Trail running thread

Check this out! Makes you wonder if there was an mandatory kit requirement at all?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-57216601

Ive got a 110km, 3500 vert race tomorrow, starts at 8.00pm. Forecast is for it be pissing down and blowing a gale!

Hills in the dark and wet. Sounds like it could be challenging although doing the dark stuff when you're at your freshest might not be such a bad idea.  Enjoy and let us know how you go.

Absolute disaster mate.


The weather was truly awful, horizontal rain. We started at 8.30pm and it was weird starting at night but exciting. Navigation was a bit tricky and I stayed with one guy who was going at my slower pace. We were generally mid pack. I was eating and drinking well.
We reached the first checkpoint (Woolacoombe in 4.05), so we were nearly 90mins ahead of cut off. The wind was very cutting and the rain made your eyes go dizzy because the headtorch illuminated the droplets, it’s a weird effect.

After the checkpoint everything gets hard, an awful lot harder with very sheer cliff drop offs, big hills and narrow rocky paths. I was very glad to be with someone. About 10km after the checkpoint (so about 40km in) I started to feel some pain in my left hip. I’ve had this before and in my attempt at a 100 miler in June, this pain caused me a DNF, so I was wary to say the least!

We made a huge navigational error that caused us to ascend for over 20mins and then we had to come down again, find the right hill and climb another 15, so that costs us and then 5km later we made a very similar mistake which caused us huge time chunks. By now my hip was on fire and my whole energy system had shut down. I’d never experienced anything like it and it was getting worse by the minute.

By this time, the race sweeper had caught us with one tail ender and the last lady in the 110 milers (she was walking but strong). So in 20kms, we’d gone from being 90mins ahead to being right up against cut off. Talk about a detonation!

We got the the next town but that was not a checkpoint, the next CP was a further 10km. i had no chance of making it, I could barely walk now and my feet felt like glass.

It was 5.20am, no taxis, no sign of life in the small coastal town and I was worried. I saw a hotel that had lights on, and so me and the sweeper approached. The night manager took pity and let me sit in the nice warm lobby area, as the weather was still biblical. The sweeper went on and caught the others.
Of course all the taxi companies in town were shut, so I was stuck but I was safe and off my hip.
Later in the morning, the race org sent a mini bus to get me from the next CP, there was three other DNFs on there and then it took us to Minehead (where my car was) and we picked up another 2 DNFs on the way.

They were heading out again to pick up others. So it was not my day, two DNFs in one year is very hard to take. I have a 50 miler in Nov but I’m thinking of canning that until i can get to the bottom of this hip issue.

Ironically, my knee felt fine until i was actually driving home! :laughing: So I only managed 51.4kms in 8.5hrs and 1300mtrs vert but I did get some good night experience.

Tough night out - I guess having either the injury or going the wrong way is bad enough but to have both..... Sitting here it's 30c and the sun's shining so it's hard to imagine how crap it can get sometimes! Well done on giving it a go.

Not sure what it is about race start times over there but have entered a 10k trail race starting from Kendal in Nov and it starts at 11.30am. I know it’s dark early in the morning and it’s winter but bit of an odd time? Also looked at another 10k road race down in London a couple of weeks earlier but that starts at noon and I have EPL tickets so forget that!😄

Will be doing a bit of everything first up.  Got a week or so split between Cambridge area and Newcastle (family/friends), then west London for a week (work and EPL!), then a couple of weeks around Ambleside in a AirBNB (hill walking and trail running), then will see what's happening and work out where to from there.  Will be looking for some early snow somewhere if possible which could be Europe or Canada (really like Colorado but US may be a stretch too far at the moment). Will be a few late nights/v early mornings thrown in there for WFH and lining up with Aussie stuff but that pays the bills and should be able to manage it.

Cheers, will do.  Will be over from late Oct so will see how I go.

Speaking generally there's normally a long list of items required for these races which are non negotiable.  More and more though you see FOP people wanting to cut corners wherever possible and get away with the bare minimum or deliberately lose stuff.  At the other end of the spectrum you get other participants buying the cheapest sh!te possible just to be able to pass muster - often not knowing when or how to use it.  When I did Celtman, not only was there a pre race complete strip down of all the kit that had to be carried and that it was up to scratch (not torn, genuinely waterproof etc) there was also another check on course at T2A before you went off into the mountains and they'd stop you if you didn't have everything.  Add to that satellite tracking and the people out on course were the local mountain rescue team.  Having said all that, they're called extreme races for a reason - that's part of the attraction, and the risk.

I was entered into the UTA 100 for 2020. I bought all of the expensive gear they wanted and it is sitting in a crate unused.

At work I regularly run in sub -20C. I always have a back pack with an extra jacket, balaclava, gloves and food. If you are injured and have to stop you will very quickly get hyperthermia and die.

Good stuff mate, glad you are enjoying yourself.  I'm suffering a couple of niggles, so I'm binning Goodwood Marathon in Dec and concentrating on Arc of Attrition 50mile in late Jan

Been watching this, what a lovely film

Ok - found the right thread. I hope the quad is healing. Remember why you are doing this - don’t over think it, have fun and confuse to just take one step at a time! :-) Have fun….

Well, despite a DNF at my race , I've been invited to enter the Arc of Attrition 100 for 2023, based on my E24 result. I have 3 more races this year which I'll use as prep. Major EEK!