The Deca's run course will take the athletes from Lands End up to Sandy Bay some 262 miles apart.  This will be the longest and toughest footrace in Europe even if the athletes did not have the small job of a 1120 mile bike before hand (oh yeah, and a 24 mile swim).  This type of running is miles apart from road running, and with the ONER 7-days away, I thought I'd go and have a look around the course.  The ONER's course starts just after the Deca's course finishes.  There are parts of the ONER course that goes inland, so I took a look around them in the daylight before I have to navigate around the course in the dark.



The main purpose of racing (training would be a more appropriate word), at the ONER, is that it provides a 'training run' for Tom Beaver for his Arch to Arc preparation.  Once these miles are in the bag, Tom can now concentrate on his Swim training for the English Channel.

Please have a look at Tom's training blog at www.runningbeaver.co.uk

The Sennie Extreme is about 2 months away.  This is a 200-mile footrace from Birmingham to London.  Athletes have 3 days to run 174 miles, then they all run 26 miles on the last day.  This will be great training for the Deca.  I will run 58 miles for the first three days.  Although this is a little longer than the daily requirement for the Deca, the course will be much easier and the time on the legs will be ideal.

The photo above was taken just West of Lyme Regis.  This is a view of the route to Portland.  Awesome!!