It was nearly a case of going down stairs on my bottom on Sunday morning, the New Years Day score event of the previous day having taken its toll on my calves and quads. In fact I had to force myself to walk down them properly carrying the box of SI kit.
Leading up to the event I had decided not to run, so soon after being ill and not wanting to pick up a silly injury at an event not important in my MTBO training, but I was leant upon by Cath and a couple of other club members to support the event and run (this quandary may make an interesting blog item in the next few weeks, watch this space).
I stretched and stretched, warmed up and stretched some more before starting steadily, legs like lead, but I swept through the first 4 steadily before my first encounter with the huge linear marsh that runs through the valley that bisects the southern part of the map. Although the wet bit doesn’t extend far it is surrounded by man eating tussocks and reduces all but the most determined to a comedy walk.
I made a little error grabbing the wrong track on the way to 7 losing perhaps 30 secs but ran cleanly through the rest of the first map, getting lucky off-track several times with good bunny runs through the terrain speeding things up.
I made another error coming out of 13 losing about a minute and a half going too high and overshooting the control before bouncing back to it, but got a lucky break on the way to 16 with a good elephant track across the dreaded marsh. After 18 I started the final climb for home. My legs had had enough by this point and it was all I could do to keep running up the track to 19, but kept it going to the finish.
Given the state of my legs I was happy with 3rd some 7 minutes down on Iain Stamp and a minute down on Mikey Hopkins.
For those looking at the map thinking it would make a great MTBO area, it would, but it is unfortunately covered in bridleways: http://www.streetmap.co.uk/map.srf?X=405165&Y=311172&A=Y&Z=115&ax=405130&ay=311130
Results and photos here: http://www.walton-chasers.co.uk/results/2011/clubchamps/index.html