Ok, I have not blogged in a long while. Life, work, family, stuff. Some of it important, some of it not. And within all that I was trying to string some decent training together and failing dismally. I had put together a team for the Thunder Run last year when I had put the entry in for a team of 8. Unfortunately, that team rapidly dwindled from 8 down to 7, then 6, then 5 and finally, with two weeks to go down to , when another injury blighted another runner. I managed to get Jon, a friend from work to join us so we headed off to Catton Park as a 5 team.
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| The night before. Drinking tea; talking rubbish |
So what is the Thunder Run? It's a 24 hour non-stop relay of teams from 2 to 8 runners and some solo runners as well (loons!). It's on a hilly 10km loop and you run through the day and night handing over a slap band. There's dodgy catering facilities but it has best been described as a music festival, but with running; and no music. :-/ Simon, Jon and I drove up on the Friday to set up our tents for the whole team, with Martin and Sarah arriving early Saturday ready for the 12pm start in the afternoon. Many clubs, mainly from the Midlands had arrived very early and cordoned off large areas so we ended up quite a way from the hand over point, but nicely positioned at the 9km point.
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| Martin still smiling |
As team leader I took the honour of running the first lap and it was great with all the supporters cheering us on at the start and as we made our way around the course with much of the first 3 kms weaving in and around the tents manned by all the teams. It was a testing course with a short, sharp hill in the first 800 metres, which then just had a series of open grass track with gentle rises that would become full on hills as the event wore on. The really nutty bit was at 7kms where the runners spent 200 metres zig-zagging through trees and over tree stumps and roots. Difficult in the day when you're fresh and a trip-fest at night when you're tired. After that it was a steady drop back to the main field on the hand over, so after 45 minutes I was done and Simon was on his way. Obviously, despite carrying no injuries for the last few months my left Achilles started to really ache and my right foot got very sore, presumably from working hard over some of the rutted sections. Bugger.
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| Sarah at the 9km point next to our tent. |
As it turned out, 5 runners was a really good number to have. It would mean that we would potentially be running 50km which would be quite a challenge but not hanging around for a long time. We got into a routine of seeing our team runner coming in at 9kms to hand over and that would give the signal that the next runner after that had approximately an hour to get ready. While it didn't involve spreadsheets and predicted timings it worked pretty well. The hard thing was getting the feeding right. I found by my third lap that I had eaten too much and it was a very slow one while I had the burps. Thankfully, the weather was kind, although possibly too warm, with a bit of rain through the night, although not enough to make running too difficult.
We ended up being the 21st team out of 69 with 25 laps completed. Had I gone out a shuffled round another 10kms, which I had the opportunity to do we would have been 15th! Unfortunately my foot was really sore by this stage and discretion was required with me racing the Alpe d' Huez Triathlon a few days later, so we were happy with that.
All in all, a great event. If you run, you need to do it.
