The Sword in the Stone

They called it Excalibur...

It was a marathon

It was an off road marathon

It was as tough a day in the hills as I've ever had

26 miles is never easy.

Climbing the equivalent of one and a half Ben Nevis' is never going to be easy

Combing the two in one event was somewhere between inspired and insane...

My primary aim was to finish, ideally within the 12 hour cut off.  And a mate and me did it:-)

We were hurting, and are still hurting... There was no medal, just a t-shirt and a huge sense of achievement.

As often happens the details blur into one, but there are some standouts...

- The soup at 12 miles - never has a plastic cup of soup tasted so good

- The colourful commentary we provided to some who "cut a few corners" - they say you only ever cheat yourself, tell that to my thighs!!!

- My mate channelling the spirit of Marylin Monroe and singing Santa Baby on the way down the penultimate hill...  Never has Moel Famau been subject to such tortured vocals

- The last hill, passing the car on the way up, and on the way down, that was mentally tough! Very tough.

- A deep abiding hatred for some of the newer forms of footpath construction

- A deep love for the kit I have - tip to toe is worked how it should

- The stew at the end - never has a plastic bowl of stew tasted so good.

- Dan and the Marshalls (sounds like a bad pop band) and all of the other walkers and runners - Thank you, I've run in soulless events and this one had a lot of soul.

It had a few hills and we went for them...

This is a video of the track on Google Earth - you'll see where we were zig-zagging in a desperate attempt to get up a steep bit... I seem to recall zig-zagging up a flight of steps at one point!




This is the more usual biometric containing Garmin feed



Traditionally the end of a marathon consists of swearing that you'll never do the like again, its a measure of how good (it's been 48h, my insanity is returning) this event was that we didn't say that... We did think an offroad 10k in July would be good fun (it has pies at the end!!!) and that we could always pop back to the Yorkshire Three Peaks for a autumnal jaunt.

But that's in the far future, before now and then there is the small matter of a trip to Belfast, and a much, much flatter marathon - 5 weeks!


TTFN

Paul

ps mileage so far this year - 350 miles, 564 km:-)


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