On Saturday, Mark, Stuart and I completed the
Lakeland 55km ultra trail marathon.
Two slight understatements appear to have been made in
the race title as due to a change of course it ended up at 58km, and
it was more of a mountain pass race than “trail” as we know it!
Apparently they are technically hills, not mountains but they felt
more like mountains to me! Luckily we had unexpectedly beautiful
weather and, although a little warm for much of the day, this
allowed us uninterrupted views of the stunning Lake District Scenery
– when we could look at it rather than watching our steps on the
very rocky ground… A beautiful, butvery
challenging, route there were plenty of sheep shouting encouragement
(I assume) all the way round, and I helpfully pointed out each of
them to Mark over the 36.5 miles. Stuart raced round impressively in
just over 8 hours. I got stared at ominously by a cow (bright
yellow may not have been the colour to be wearing at this point),
picked up a few blisters and fell over a big arse rock, and Mark got
stuck in a tree when he forgot his walking poles were in his
rucksack, but we finished in the middle of the pack in 9hrs 45mins,
luckily many hours before the dreaded cut off sweeper who was
picking people off in the last half of the race…
and whilst the chip shop
was still open.
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