WOW, what an awesome weekend.
HWMBO and I set the alarm for 5.30am and left the house at 6, arriving in Farnham at 7.30 in preparation for the 2 day Pilgrims Challenge. Very early considering I wasn’t running until 10am, but HWMBO was on crewing duty for the weekend. The temperature outside was minus 9, far too cold!
Im not going to go into huge detail about the event here as I hopefully will get round to doing a proper write up. Although cold, it was going to be a stunning day of running along the North Downs Way to Merstham. I felt great standing on the start line, nervous as always but not particularly worried as I was treating the two days as training runs, however once I began running my chest kicked in, my asthma was awful and I had to keep using my inhaler. Hannah was a great help and support at CP1 which I really appreciated, but had had to slow down in order to keep my chest under control. A good run nevertheless, legs felt great and the final two Cps I ran with Michelle (who went on to win the Ladies title for the two days, very well deserved) and Jules, fantastic company. We finished in a time of 5hrs 16 minutes which I personally was pleased with.
I thoroughly enjoyed meeting lots of new people, and catching up with friends. Its wonderful hearing how people are training, what they are training for and their various experiences, just fantastic. James Adams gave an excellent talk about his Run Across America, he made it sound so easy! christ, imagine running that far! very inspirational.
Day two was somewhat different to day 1, we had a good 6 inches of snow; Neil and his team were extremely professional, kept the race going but changed the Cps so that they were easier to get to for the cars and more accessible to railways for the runners. Although my chest was playing up and I nearly pulled out at CP2 (had a bit of a low point – thanks Hannah) I finished the race and running the last 10 miles with Jim who was having a bit of a bad time, what a pair! so we supported each other which was fantastic, making my day of running in the snow a fantastic one. Day two completed in 6hrs 42 so not very good, but the best I could do given how I was feeling. Having asthma is very debilitating and extremely frustrating but needs to be taken seriously and I did what I had to do to finish the race.
There are always lessons to learn from a race both positive and negative. One of the lessons for me was I need to eat more (well, I always know that) but I really didn’t fuel my body which was very stupid and you would have thought with all my years of running I would have sorted that by now!
A big thanks to Neil, Anna and their amazing crew, including HWMBO they did a fantastic job and gave us all a weekend that will never be forgotten.
Happy Training
Jim Tinnion
Thanks so much Mimi for your help on day 2 – I too had a fantastic day despite it being a bit of an effort at times. I think it’s brilliant how this sport of ours gives us reasons to keep going even on a bad day- maybe you were destined to stay in the race because someone would need your help later? Anyway it was great to meet you and I look forward to racing with you again soon. Sorry I didn’t catch you afterwards, we had to skeddaddle back to Shropshire so Em could see her lad…