Phoenix Running Squid Run - the Square Run, 29.5 miles, 26.03.2022

My Squid Games knowledge is still lacking, but I do know that the workers who are of the highest level have a square on their masks, and can give orders to the workers who have triangles and circles on their masks and supervise them. I've got a triangle and a square now, and if I get the circle I might even watch the programme. 

Although clueless as to the topic of the run, I was very impressed by the group running dressed in Squid Games costumes!

It was the most beautiful day down by the river. Sunshine, blue skies, and lovely and warm.

Ran the first 2 laps with Andrew, and then Paul joined us, so ran another 7 laps altogether. I have never run with Paul before, and it was great fun, and the miles passed by really fast and we all did an ultra (29.5 miles). And thank you for the half way emergency sun cream! 

Huge congratulations to Simon on his 250th marathon! Epic milestone!

Good times in the pub afterwards, sat in the sun with rehydrating beverages. And thanks Rob and Andrew for a fun trip back to the Big Smoke!

Thank you Phoenix, to Rik and Nicole for looking after us at the aid station, and for the supply of shrimps Nicole!

Like the boat says, happy days 💙😃🏃

The Sevenoaks Circular, 32 miles with the Kent LDWA, 20.03.2022

It's excellent that LDWA events are back up and running post-Covid! The Sevenoaks Circular is an event I've wanted to do for a few years now, and it was worth the wait. Fantastic route, great hospitality, friendly and encouraging, five amazing checkpoints, and the Kent group of the LDWA had even arranged beautiful weather for the day.

The event started and finished at West Heath School in Sevenoaks, which was quite a spectacular starting location indeed, and even had chandeliers in the toilets.

I did the 32 mile route with Andrew, which was an anticlockwise loop, going to the north of Sevenoakes. My Mum, Dad, Auntie Nicky and my cousin Sammy were all there too, doing the 22 mile loop. It was great to all meet up at the start, have tea and biscuits together in the banqueting hall, and all set off together into the sunshine at around 09:00. 

The first 6 miles to checkpoint 1 at Heaverham wound through a nice valley, and past Knole House...

...and a golf course where we saw some deer, and there was another running race on, and the golfers were all very polite, so we made it through without any gold ball incidents.

Checkpoint 1 was outdoors at Heaverham and was filled with peanuts, chocolate bars and bananas. From here, it was 4 miles to the next checkpoint, starting off through the very beautiful St Clere Estate.

Then, there was a little section along the North Downs Way, before passing through a caravan park, after which we met two elderly ladies crossing a stile, who were concerned there may not be enough refreshment opportunities on the run, so advised us that there was a pub in their village. Happily, this happened to be the next stop (Stanstead), but the checkpoint in the village hall was so good (it had scones!) that no pub was needed.

From there, it was up some fields, through the London Golf Club, through West Kingsdown (close to Brands Hatch Circuit), and then up to the next checkpoint at Eynsford, the most northerly point of the route. Refuelled with some peanuts and grapes, then it was off through Eynsford village and across the River Darent. Then we picked up the Darent Valley Path, and continued on this uphill.

At the top the path levelled off, and running along, we spotted a huge bird circling in the sky above. I've never seen a bird so enormous before. We stopped to watch it. Turns out, it was a white tailed eagle! A guy walking behind us caught up, who professed to know nothing about birds, but I suspect was being modest, as he sounded suspiciously like an ornithologist from what I was hearing. Which was very handy!  

Nice bit of downhill, past Lullingstone Castle and a pretty path through some woods by the River Darent, then some uphills, woods, and many flowers to admire. 

Made it to CP 4, at Shoreham Village Hall, where who should be there, but our family gang! Reunited, we all had a nice sit down with a cup of tea and sandwiches, and caught up on each others adventures so far that day. 

Then it was on through Shoreham Village (where the pub was advertising a pie and a pint for £89.50, which seems expensive, even for round here). Shoreham is very pretty, but I've no idea how anyone gets around it, tiny villages aren't made for cars. So slow was the progress of cars through the winding streets, that I even beat a supercar (Aston Martin, but no James Bond) to the vineyard at the end of the village, which is my favourite way to arrive at vineyards. 

Through a very lovely church yard, then the route had a few miles which seemed nice and flat, so we got some good paced miles in. Down towards Dunton Green, and running past a pub, a man called out that " you should be coming in here instead!" which, to be fair, was a very good point.

CP5 was an outdoor checkpoint at Chipstead, where we ran into Kasia and Ellen and had a good catch up! The last section was 4.4 miles and included the only part where we got momentarily lost, as we had lost concentration due to chatting. It also involved a sneaky line on the route description, which casually mentioned almost a mile uphill through a forest. But at the top, ran into Davo and Bryan, so that cheered up the long haul up the hill! Then ran into Lisa a bit further on, and then it was back to the school and the finish. 

Hot food (bean stew and rolls), hot drinks and cakes awaited, so spent a nice time catching up on lost calories, and with many people. Family gang all arrived back safe and in triumph, and so yet more tea and chats were partaken of, until we all had to head off on our sperate ways....

Such a brilliant day, thank you Kent LDWA and all the many volunteers for such an excellent event, a beautiful route, checkpoints full of gustatory delights, and amazing weather! I also loved following a route description again, I've missed them.

Rhino Run - Chris's 100th Marathon, at Phoenix Running, 19.03.2022

A beautiful day for a jaunt along the Thames, to celebrate the fabulous Chris Green's (AKA Rhino Boy) 100th marathon! 47 of these marathons Chris has run in his rhino costume, raising money for charity Save The Rhinos. How amazing is that, and what an incredible journey. Huge congratulations Chris!

So many people were there today to celebrate the occasion, and it pretty much felt like things used to feel like before Covid happened. It was fabulous.

Ran the first half with Sarah (look after that hamstring!), then 10km with Dave, all of it with Andrew, and plenty of miles with friends added in along the way. The sun was shining, the sky was blue, hundreds of yellow and white flowers are out all along the path, there was a rhino running along, and it altogether felt like spring is coming. Hurray!

Thanks Rik and Phoenix for another super day, and big well done to to everyone! And huge congratulations to Chris and Rhino! 🦏💯😎

Double marathon weekend: Thank Phoenix It's Friday (11.03.22) & Spring Marathon (12.03.22)

A cheeky wee marathon weekend at the end of a holiday! 

Friday was the "Thank Phoenix It's Friday" event, and was the blue bridge route. This is normally my very favourite route, but today there was a sponsored walk on, and about a thousand kids from a local school walking up and down, which made for a less peaceful than usual Friday run. Anyway, it's still Friday, still not at work, and still running, so it's all good! Plus, it involved a lot of interval running, dodging past everyone, so managed the first half in just over 2 hours, which was quite fun. Then my legs had something to say (very rude, unrepeatable here) about doing this after last weekend, so the second half was a bit more sedate, and involved employment of the "Shrimp Technique" (see last week's post!) each lap, to get to the end. Thanks Andrew for the run, plus lots of running friends were out and about, and the local cockerel was also out for his morning walk. Saw six swans take off all at once from the river, which caused quite a cacophony. Found that Amazon Prime deliver to the house boats. Lovely and sunny until the last lap when it started to rain, and then it poured for the rest of the afternoon. Finished my second round of 52 marathons in 52 weeks (two weeks faster than last time!). Love the medal!

Today was the Phoenix "Spring Marathon". Thanks Sarah and Andrew for another chat-athon! All our legs had some words for us today, so we got each other round - thanks team! The Shrimp/ pretzel/ Freddo techniques were made good use of today, for sure. Good turn out today, and great to catch up with many friends on the way round! It was the little Hampton Court loop today, which was nice and muddy after all the rain. And an extra bonus couple of laps of rain too at the very beginning, which was nice and refreshing, rather than being horrible and miserable; the weather is definitely turning milder. Fortunately, I had put the lid on my kit box, and put it under cover, so there were no stupid wet kit box moments today. Gorgeous daffodils out along the lock, and blossoms coming out all along the route too. Spring is in the air. Andrew sat on a bench by the lock to take of his shoe as there was something in it (as well as his foot), just a a boat called "Foot Loose" came out of the lock. Sang "sitting on the dock of the BAY". To the Weir afterwards for soup of the day (or, soup of two days) and catch ups.

Thanks Rik and Phoenix for another fantastic double event! Well done to all runners! And thanks to Andrew and Sarah for the miles and smiles! 

Track Wars III - Destiny, 24 hour event, 04.03.2022

My first 24 hour event on a track, and what an amazing experience it turned out to be! 

I was so, so anxious about it. It wasn't so much the time or the distance involved that bothered me, rather than that it was going to be the same thing (a 400 meter track), over and over and over again, always being able to see where you had come from, and where you were going. I had no idea if mentally I was going to be able to manage that in my head, to be quite honest. I haven't been able to manage a lot of things in my head lately, and I thought that this might be too overwhelming. 

I had spent a couple of days deciding I wasn't prepared enough, and checking the weather forecast - the conclusion of this being that I needed a plastic kit box to leave my things in by the side of the rainy track. This was sourced (as I'm sure real athletes do too), from Argos on the Holloway Road at 5pm the day before (long story, but includes tube strikes, being stuck on a home visit in far north Haringey at 4pm, and a long traffic jam). I was quite pleased with it, and arranged my spare kit, head torch, first aid kit, hairbrush, and a selection of favourite snacks and ginger beer, all neatly inside. I felt quite proud and prepared, finally. 

The event started at 08:00, at the athletics track at Elmbridge Leisure Centre in Walton on Thames. I placed the kit box down by the side of the track, and instantly felt less prepared again, when I compared it to all the professional looking kit everyone else had. Andrew and I met up with Sarah and Jon, and lots of other friends. 

We collected our timing chips. Had a last minute safety wee (in the luxury loos in the trackside building - so warm!). Then it was over the starting mat, and away, for 24 hours!

The 24 hour event was, as you might have guessed, 24 hours to run as far as you wanted. Each lap was 400 meters. There was a fantastic aid station, which was every 400 meters (which during some other last minute panic preparation I had done about running for 24 hours on a track, turned out might actually be an additional challenge, as the temptation would be to stop too often!). We started off anti-clockwise, and the direction changed every 3 hours (when if you were lucky, Rik would dress up as a traffic cone and mark the place of turning, plus Sarah and I had a rule that we got a chocolate Freddo at each turn around point). There were other 6 hour events starting at 08:00, 15:00 and 00:00, and a 12 hour event starting at 20:00, so lots of new faces would join every so often, which was really nice. It was very excellent to run the first few miles with Alice, and to run some with David and the two Richards at the midnight event. So many people I saw and caught up with!

I ran with Sarah, and we had the best time. Sarah has done a 24 hour track event before, as she is amazing, and when she talks about it, she says she never looked at her watch at all during it. So I tried that too, and it really worked for me as well. I put my Garmin to show the time of day, rather than miles. There was a screen by the timing mat, so you had the opportunity to see how many laps you had done each time you passed it, if you wanted, but fortunately the text was quite small, so it was easy to ignore it. We decided that as the medal was in the shape of "24", that our aim was to run for the whole 24 hours, rather than worry about the distance. I really liked that, and it felt really relaxed. The first time we checked our distance, we had already covered 76.1 miles, and I couldn't believe it! 

I had been worried more about the mental challenge rather than the physical side of things, but it turned out to be totally the other way around. I found running on a completely flat, completely consistent surface for the whole time actually was really difficult. The 100 milers I have done so far have all been trail, and actually hills, although they are nice to moan about, I think I find them easier - it uses different muscles and tempo on the up compared to down, so different muscles get little breaks while others work harder etc. I also got a really sore right hip on the clockwise sections, running in circles! Sarah and I did lots of strategic stretching, which really helped! Mentally, it was no bother. I absolutely loved being around so many people, chatting with different people for different laps, and seeing everyone all the time. I managed to switch off thinking about laps in my head, and just enjoyed being there. So many catch ups with old friends, and getting to know new ones, lots of joking and banter. It really was very good fun, and I felt very happy to be there for 24 hours. 

It was very cold, and a bit rainy on the Friday (where I learnt that the first rule of having a waterproof kit box, is that it is only waterproof if you actually put the lid on properly). But actually it was pretty nice for running in. Overnight it was absolutely freezing. My layers sort of built up overnight, until they almost got out of hand - in the end I had on a base layer, light running jacket, waterproof jacket, and a puffer jacket, plus gloves, handwarmers and hat. And leggings (obviously). On the subject of kit, I had on my specially bought and (what I thought) well broken in, Hoka road shoes, which are really comfortable for general running around in, but turns out weren't that comfortable to wear non-stop for so long. I had terrible sore feet by half way, and a few blisters, so ended up doing a short trip to the car to pick up my reliable old trail shoes with a hole in, which saved the day for the second half!

The aid station was epic. I had my own favourite snacks in my stupid wet kit box, including smoked salmon and cream cheese wraps, Quorn sausages, jacket potatoes with olive oil and salt, custard, bananas, cream eggs and watermelon (and some additional chicken cocktail sausages which I accidently bought, thinking they were Quorn, which Jon kindly ate). But I didn't really eat much of them. The aid station had, amongst other delectable delights, all types of cake, sweets, crisps, cold drinks (Coke, which I normally hate, but love on ultras!!), a kettle and coffee machine. The best sweets there (and indeed, the best sweets anywhere) are foam shrimps, which were essential for our "Shrimp Strategy". The Shrimp Strategy is an as yet unknown ultra technique (developed by Sarah and I, during the event), which I suppose is a version of "winging it" - whereby we kept an eye on how we were feeling and ate and drank as we needed to. The very moment that either of us felt low on energy, the next visit to the aid station we would have some foam shrimps, walk a lap, and pretty much always, we would feel better. If we didn't, we'd just try something else (always good to have a Plan B!).  This served us well! It was only at around 90 miles in I think, when we were quite tired, that we adopted a more structured strategy of running two laps and walking one, and that worked well too. 

Other special aid station moments were the 20:00 pizza delivery - I have never seen so much pizza! Coffee at about 01:00 was epic. And hearing "we've run out of tea bags" in the early hours of the morning, and the calm manner in which this was rectified, is something I shall remember.

Andrew did the 6 hour events at 08:00 and midnight, and is now on his #90 marathon total! Miles with Andrew are known as the "joke-athon miles" as he has such a vast range of terrible jokes. That's also a joke, by the way. His jokes are exceptional. 

The flood lights went out at 22:00 (actually, they momentarily went off quite a long time before, due to a technical hitch, which was quite a moment of excitement, and forced me to find my torch and batteries in my stupid wet kit box, which randomly and unlike anything else, I had put in a plastic bag, so were fine). So the night section was a headtorch section which was great fun - I love running with a headtorch!

There was an incident in the early hours when a gust of wind caught the gazebo that the timing chip screens were in, lifted it up, which in turn lifted up the tables with the timing chip screens on, and brought them all crashing down to the ground, which was all quite dramatic. Happily, everything was fine!

"Cone chat" included party cones (fallen over), fancy cones (reflective), naked cone, little yellow cone, baby orange cone, and Rik cone. This is nonsensical chat, I appreciate, sitting and writing this well rested and with a nice cup of tea, but at 03:00 running round in circles since 08:00 that day before, it's a completely serious topic of conversation, I promise. As is, how do trees know to grow in the shape of a tree, the Poddington Peas, the differing heights of floodlights, the wildlife on a running track, if hurdles can watch you, and saltwater.....

...so, thank you Sarah for putting up with me for 24 entire hours non-stop! You are an amazing friend to me, and I love running with you and our adventures together. Love you big time!  Thank you Rik and Phoenix for an absolutely brilliant event! And all the volunteers and especially Gavin for his epic mammoth volunteer stint and for being so positive and supportive even in the dead of night, and making the best cup of coffee I have ever had. Karen, Matt and Timing Monkey! The lady and her two small children who had come out to support Dan, and who ended up adopting us too. Everyone there in fact - what an awesome community this is! Running past the part with people kit/ support crews was awesome. Huge well done to everyone who ran. Brilliant, the lot of you!

I ran a PB for 24 hours, which basically was going to happen anyway as I have not done a 24 hour event before - so that is now 109.9 miles. I also ran a PB for the 50 km (05:10:55), 50 mile (08:58:01) and 100 mile (21:20:12) parts of it. Which I know aren't official PBs, as they are not the actual thing that I did, but I don't mind about that, I just am happy that after a bit of a disastrous few weeks I did something that turned out positive. And the best part? I felt good, and I and loved every moment.