He who dares Rodney.....

When one turns up on the line of an ultra race, one expects that things are going to get a little tough.  Tom Beaver and I stood on the starting line at Lyme Regis with 30 other ONER hopefuls wearing three outer layers and the wind and rain flying horizontally into our faces.  The organizers told us that we had a South West wind.  He went on to say that if it had been a North wind then he would of cancelled the event.

We had a checkpoint to pass through every 6 miles of the 78.6 mile route.  At the first checkpoint the organizers cancelled the event.  I can totally understand why they cancelled; after all they are a business and their business is more important than the needs of the athletes.  The bad news came at 7pm on the Saturday evening and the organizers suggested that we slept until 5.30am, then start at another location and run the last 54 miles of the course.

Myself and Tom were there for one reason:  It was a training run for Tom and the goal was to run through the night for 78 miles.  Some athletes decided then and there to go home, others headed for the accommodation so they could get their 8 hours beauty sleep before their double marathon the next day.  Tom and I however, headed off to do what we had set out to do:  78.6 miles.  We had to tell the organzers that we had pulled out from the event so that we were no longer their responsibilty.

To start with, we headed onto the road, but then we navigated back onto the coast path as we thought that running on the road was more dangerous.  The road route we took added another 5 or 6 miles onto the course.

At around 6pm on the Sunday evening, we completed the 78.6 mile course we now call, The 'TWO-'ER.

The ironic thing, is that about 4 hours after they cancelled the event, the rain and wind stopped.  I then went on to get sun burnt on Sunday.   

Photo's to come......