Lat weekend I travelled up to Durham with Sue and we met up with Flip (Phillip Owen) and Anna Seeley who we have made friends with throught Fetcheveryone and meeting at races.
I had planned to do the Hardmoors 55 as a very long training run to prepare myself for the Viking way in three weeks time.
We got up early on the Saturday and drove to the start, I met Richard Webster a very fast runner who I had been chatting to on Facebook and Twitter as he is aiming fior Spartathlon in september too.
He went on to finish 9th in 9:30ish which is fantastic.
I met loads of cool people which is another reason to do these type of events and most people knew Flip as he has helped organise this particular event in past years.
It was not long before we were off and I jogged off with my very heavy pack and plodded along, it is a nice route and although not huge hills on the first 22miles there were a few “nice” hillls and the course was reasonably hard going with my deliberately heavy pack on. I was chatting with various people and talking my usual crap as I plodded along. I was fairly comfy running at an easy pace apart from when I met Clare who is also running spartathlong and I have met at places like GUCR last year who dragged me along for a bit at 8:45 pace but I dropped back as that was definately too fast for me. I also met Jo Kilkenny who is also running Viking way in a few weeks. I was also leap froging with Flip and Anna and chatting with them, it was a nice day out.
About 15miles in and although my legs were in good shape I knew the course was to get very challenging later and I started thinking that maybe runing the whole 55 miles may not be good for my legs with Viking Way in 3 weeks so I took the difficult decision to stop at the 22 mile CP and drop out to save them for the pain of Viking Way which is much more of a target to me. I met up with Sue here and she seemed a bit surprised at me stopping and we then spent the day going to CPs and supporting Flip and Anna till the end of the race along with others such as Yin-Hai who I also met at JW Ultra last year.
Although I am a bit dissapointed for getting another DNF and stopping I think it was the right decision as I think my legs would have been too trashed if I had completed it and to give me my best chance at Viking Way I need to bee well rested.
It was however a very nice weekend with friends and good training over some hilly 22miles.
looking forward to Viking Way now and pushing my limits hard even though I am crapping myself a bit about it but I will go th it and give it everything I have and possibly more and I hope that is enough!