Just as before last weeks race I went out for a bit of a ride with young Mr Dawson, thankfully I was the one choosing the route this time, and I knew the roads didn't run out halfway along. However, it was the route that somewhat beasted me last December where I had to get bailed out by Lynne part way around... This time, though we blasted around snake pass, strines and back over holme moss in little over 3 hours (with a coffee break).
50 miles of not exactly perfect preparation for an 18mile epic, but there you go.
There were a fantastic amount of glossopdaleans out for the Coombs tor race, which is always good to see. Although its quite amusing to get to Rowarth by road everyone managed to get there pretty much on time, though Jack Ross was one of the last to arrive.
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| Thanks to Elanor Swan for the photo |
We were set off with an almighty toot from the starting, um, tooter, and we commenced a mad dash to the bottom of the hill, knowing that there was a pinch point almost straightaway. Phil Swan put in a great burst of speed to be in the top 10 down the hill, and was commenting something about going off too fast.
Well, that's what he thought, and then overtook me up the next hill, going very well indeed. I decided that I'd generally enjoy my day out, thinking that my legs were a bit heavy, and that I wanted to have a bit of energy in my legs for the rest of the day. Off went Phil, and then James overtook me, and a few others.
It wasn't until a good few miles on, after John Doyle passed me that we ended up catching back up to Phil and James. Julien was suffering in the heat, and he was rapidly falling back, not running comfortably.
Going up past lantern pike, we Phil was beginning to tire, and the running though a big puddle and spooking a load of cowes didn't help either. I finally caught up with him and James on the last ascent. Phil and I hooked down the last descent, following John Doyle and one other guy. We blew the other guy away with about 400metres to go, and I could see Phil was really feeling it, so in the last 50metres I took it into my hands to blast past John, which was nice, coming in 11th overall, 3rd glossopdale in.
Props to Alistaire for coming 2nd- a fantastic result.
The run over was all good fun, and 6 of us stuck pretty close together. We took a slightly different line to last year, but got over to Padfield in good time for the start of the Plum Fair Scamper.
I started out at the back with Andy Oliver and Charlie, thinking that we'd just cruise through the race, not too concerned about blasting it. All of a sudden we were actually pretty much last, being held up at stiles and gates, which was nice to get the rest at that point. I slowly worked my way through some of the back field on the way up the hill. I finally managed to catch up with one of the Jackson clan. Tony was kind enough to give me a couple of sips from his bottle, before I headed off on a very slow chase down of John Doyle. I finally caught him at the peak of the hill, and we ran down the hill together.
Just about held it together to keep John off at the end with a bit of a sprint finish for 31st, which was nice.
Lynne and I decided not to hang around for a further 2 hours for the Coalsack race. My contact lenses were dirty and needed to be taken out, so we wandered back across the fields to glossop.
A few of the original starters from Coombs that ran across and did the scamper stayed until the end to do the race up Redgate, which I believe John Doyle won. (mainly because I wussed out- at least he knows that he can beat me up a hill with a coal sack on his back... useful for when winter comes, I might be calling on your services John).
I'm now pretty damn tired, and will probably stay that way for a while, let's see how things go at Lantern Pike next week. Its on the Saturday so we'll have to think up something to do on Friday night to knacker ourselves out beforehand.
Good effort zeph. I think you should have hung on for the sack humping at the end, though ;-)
ReplyDeleteNot sure but I might have captured your image before the start.