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Noel Jones and I left for Kent at 6am and arrived in time to start running at 8.45. Id read a little about Gatliffe and knew that this was its 30th year and that they changed the route every year too, also that the area was blessed with hills and potentially mud. It wasn't about speed, but it was certainly all about endurance. It soon became apparent that there were hills, lots of hills, we tackled them at first by trying to run the gentler ones and walk the steep ones which worked well. Most of the run was off road and checkpoints were approximately every 10k. The scenery was distracting with stunning winter sunshine and autumn colours on the trees. We ran through fields and into farmyards, passed horses, sheep and even turkeys, Noel even had a go at a few horse jumps. Off down bridleways and little footpaths and through countless styles - we may have seen every type available, it was great chatting to other runners and walkers (you have to pace well, naturally) At around 15k I slipped and took a tumble - seem to have a knack of this, which is great as I did it again later on, both times on mud so no injures sustained. The checkpoints were mostly by the roadside offering biscuits and cold drinks, the lunchtime checkpoint was a site to behold in a pavilion, sandwiches, soup, cake, a veritable buffet - its difficult to not get carried away, but we had a job to do so tried to restrain ourselves. We pushed on and at checkpoint four we were feeling pretty good considering. it was around this time that the instructions became more difficult to decode and we got a little bit lost a couple of times, only to the tune of about a kilometre but this hurts when you have already done 40! Eventually we got back on track and the light was fading, the organisers really excelled themselves by placing beacons along the last 4 or 5 miles to help us back to base. I really enjoyed this race and am very grateful to Noel for sharing it with me, am pretty sure I would have done closer to 80 miles if I had relied on my own navigation! Sarah
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