Marathon 33. 2 Laps of T'Owd Man the Pilot Event for Wirksworth Running Club next year..

Again another race day and that meant another hot sunny day. Its almost October and this was like a mid August sunny day. Wow. I knew bits of this course do to other runs in the vicinity but as a joined up route it was great. Good solid trail running with stunning views most of the way round. I was more than happy to head round again and enjoy them once more!

I set off early in the morning with Katie V whose making a great step back into running after time off for motherhood. I will let her pick up the story:

Having signed up for a half in Oxford the next weekend,I agreed to join Damo on a 10/11 mile run, as part of my training and to add on the miles before he attempted the stupidly hilly wirksworth half 'T'Owd Man' with my husband. Imagine my horror on discovering, during our traditional pie and cream pre race evening brief, that he thought it would be a great idea to do two laps of the very hilly course. Too late to back out, I agreed, being told it's only a 550m ascent (I had no idea how big or little that was)‎. 

7:30am in Wirksworth. 3hrs till the lap 2 deadline and official baby handover. 15 minutes of 'faffing' while I admire the beautiful valley we're parked in. (2:45 to deadline). 

Apparently in 'ultra running' circles it is classed as amateur to run up steep inclines. Why ruin your legs? Not a philosophy I will ever question. ‎I don't think Damo meant for it to be applied to any terrain that wasn't flat to slightly downhill. (I guess the purest whippets probably run, but I live and struggle by the 'Walk when you shouldn't be running, so you can run when you should be running!' motto. DT)

With my legs feeling 'fresh' we got to the top to be greeted by a lot of cows‎. I followed Damo's lead as he ran directly at them, seemed to do the trick. Further along, it was a little more nervy in the young bullock field, but we live to tell the tale. 

The middle section passed in a blur of stunning English country side going up, down, over styles and through ankle testing fields looking desperately for the next piece of red and white tape.

‎Having talked Damo into letting me skip the 'there and back' section, he caught me back up and found me walking (oops!) in my defence I hadn't seen any tape for a while and he had the map. On we plodded, Damo skipping around taking pictures, time check 1.15 to deadline (easy!).

All downhill from Middleton top, feeling the end was in sight, loving the clear blue sky.  Until we hit THE HILL after Carsington, not really steep or long in retrospect, but at mile 12; a killer. Even walking‎ was a challenge, I was energetically told to dig deep, 'it's all downhill after this'.That was a lie!! With 15 mins to deadline it was mostly downhill, the race was on....

‎We rolled into the cricket club 10:25. A sleeping baby, shower and a bacon sandwich awaited me. Bliss. 

Thank you very much KT for helping out and sharing a quality tranquil outing in the fine British Countryside. This is what every early morning run should be like. Oh, actually yeah apart from the cows. Mostly they were well behaved, but that crumpy one with the big horns that didn't move... Thats made me question my philosophy of cow management during running races! PS hope the legs recover well for next weekends slightly flatter half marathon 'Dan Saf'..

More to come on todays race from Big Ben soon....ish...