If a butterfly flapping its wings in Guadeloupe can cause a hurricane, what happens when you take 50-odd ultrarunners and you make them run in tiny wee circles for 100 kilometres? That's got to build up a heck of a lot of vorticity. I'd take cover – there could be a bit of a storm on the way.
It's enough to have a significant effect on the earth's rotation. They had to knock the clocks back an hour on Sunday morning to compensate. Within the little circle marked out on the Galway seafront the fabric of space-time itself was warped. An hour to an observer outside became an eternity to us runners within; the 2km loop may have been measured to the millimetre beforehand, but I'm convinced that with every circuit the centrifugal force of the mass of humanity swarming round it stretched it longer and longer.
Galway – rolling hills and rocky coastline. You could have a fine trail ultra out there. Sadly, that's not what 100K races are about. A flat tarmac course is what is wanted, and if that means 50 laps of a 2K course, that's what you get. You have to run fast just to get it over with before you die of boredom. Jez had less time to get bored than the rest of us - he kept a remarkably constant pace to finish in a phenomenal 6.58, the first Brit to beat 7 hours for a number of years. Allen Smalls and Marcus Scotney also posted superb times: 7.16 for Allen, with Marcus - running his first 100K - just a minute behind. I was pretty happy with my 7.43, which got me 4th in the UK championship (8th overall in the main race - the German national squad having turned up for a bit of a sparring match and taking some of the top spots).
Give me a trail race any day though – a wide open space, a rocky path, a hill, a forest, an ever-changing view. I think most of the top runners at Galway would agree – the line-up for the forthcoming Highland Fling has most of the same names. It's gonna be good.
[posted by Andy]
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