An early start for a Saturday morning, Mary Davis and I along with chief cheer leader (Stuart) headed over to Leighton Buzzard for the the dirty half challenge - A half marathon trail run. It was only on Thursday night (after looking up directions on the web site) that I noticed the elevation for the race. I'm not a huge fan of hills and this one scared the hell out of me.
We arrived at Cedars upper school at about 8.50am and had plenty of time to collect our numbers and find the start line. The fog from the previous night had lifted but the air was still damp and very chilly. We had come prepared and had plenty of layers on. About 500 runners took part in the race, a lot were from local clubs from this area of the country, although I did meet some runners from Devon and one from Suffolk.
The race started out along the tow-path for the first 3 miles, we then ran through a local village and in to some lanes. At mile 5 Mary turned to me and said "never again" we were both starting to feel that this was a very tough course.
I was counting down to mile 6 and the mile climb up THAT hill to mile 7.
It began..... we huffed,puffed, ran, jogged, plodded and briskly walked until we reached the top. We had a small downhill on some road (a light relief) before we were given another steep climb. The course took us in to the forest and more climbing before some steep downhills, but it was imposable to to make up time and run down as the forest floor was covered in wet leaves, tree roots and stumps.
We left the forest at mile 10 and into some boggy fields. Our feet got cold and wet as we ran through some big muddy puddles ( only just keeping hold of our shoes in the mud) and back onto the towpath as we picked up the pace to the finish.
Finally we crossed the finish line together. The official time was 2.09.48 for both of us and Mary was 3rd in her category.
We decided at the beginning that we would run together and this was not the race for PB's. This was my first trail race and Mary had been of with a knee injury for just over a week.
The course was very well signed posted throughout and there was 4 water stops in total. After the race tea, soup and sandwiches were available in the school hall with chance to warm up and see the winners receive there awards. Mary and I both really enjoyed the race and the scenery was very pretty.
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