building.
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| Our Future Waterstop! |
We run, up and up, and up, until we reach Brighton racecourse, we start to follow instructions and discover there’s another TW map cockup, the map says turn left onto Whitson Avenue, when it’s actually called Wilson Avenue, no matter! We’re here! 15 miles done and we’ve finished TrailWalker! Well we will have on the 27th of July.
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| We’ve finished the race! Oh wait, we’ve got to go back |
We have a quick bite to eat at the Race course and the sun comes out! The sun makes the run a lot prettier! Although thirstier work too, we’ve got another 15 miles to go and we’re running low on water,
We spend a lot of the return playing spot the trailwalker, whenever we see groups of three or four, I’m sneakily looking in their hands to see if there’s a trail walker guide, if we find some, we epically run past them and give them a high five and get a photo.
Our camelbacks and bottles are nearly empty, the TrailWalker waterstop (with the ability to be in two places at once) was dry. We’re getting worried, we’re about to leave civilisation for a good 14km and we’re not in a safe part of the uk for stream drinking, we need some sort of miracle!
*Cue Holy Chorus*
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| Filling up with Holy Water |
Nuns! Lee makes the observation that the nuns can supply us with Holy Water! Yay! We’re not going to die in the South Downs Sahara! Best of all we’ve now got god on our side!
At about mile 20, I start to break, I’m struggling up hills (I usually love uphills!) and I’m drinking lots but I can’t get moving, it takes me a good few miles to notice that I’m actually dehydrated, so I’m drinking a lot of water, but I’m still slowing down.
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| I’m a giraffe! |
A good few miles later (whilst doing a giraffe impression) I realise why I’m struggling; I’m overheating, I roll my tights up to above my knees and this gives me the boost to get back to Ditchling Beacon! Where’s it’s still Bikeageddon, to finish our journey we have a threeway with Mr Whippy.
With our Threeway over we start the final few miles home, we notice the thing that’s been missing from this blog… a TRIG POINT!
With the planking over it’s a couple of miles back to my carpark, which is where I leave Little Pecker and Scrum Muffin to continue to their car.
I then lie on the grass besides my car for a good half hour, I’ve just done my first marathon, and my first Ultra too!.
Normal Services will continue next time! But in the meantime you should so sponsor us!
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