UltramarathonMike

Last December I spent 12 hours in the cold, the wet and the dark slogging around Rotherham in deep mud and what felt like one giant puddle. Yet once again I found myself back for more, only this time it was October the weather was pleasant, cool but not cold, not too windy, sunny but not too bright and well … almost perfect in fact.

I rocked up to the Dearne Valley College quite late to meet my good friend Andy Shirres who was coming down from Stockport. Andy has long been a part of themds.co.uk/forums and formed part of Tent 66 at this years MdS.
Last year I stayed in the sports hall but this year me and Andy were camping out in the luxury of the Volvo 940s, 6ft+ of flat space and enough room to sit up equals a quiet nights sleep, just the prep needed. It was great to catch up with Andy and share a pre race beer and the 5.5 hours of sleep was a real bonus too. 5.5 hours, undisturbed! Unheard of in the Blamires household of late!

We were due to set off at 7am and the weather was looking great, cool but not cold and dry. We set off in the morning light with the rest of the runners and soon fell into a nice pace. We mostly went the right way and I seemed to remember the route OK. As we headed toward Keppel’s Column we did make a minor mistake which looked like we cut a corner but as we ended well behind a group of people we passed earlier it wasn’t much of a cut!

Andy and I chatted to various runners (one of whom was a fellow East Yorkshireman) and enjoyed what was lovely weather for October.

In many ways the run was unremarkable and it’s difficult to write about, but that is not a bad thing, everything was going well. The scenery in the first half is not the most salubrious in the UK but I couldn’t complain. Me and Andy were running with … Andy, it was his first ultra but with many running years under his belt and some rather fine marathon times it looks like he was on to do well. He was certainly better trained than I was!

After the 25 mile mark we continued plodding along and Andy (not Shirres) pulled away, although ‘pulling away’ does take a long time in terms of an Ultra. The weather stayed nice, the ground was hard and we plodded on. At about 35 miles our pace was slowing a bit but it was inevitable with my recent training & baby based hiatus! At this point Mr Shirres proves excellent company and despite the look on the face his mood didn’t drop.

A few of the hills had us walking toward the end but we were hanging on well with no major problems, our running pace was not too much faster than the really fast walkers out there but we were a good hour ahead of the with 7/8 miles to go and we (slowly) pulled passed them and kept going.

After we hit the last checkpoint and the finish was just a few miles away I knew we were on good sub 11hr time. At 10hrs 50minutes into the event I knew we were close, I picked up the pace to something silly and kept shouting at Andy to hang on. I crossed the line in 10hrs57 minutes.

I spoke briefly to Angie Sadler (who had a stunning result in the Commonwealth Games, and of course in the RRR50!) at the finish line. When I got in the hall Nick Ham was there waiting and looking remarkably well, he had finished in a remarkable time of 9hrs 13minutes.

I’ll certainly be back next year, though I do yearn for the challenge of the short days provided by December!

• http://www.hmarston.co.uk/rhac/trail/rrr.htm
• http://ultraploddernick.blogspot.com/2009/10/rowbothams-round-rotherham-50mi.html

Addendum: I was underestimating Nick who completed in 09:13 rather than 09:16.. so he did even better!