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25th Anniversary Relay – The Big One! - Southern Section
Lands End to Bideford The first section of 'The Big One' from down south was successfully completed this weekend. Sandy set us off from Land's End at 17.04 on Thursday afternoon and at 11.30 on Monday morning Suze, Colin sr, Claire and Matthew ran down into Buck's Mill near Bideford on the last leg of an innovative 11 x 1 mile rolling sprint relay used to complete the run.
Radcliffe-on-Trent Flying Ace Don flew down to join us, and Colin Jr, Christine Hallam - now a seasoned HPRC relay participant after leading on the Padstow to Rock ferry leg- and yours truly completed the group. We have advised Garmin they need to bring out an altitude sensitive version as while we ran 139.17 miles this did not include the effect of numerous 2:1 descents and ascents as we battled along the coast - spectacular views and but often stamina sapping terrain. North Devon and Somerset here we come!
Bideford to Moorlinch The
second weekend's running of 'The Big One' has now been completed with an
extra 103 miles covered from the south and 53 from the north, getting us
to Moorlinch and Filey as planned. We in the south were bang on schedule
with wet weather, horrendous traffic, occasional tumbles and steep
hills being offset by excellent running and a good pub. . The
northern trio of Over
to the 100 mile team now to do the last bit (well c. 50 miles) to set us
up for the last weekend. Derek
Well, we didn’t expect it to take five and a half hours for a start! Neither did Derek when we phoned him an hour from the end of our leg(s) when he was – well you know Derek – just ever so slightly put out that the very carefully put together schedule for Sunday was rather falling apart. (But he was very nice about it later.) Joe,
Hilary and I had put our legs together (our stages on the route that is,
not our lower limbs) to give Hilary and I our last 20 before Robin Hood
Marathon. It came out as
rather more than 20 on paper but what’s a couple of miles here or there?
Then we checked the guide book stages and it came out as rather
more like 24 but by that point we were committed.
No problem as we emailed the next and final couple of runners for
the day to warn them we might just be a little over schedule.
(Sorry Haywoods. Very
sorry Jogger who had to come back the next day early.)
Pity Bernard got the day wrong in the email – but – hey – we all make mistakes. And the minor electronic panic was soon resolved to everyone’s satisfaction. We were all running on the same day. But these straws in the wind should have alerted us to the fact that there might be problems ahead. But
there weren’t. Apart from
the fact that electricity pylons are usually a bomb proof navigational aid
– “We’ll run along this track until we reach the pylons when we need
to turn left along a less obvious footpath.
How handy that the 100 foot high pylons are there to mark the
way….” Except they
weren’t – somebody had taken them away.
I realise no-one will believe this and Hilary was very nice about
it at the time. BUT THEY WERE
ON THE MAP AND NOT ON THE GROUND. And it only cost us about five minutes
anyway. Oh – and the small matter of the ploughing. The nice farmers had ploughed up rather a lot of the footpaths, that morning by the look of it, and they are legally not required to reinstate paths for a fortnight. That
apart we really had a very nice time in surprisingly attractive
countryside for the Bernard
Jarvis
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