Monarchs Way 2019 – In the beginning……….

For those who don’t know the race its a 615 mile non stop ultra following the escape route of King Charles the second in 1651 as he escaped Oliver Cromwell after defeat at the battle of Worcester. 

It’s extremely tough and in 3 years and 17 starters only 3 people have so far finished it. Over 43 miles a day needing to be completed and all carrying your own kit and having to navigate. You only get a Checkpoint about every 45 miles and access to clean stuff. 

You just carry or buy your own supplies on the way and suffer whatever the weather brings and all on little sleep. 

It’s safe to say its pretty tough. 

There was the usual meeting up the night before for dinner at the hotel. Something I we now call the “Last Supper”.

The Last Supper

7 Runners, 2 crew and several family members met in the Premier Inn Worcester as usual and exchanged pleasantries and laughed at some of each others jokes over dinner. I ran through the briefing and then we had a very enjoyable dinner with Peter and Leanne managing a starter and pudding, this is the reason Peter now has the name “Pudding” on his tracker.

Last Minute Faffing

The Traditional Start Photo

The off we went to bed and after everyone had a big breakfast in the morning we headed down to the start for the now compulsory yellow banner photos with John from the Monarchs Way Association, trackers were fitted and we added a new photo set to the album, the “Bag Off”!

The Bag Off

There was much debate and banter around who had the largest and heaviest pack size we had them line up in pack size order. I may also use the picture to cross out faces as the numbers eventually get reduced.

Peter chose to go for the best dressed Ultra Runner this year, taking the smart shirt theme to new heights this year in the absence of Chris Yeo.

After a little banter and a bit of FB live by Lisa (Ellen’s Wife) we started bang on 10am. Off they went into probably the worst bit of mud they would see all day just under the first bridge where the cows had trampled the ground, Maxine took a short video.

The it was a mater of getting back to the hotel and squeezing the final bags into the rather full pick up truck to head off out onto the course and do the food shopping for the first few days of food supplies.

To see all the event info go to http://www.challenge-running.co.uk/races/monarchs-way-ultra

There are also profiles on the runners on the page and a link to the tracking page.

I will try to update each leg the day after and post regular updates on FB and Twitter.

Lindley