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| Lee-Stuart Evans and Jenny Lord at the UK National Wife Carrying Race 2016 – photo by Gaz Davies |
Its a Sunday morning and I’m doing a highly professional ‘pre race dry run’ figuring out the best way to jump over hay bales with a woman balanced over me , We’ve tried 5 positions the day before with varying success and my trousers are making jumping the hay bales difficult, as is the Intova Video Camera sticking out on a pole from between my legs.
As I run I shout ‘Jenny can you open your legs more….. I can’t see what I’m doing ‘
The crowd cheer at my double entendre and get ready to throw buckets of water…
This is without a doubt the strangest and most fun running race I’ve ever done.
But let me take you back 24 hrs and explain how it happened…….
UK National Wife Carrying is now in its 9th year. It originates from Finland where the idea is to race carrying your wife ( or any person over the age of 18) through an obstacle course that usually involves water as well.
The UK Wife Carrying course is a 380m uphill course with hay bales and the crowd throwing water over you on the return loop. Its 2 to 4 mins of incredibly intense exercise with a ‘wife ‘ that must weigh at least 50kgs.
With my new found gusto for saying yes to any whacky running race this event had been on my radar for a long time.
The day before the big race Jenny and I took the time to try out the different hold positions, you can see our results here
Pre race we took the time with Hot Under the Collar TV to explain some of the wife carrying holds.
After the official registration and weigh in ( when I discovered I would be carrying 8kg more than the required minimum) we limbered up and headed for the start . We noticed a chap called Joel was going to be carrying 2 wives this year having carried ‘Tiny Tina’ a huge rugby player the year before.
My ‘wife’ for the day Jenny Lord and I had opted to run ‘classy’ in that true British spirit. I was wearing black tie and Jenny sported a cocktail dress , opera gloves and pearls. We may not be the fastest but we would be the most fabulous.
AND WE WERE OFF !
I’m normally used to ‘settling in’ to a run over the first hour or two. Getting to that first checkpoint , taking it easy . Instead it was flat out from the start ! As I got over the hay bales I had to remind myself to NOT powerwalk the hill as I would normally do and instead maintain full power all the way up to the turning round point.
It was the craziest 3 mins of my life. I opted to be safe and pick my footing carefully, being slightly worried to not injure myself 4 weeks from the Marathon des Sables having trained for 18 months.
We crossed the line in a flurry of water and confusion and it was obvious that we had not won. My dreams of finally representing the UK in a national sport would have to wait for another time.
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| Lee-Stuart Evans and Jenny Lord at the UK National Wife Carrying Race 2016 – photo by Gaz Davies |
The fantastic winners were America’s Jonathan Schwochert and Charlotte Xiong who won for a second time running with a new course record of 100 seconds.
I made a mental note if I ever ran it again to opt for racing spikes for confident grip and to grow about 10 inches taller like Jonathan.
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| Lee-Stuart Evans and Jenny Lord at the 2016 UK National Wife Carrying Race – Photo by Steve Rencontre |
Awards were dished out that included winning your own wifes weight in beer , pot noodles for the slowest runner (Joel again) and sausages for the man that carried the heaviest wife ( who did not claim his prize for fear of retribution) .
The full video report on the race is here
Massive thanks to Dr Rob at Trionium and the guys at Pulsin and Beyond and Intova for helping us with the race.
If you want to enter the race yourself you can follow the link here for next year
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