A school teacher once said to me, "I don't like it if I see you quiet. You're not one of those who's meant to stay quiet."
She was quite right. At the risk of beating my own trumpet, I am a firm believer in not staying quiet; in making my mark wherever I go and in whatever I do. A former boss - when discussing my enthusiasm and professional desire in a not-very-positive light - said once, "don't try and run before you can walk". I firmly believe he was full of s***.
I do not underestimate the achievement. I am bloody proud of it. In no way was the event easy, in no way was it taken lightly. My thighs hurt, though mentally I felt fine. I was cold, my fingers were numb, but I motored on. Churning out the laps was pure pain, but time actually passed by fairly quickly. I was lucky to be helped for a good few hours in the morning by Tom Fitzsimons, who I met earlier this year and who has been a great inspiration for my running - more on that in a previous blog post here - and who gave me some invaluable tips on staying hydrated and fuelling. It was so good to see someone like Tom, who has achieved so much with running, come out in support of me.
She was quite right. At the risk of beating my own trumpet, I am a firm believer in not staying quiet; in making my mark wherever I go and in whatever I do. A former boss - when discussing my enthusiasm and professional desire in a not-very-positive light - said once, "don't try and run before you can walk". I firmly believe he was full of s***.
On 31st March, I ran for 9 hours. I covered 58km. Prior to that day, the most I had run was 30km (3 hours). I had never run a marathon, not even walked 42km. And yet, at 08:50am, with rain and wind sweeping through the Humber Bridge Country Park car park, around 40 of us gathered for the pre-race brief for Hell On The Humber - Mad Hatter. A 9-hour endurance event on the Humber Bridge. At exactly 9am I began my quest to be an ultrarunner. Running has become a passion for me over the last 18 months, and like anything else I take up, I want to leave my mark on it. HOTH was just the start of it, but it's a pretty solid mark! I had well and truly run before I could 'walk'.
I do not underestimate the achievement. I am bloody proud of it. In no way was the event easy, in no way was it taken lightly. My thighs hurt, though mentally I felt fine. I was cold, my fingers were numb, but I motored on. Churning out the laps was pure pain, but time actually passed by fairly quickly. I was lucky to be helped for a good few hours in the morning by Tom Fitzsimons, who I met earlier this year and who has been a great inspiration for my running - more on that in a previous blog post here - and who gave me some invaluable tips on staying hydrated and fuelling. It was so good to see someone like Tom, who has achieved so much with running, come out in support of me.
The first two laps (each lap being 4 miles of a round trip back and forth on the bridge) I knocked off in 1h 20mins. It wasn't the smartest strategy - going out too fast - but even by the 7th hour I was still pulling 50-min laps. Everything hurt; there were many points where I was walking for 5 mins and running for 2; many stages where I wondered whether with every passing minute my sanity was slowly floating away on the river 30 metres below my feet. As is the case with a laps-based event, I was passing other runners all the time, and it became second nature to say "well done, well done" to each one - a kind of tribalistic, almost cult-like exercise. It did not matter whether you were walking, jogging, or running - you said it, and got one in return. The winds from the North Sea blow your ego away quicker than you can say "I'm too pro for this". But such was the state of mind and body by the 8th hour that I'm sure I said "well done" to pretty much every passing person - didn't matter if they had a race number attached to their clothing or not. Sanity was three laps behind me and didn't seem all that bothered about catching up.
At approximately, 4:10pm, I was hoping to put in 2 more laps, but as soon as I started lap 9, the legs just refused to go at beyond walking pace. Even a slight jog would set off my thighs. Halfway across the bridge, the realisation hit that I wouldn't make my goal mileage of 64km. Perhaps out of sheer exhaustion, my ego didn't have the strength to battle anymore. I accepted the outcome and decided the best thing would be to jog/walk the 9th lap and finish with a smile, which I did at 5:20pm. At 5:30pm, we were allowed to sign-off from the race - race officials deemed 8.5 hours as the good-enough cut-off for a 9-hour-finisher cert.
Far from being disappointed at my failed lap, I sat in my van with a big grin, thinking "I've just run 58km. F*** me, that was brilliant!" Or as the great Bruce Dickinson would say, "Hell ain't a bad place. Hell is from here to eternity."
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