Wuthering Hike

The High Peak Marathon was always going to be a hard act for us to follow. Team Vasque North (featuring Mark Hartell!) had a hard fought race with the High Peak Rollerbladers to win the 42 mile High Peak Marathon while Team Vasque South pushed hard to finish third.

The Wuthering Hike is held the weekend after the 42 mile High Peak Marathon, so it's not too unsurprising that we didn't feel quite as fresh as we might have done. Given the rigours of the week, I was well pleased to finish in 6th place with my Three Peaks Yacht Race partner, Martin Indge: and we won the team prize! Mark Hartell did well to sneak in in just under 5 hours after last weekend's great performance.

So what of the race? The dominant feature seemed to be the wind. We were running into a headwind for the first 10 miles or so. This felt like hard work, especially when you know that these 10 miles are usually the fast miles. A good tactic seemed to be to try to slipstream either your team mate (for us team runners) and / or another runner. We did this along the side of the Widdop Reservoir (slipstreaming another runner) and when we decided to make a break for it, we pushed really hard for a few minutes. When I felt we had put enough effort in and should have opened a gap, I looked behind to find the other runner slipstreaming me! It was hard to break away from other runners in these conditions.

It was a race of two halves. The first half we felt pretty fresh and were running into the headwind. The second half was more tiring, but we had a good tailwind behind us. I guess this was the right way round, especially given that the latter half of the course has a couple of vicious little hills on it.

The event centre after the race was a nice place to relax and chat with the friends that we've made during the series and to meet new ones. For me it was nice to be stretching outside in the sun and to watch Mark come in after me. This doesn't usually happen, but I hope I've set the tone for the rest of the series there! I managed to make a complete mess of clearing up the series sponsors' banners after the race. It might have looked like I was just trying to avoid being asked again, but I think I just wasn't quite with it after the race.

Next stop Calderdale Hike, but there are a few good training sessions to be had before then. The first one for me is this weekend in the Lake District. I'm really looking forward to being in the mountains!

[posted by Martin Beale]