Race Review: The Sedbergh fell race: 17/8/14

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There were at least 194 reasons why me doing this race was stupid

At least I'm committed. And almost certainly, I should be 

When will I learn? Seriously; WHEN. WILL. I. LEARN?

"You doing Sedbergh Scott?"
"Yeah, sure" I replied, casually. Of course, I hadn't actually looked at what it entailed as per usual. It's on my club's Runner of the Year (ROTY) list, so I planned to do it. I had meant to recce it a couple of weeks beforehand and it's a bloody good job I didn't, for 2 reasons: 1) I wouldn't have been able to navigate the bloody thing and 2) I would never have done it had I known what it involved.

So for those of you who don't know me (Basically I am talking to spam bots here because only 5 people read this blog and one is my mother and at least one of the others is in my running club) I am a fiercely mediocre runner. In any given fell race I tend to finish just inside the top 3rd. Due to an only recently resolved injury, I am currently around 80% of the fitness I was last year when I set all my road race PBs.  At the Great North Run last year I finished in the top 1% of a field of 40000 runners, but of course, the fun runners that do the GNR cannot be compared to the cross-between-mountain-goat-and-mountain-lion that fell runners tend to be and all of them seemed to have turned up to the Sedbergh fell race to run around the Howgills. In addition, this year Sedbergh was an English championship race so the field was even more competitive than it might normally have been.

Okay, enough of the preamble. Brace yourself, I am going to break with my tradition and show you the profile of this race early in the blog post to give you an idea of exactly why I am about to tell you a story of a very bad day for me, running-wise.

Take note of the elevation on the Y-axis; that's the bit that kills you!

So yeah; 14 miles and 6000ft feet. Bear in mind that the big Welsh mountains are the 3000s- so basically, twice the height of one of those. Why did I not take this as a red flag? Why, why?!

We set off from Leeds in lovely bright sunshine, but I had seen the weather forecast and knew it wouldn't last and sure enough, it didn't. Before long we were all taking part in our own personal ice bucket challenges courtesy of mother nature. A long walk in the pouring rain from the car parking, way out side the village, to the People's hall in the centre meant I arrived with soaking wet tracky bottoms for registration, looking like I'd got lost on the way to my community service.. I was given number 194 and had a "dibber" attached to my wrist. A dibber is a small electronic thing-a-me-bob that you "dib" in at each check point enabling the computer to clock you. At fell races like this, it's important to keep a careful count of the runners, y'know, in case you lose one down a huge slope or in an abandoned mine shaft with Scooby Doo.
We all lined up on the unassuming road next to the hall for the start with most of us already clad in waterproof jackets. Each of us carried the standard kit, mostly in bum bags, consisting of full waterproof kit, map, compass, whistle, emergency food, hat and gloves. In addition I also had an empty collapsible water bottle, food to get me through the run and my mobile in a waterproof bag. I probably should have brought flares too.

I'm in there somewhere, edging my way towards the back

As per usual the race was started with a bare minimum of "to-do" and after a short safety speech, the race director said, "Off you go" in such a casual way that for a second none of us were quite sure if that was the start or not.

Standing around at the start on the brief section of road through the village that the route took gave me a chance to chat to Simon. We looked up at the hill towering above us and we considered the route we would take down it at the end of the race. I discovered that as little fun as that hill looked from the bottom, by the end of the race and over 3 hours and 6000ft later, it would look a whole lot less fun from the top.

Very soon we were staring up at the first ascent, which is actually the toughest of the race as you can see on the profile: from 150m up to 600m. So around 1300ft. I took this slope well, bouncing away, feeling good and powering-hiking; thrusting my feet downwards and putting my hands on my knees for help. This confidence and relatively swift movement did not last....

That's me on the right, looking almost happy. That's only because I had no idea......

Down we looked from the first summit; a mere drop of 1200ft down a grassy slope. I had asked Simon a few days beforehand what he did in long races with big slopes, take it easy or go for it? "Go for it", he had replied. I reasoned that if I went cautiously down this slope it would take so much braking from my thighs that they would burn out pretty quickly, so I decided to take Simon's advice and for a brief moment during this race I was flying. I over-took probably a dozen people and was down the hill before I knew it, but it had cost me. I was already very tired and my thighs were already complaining. This didn't bode well.......

Oh the humanity!

Over the next 10 or 12 miles the ascents and descents began to merge in to one blur of pain and despair. My memories are already fuzzy, so they may well be very mixed up and tumble out in a way that is in no way the correct order, but here goes anyway.......

The thing about this race is the elevation, obviously, but it's also that so much of the elevation is not gentle, in fact, I'd go as far as saying none of it is, but that could just be my mind playing tricks with me. I do remember looking at the last two slopes and being very glad that they weren't all that steep when on a normal day they would have looked fairly scary.

The Kanadias that I wore (HUGE mistake!) with a number from another race. I remember this as I had to shout out 194!! numerous times

My first clear memory is of going up the second hill and beginning to tire badly, it seemed absolutely relentless and endless. The first of the runners that over took me on the day went past, I would get very used to being over-taken by the end.

Before the race I had been panicking about navigation. Much of the race was not on clear paths, to navigate it without help would almost certainly require compass bearings. Luckily at no point did I lose view of the runner in front (The runner in front changed frequently as more and more people over-took me) At one point, the clag (A fell runners word for mist and fog) had come down, cutting visibility and I could only see one runner in front of me. I felt slight panic and began to push on as he was about to disappear over the crest of a hill. When I got to the crest and looked down, the mist was clear and I could probably see at least 20 runners and I had to laugh at myself for having put in a huge effort to keep the runner in view. I think it was around this point I saw the runner in front take a bite of an energy bar and I decided this was a good idea, however, eating a very sticky energy flap-jacky thing through gasps isn't easy. I know I also stopped at the second stream we crossed and filled my bottle for a drink. I idly wondered if I would incubate something over the next few days and end up with the world falling out of my bottom. (I didn't- but wouldn't that have been the icing on the cake?)

Never do a fell race without proper fell shoes. Duh!

At some point we began to run on a very muddy track that was "Contouring" i.e. we were running around the side of a hill. The adidas kanadias I was wearing revealed themselves as hopelessly, hopelessly inadequate for the terrain. And did I say very muddy? I mean extremely muddy, I mean stupidly muddy, I mean Mud Street in Mud central in the Mud district of Mud city, Mudland. And this was no mere mortal mud, this was the slipperiest mud man had ever seen *this may be slight exaggeration for comic effect; but only very slight* And also at a very steep angle. It wasn't very long before my ankles began to complain about being turned at 45 degrees for step after step after step (45 degrees may also be a slight exaggeration) The path became so treacherous that I could barely stay upright and I slowed to walking pace. The hill to my right dropped away several hundred feet, one slip and I wouldn't stop until I hit the bottom, a broken rag doll. Not for the first or the last time during the race, I moved the feeling of terror to the back of my mind and carried on regardless.
I think it was along this path that Simon passed me in far more appropriate shoes. I knew there was no way I would finish ahead of Simon in a race with over 6000ft of climb, but I had moved in front of him on the first slope and I believe it was around half way that he over-took me. He gave me some words of encouragement that I can't remember now; I'm fairly sure that my mind is trying to block out the whole experience to protect me, but to be honest, I was reasonably pleased to get to half way and still be in front of Simon.

These are my race splits....if you hadn't guessed. And if you hadn't guessed, get off my blog, you're drunk

After what seemed like days the contouring finally finished and I filled the bottle again at the stream in the bottom of the valley, before I looked up at the next horrific slope. My mind began to rebel "OH HELL NO! YOU HAVE GOT TO BE CRAZY!!"I looked around me. There had to be a way out. Where was the nearest road? Maybe I could flag down a truck driver?
As I trudged up this slope my thighs screamed and screamed. Several times I sat down and looked back on the field. I could see 20 or so runners. So many had passed me at this point that I began to wonder if I was looking at the back of the field. There was still at least 6 miles to go and I was utterly exhausted. I could only climb so many steps before needing to stop. I resorted to moments of walking on all fours, more than once I dropped to my knees and shuffled along for a few "steps" People were now starting to ask if I was alright, such was my obvious distress. "Yeah, just dying"
I decided I would drag out my packet of clif shot bloks. I far prefer them to energy gels as clif bloks taste like wine gums as opposed to liquid sugar. One lady of, let's say, advancing years, passed me looking like she was on a nice pleasant day out in the countryside rather than the middle of Hades as we clearly were. I decided to offer her a clif blok which she gratefully accepted and I felt good for a brief moment. But I knew I had to carry on at some point.
I managed to have a chat to a guy next to me who had given me some words of encouragement. Turns out he had done the lakeland 50 only a couple of weeks before and it heartened me to think I had kept up with him for a long way in this race.

As is traditional in fell racing, the route is in the shape of a noose.....

I haven't yet mentioned how wet we all were at this point. It's all very well wearing fancy, expensive raceshell running jackets, but nothing stops rain like that getting in and "breathable" material, isn't breathable, not really. Sweat soaks the inside and a lot of the time I was moving so slowly that I was getting cold.

Three times during the race I had to stop and empty an entire bog full of mud out of my shoes as well as enough gravel to cover a decent sized driveway. Each time I sat down I got soggier and soggier to the point my mind invented a new condition- Trench-bottom- and I wondered if you could die from it. It certainly felt like I was well on the way anyway.

Mummy, Mummy, please make it stop

With a mile or two to go it was taking all my, determination, all my stubbornness, all my strength, all my pig-headedness not to just give up and sit on the ground crying and rocking backwards and forwards. As it was, I was spending some time at the side of the track, bent double with my hands on my knees reflecting on my poor life choices. Very early in the race the young men had over taken me, then not long after the men my age had over taken me, then the women started to over take me, then the older men started to over take me followed by the really old men. Then finally, as I willed my legs to carry on whilst still bent-double, the old women started to pass me. I saw one such lady catching me up. My competitive spirit had long since deserted me; I couldn't have given a monkey's nuts who finished in front of me at this point, just as long as I could stop running/stumbling along in this ridiculous race. The lady was a veteran 65 (I know this as I looked her up after the race) and as she passed she gave me a look of sympathy and said "You alright, love?" before mountain-goating away after I mumbled a "Yes, fine". My humiliation was complete.

I had to laugh at a very dark moment late on in the race. I looked down at my watch and saw it was showing 21km- the half marathon point, and the time was showing as 3 hours 11 minutes- which is my road marathon PB. I was literally completing this race at half the pace of my best marathon. This should have been an encouraging thought considering 6000ft of ascent but it really wasn't.

Now my watch ticked over to the 14 mile mark- where the race should have ended, but somehow I was still on the course. At the very least I considered that it meant that it couldn't last much longer and lo and behold, the final descent down into Sedbergh appeared and it looked HORRIFIC. A massive 1000-odd-foot down a very steep grassy hill. Few people, if any, made it to the bottom without spending a large amount of time on their bottom. With my thighs screaming I knew this was going to be painful. So I sat down on the hill and stared at this thing from my nightmares, wondering why I had done this thing to myself. Then I made a large mistake, I tried to bring my knees up to my chest. Every muscle in my legs cramped painfully, so I quickly straightened them again. I tried to bend my legs again with the same painful result. Ok, so my legs no longer wanted to bend. Fair enough.
I tried to decide on the least painful method of getting down. First off, walking. Nope, too much thigh-braking; very painful. Running? Nope, also too painful. I "settled" in to a sort of weird, half walking, half bouncing, half running, erm, thing. It was still painful but there was no way of getting down that wouldn't be. Debi and Naomi were lurking halfway down this hill with Debi's camera. Vanity took over and I tried running to look athletic and like I still had something in the tank.......... I failed

The expression on my face in these shots tells the story

Debi was not supposed to take this shot of me having a rest immediately after I had passed her...

The painful ending

After what seemed like another million years I reached the bottom of the hill for a short road section back to the finish which I was soon mercifully able to see. Most runners at this point had finished and were milling around the hall and I entered the little gazebo that was the finish line to absolutely no fanfare, not that I expected any. It took all my concentration to get my waving, shaking arm to drop the dibber attached to my wrist in to the machine to record my final time, which all-told was 3 hours 27 minutes, the longest run I had ever done in my life, a full ten minutes slower than my slowest road marathon. I limped painfully to where my bag was in the hall and collapsed on the floor wondering if I would ever be pain-free again. I made the mistake again of trying to bend my legs and was greeted by the same crippling cramp. Changing out of my sopping wet clothes was another painful challenge and soon I just laid full length on the floor. I think I remember eating some food, high sugar stuff, probably Kendall mint cake, basically anything I could stuff in my mouth before I came over all Yorkshire and desperately wanted a cup of tea, but there was no way I was likely to wait in the long queue. Luckily it didn't take Debi and Naomi long to get down to the hall and Debi queued for me.
A while later, in to my hand was placed an amazing shining, golden chalice. It contained an elixir of wondrous liquid that swirled like a whirlpool in my eyes. It had the restoring powers of 20 hours sleep, a belly-fully of roast dinner and a pacman power-up pill, to-wit, a polystyrene cup of tea. A tiny percentage of myself began to turn human again.

This was on the toilet door. It even managed to raise a laugh from me

I dragged the girls off to the nearest pub so I could have a pint and tell them all about my terrible experience which they seemed to enjoy far too much and for some very odd reason they appeared surprised when I answered the question, "So, you going to do it next year?" with a very resounding, "F**k, no!"

The soreness in my legs took 10 days to pass. My spirit has never healed.

My Runner's love letter to my body

You've read the title of this post and you're wondering where I am going with this one. Don't worry, I'm not about to boast about my decidedly average body, but yeah, it probably is a bit hippy. (The post, not my body)

That's right, it's possible to be really happy whilst running! (I'm in the white GB vest)

A few years ago, I became totally fed up with my lack of running. GPs and surgeons had told me my knees were knackered and that I should avoid impact. The surgeon wanted to poke a camera in to my knee but he "managed my expectations" by down-playing any possible benefit that I might have. He dismissively mentioned physio but gave it little chance of success (he couldn't have been more wrong) .
That was when I decided to spend all of the tiny amount of disposable income I had on a specialist physio and give him the long, long list of my aches and pains that started at the soles of my feet and made a slow, painful journey up my body and ended at my shoulders. Best money I have EVER spent.
For the next year, whilst the physio and I worked hard, chasing the pains around my body with various exercises and stretches, I really only managed to run a couple of 5ks a week. Any more and my shins would start screaming, but at least the noise from my shins would drown out the shouting from my back, hips, ankles, etc. etc, etc.

In frustration I posted this status on Facebook:

Dear body, I feel I have been very patient with you over the last two years. All I really want to do is be able to run for long distances. You, however, do not seem to want to let me. I have pampered you in every way I could. How can you forget the two stones I lost for you? I now feel it is time for you to wind your frigging neck in (not literally) and just let me run. Please. I beg of you. With affection, Scott

Now, I feel that it has relented, so it is time to write to my body again......

Dear Body,

I've been meaning to write to you for a while, but this time, it's to thank you.
A couple of years ago we were going through a really bad time together. I began to fear that we would never see eye to eye; that communication between us would forever be strained and that we would never fulfil my dream of running freely.
I had neglected you, I admit it. I had put poor quality fuel in to you and failed to maintain you properly. I let you grow out of shape. It was a shameful period and I apologise. No wonder our relationship suffered. It was my fault and I am sorry.

2 years later and my Manchester marathon medal hangs in the kitchen and I couldn't be more proud of you.
Time and again I have asked you to rise to a challenge and despite the problems, the set backs, the blood, toil, tears and sweat, you have achieved each one.
Many times I thought this day would never come, so I can barely begin to tell you how very grateful I am.
Allowing me to run 18.5 miles off road for the first ever time on Sunday was a real high point. Truly, you were fantastic!

3 years ago I plodded around the Leeds 10k in 48 minutes (albeit beating my 50 minute target) with painful shins, bursting lungs and burning muscles. Today, I run several minutes faster than that in training and with little to no pain. From where we started, this seems incredible to me. I never dreamed I could reach this point, but together we worked towards this goal and discovered what we could accomplish. I am immensely proud that we put in this work despite the problems.

Look what I put my body through, and yet it forgives me!

I doubt you will ever grace the cover of "men's health" because let's face it, we like beer and pizza too much to have 6% body fat. But! The moobs are gone, clothes fit properly and I would no longer scare Gok Wan in a changing room.We may never win a race (then again who knows? Maybe we will) but that's not the ultimate aim anyway and I am very grateful for the progress we have made and the improvement I feel in all things.

Now we seemed to be in sync. We like each other, we talk and the recriminations are gone. I can now believe we have a long and wonderful relationship to look forward to. Even better, we now have a brilliant and dirty ménage a trois going on with Running and it's amazing to think how well this little threesome gets on these days, especially considering just how much you two used to bicker.

I know that I have to keep you happy too. I don't mind forgoing some of the food and alcohol that I would otherwise consume and I don't mind buying you special clothing, corn plasters for your nipples and paying for your massages. These are small prices to pay considering what you do for me.

So many people questioned my faith in you. They told me you were too old, that you had too many issues, that you would let me down in the end. They were wrong, very wrong. You have stepped up to the challenge. We still have some way to go before I achieve everything I want to, but I now know that we will get there, rather than just hoping that we will.

So thank you body. Thank you for carrying me to places I feared were beyond me. Thank you for learning to live with my ever-increasing demands. Thank you for learning to work with me instead of against me. Thank you for listening to me and giving me feed-back when needed.

Thank you. I can now honestly say, I love you.

Your faithful servant,

Scott

Me and my body, working together, having fun. Smiling like Grommit

Race review: The Pain Barrier, Frickley. 13/4/13

Say hello in the comments or tweet me: @scott_leach

The very brief period at the start when I was clean

I really ought to be a little more careful to check out the crazy races I do before I sign up for them. In the high of finishing the Men's Health "Survival of the fittest" last year, I signed up for this 10k "mud run". The obstacle course in Manchester had been fantastic fun and I searched on line for something else a bit mad to do. This one sounded like a good idea at the time....

Fast forward a few months and the day of this one loomed very large, in a very inconvenient spot as the end of my marathon training was coming up. I seriously considered not doing it as I still needed to fit in my final long run before the marathon and I had almost no idea of the effect a mud run would have on me. And little did I know.

The first conundrum was what to wear for such a race. Gok Wan really ought to do a program on this kind of thing, although perhaps practicality might not be his first concern.
A lot would depend on the weather of course. As usual I set off with a variety of options in my bag so I could change if I needed to when I got there. In the event, the weather was pretty warm. I decided on a pair of above-knee lycra shorts, a long sleeve compression shirt and a dri-fit t-shirt over the top. The t-shirt turned out to be a mistake as it soon became very heavy and wasn't necessary, however, I didn't really want to inflict the sight of me in a compression shirt on the general public without a t-shirt to hide some of the man-boobage. I also needed to decide on whether to wear my GPS watch. I really wanted to be able to tell how far in to the race I was, but didn't want to break a pretty expensive piece of kit. I checked out the specs and found it had an IPx7 rating. Having been an engineer I knew this to be a high ingress protection score, so I decided to wear it. Half way through the race as my hand and arm sank fully in to the mud for the umpteenth time, I wondered if I had made a mistake. There was so much mud on the watch that it was impossible to read at times and wiping it with my muddy hands didn't have a lot of effect, I was spreading the mud more evenly instead of wiping it off. I did manage to just about wipe off the bit with the distance on it though, so it proved useful. Thankfully, it still seems to be working and I have used it since.

My unrealistic expectation of the race was that there'd be a bit of mud, maybe a couple of water crossings and I'd probably go round in 45-50 minutes. Talk about naivety! As the race unfolded, I found I had seriously underestimated just how tough this was going to be.

Looks like a baby crawling on the ground, which is exactly what I felt like.

As I lined up at the start I looked around, eyeing up my "competition". I certainly wasn't deluded enough to think I could win it but no one seemed confident to take a place at the front, and in fact, the people at the front were a few metres from the start line, no one wanting to toe the line. It seemed only a few people were actually keen to try to set a fast pace. The general consensus behind me was of simply "getting round".
Suddenly a little voice spoke up in my head and said "We could finish in the top 10 here". I replied with "What's with the "we", pale face?".

We set off after a few minutes of comic relief when the inflatable Saucony arch collapsed at the start line. Oddly, the same thing had happened when I did the Wetherby 10k last year. And no, I am not going around puncturing them. A few people went off  hard, and I set off at a fairly quick pace of around 4 mins/k. For the first couple of k the course was a dry and reasonable trail and I thought I had better crack on while the going was easy. It really didn't last......

After leaping a couple of ditches, the hills started. Let me get this straight, the people who set this event up are evil, evil I tell you! Not content with running a race on a 4x4 track liberally spackled with man-deep holes filled with mud and water, they had set the course to run up and down the nastiest hill for probably miles around, not once, but at least 2.8 billion times. Well ok, it was something like 4 or 5 times, but it felt like a lot more. The hill was so steep it was impossible to run up, in fact, it was pretty much a scramble. As I said, evil! The effect it had on sapping the strength from my legs was pretty impressive.

As my brain is now trying to block out the memories of the race, trying to recall the exact order of the things we did, even while looking at the map, is tough, so forgive me if I get slightly mixed up. As we came down the massive hill for the 7000th time we entered the biggest water obstacle, so large that a rope was needed to pull yourself through it.

I enter the pool at about 1:08 in the yellow shirt. What the video in the link below doesn't show is that there was a couple of feet of mud underneath the water. Half way across I heard someone in the crowd shout, "Swim, it's easier" It sounded like good advice so I set off.

Nearing the end of the biggest pool

Swimming past the guy in front of me put me in 5th place at that point. Another thing that wouldn't last.

The course continued through huge deep ruts in the land, in the main filled full of muddy water. At times the mud was thigh-deep. Having already lost most of the strength in my legs from the hills, dragging my legs out of the mud time and again was beginning to seriously take its toll. I have no idea where it was on the course, but at one point we entered yet another swamp. This one was nipple-deep and mostly mud. It had to be 30 metres long. Time and again my right leg jammed solid in the the mud. Eventually it became so difficult to keep lifting my legs out that I decided an army-crawl would be a better tactic. It was, but it came with the price of utterly covering me in mud and saturating my already heavy shirt. Worse than that, as we neared the end a splash of muddy water hit me square in the face from a competitor in front of me. I was wearing contact lenses, which helpfully decided to hold some of the mud underneath them and cause me a lot of pain and also meant that I was running through a fog of mud for the next couple of k. I was just beginning to think I might have to pull out and seek help, when suddenly they cleared and I was ok, just about.

This could have been pretty much anywhere on the course

At 6k in to the race I was blowing harder than I ever have in my life. I was beginning to find religion and was praying to any deity that would listen for this torture to end. My shoes AND socks were full of mud, gravel, rocks and god knows what else. Then mercifully there was a section that was on dry land. It was a heavy track, but still, no mud and water at least. I cruised along trying to recover on the hoof, and managed it to some extent. At some point I stopped and emptied out my right shoe. It didn't help much.

More mud, swamps and water and my feet were becoming a real problem. I could feel the rocks and gravel digging in to them from all angles. My arches were beginning to bruise and feel painful. I had no choice but to stop and empty out my shoes properly. I really wanted to carry on rather than stop as I was pretty far up the field and was on course to make my goal of a top ten finish, but my sensible voice spoke up and reminded me of my marathon training and that I couldn't afford to damage my feet. Emptying out my shoes and socks was a much more difficult task than I had anticipated. I need to squeeze them off and the socks needed to be flicked inside out as well as cleaning off the outside, so much debris had worked their way in to them. I probably should have just discarded the socks in hindsight. I had trouble getting my soaking wet feet back in the shoes and by the time I started running again at least 3 minutes had elapsed and annoyingly at least 10 guys had passed me. However, my feet now felt comfortable again and I set off to try to chase down the people who had passed me. I managed to catch a couple before the end of the race, but I was so shattered at this point that it was as much as I could manage.

Full on monkey-gurn mode

Then it started to finally become fun. We entered a tunnel that I think passed under an old railway line. It would have been stupid to run through it as it was too dark to see my footing and the roof got lower and lower as I neared the end. A lot of spectators, including children, had positioned themselves at the end of the tunnel and I could hear them screaming as soon as I entered the tunnel. It was a great feeling being cheered though the tunnel then bursting out in to the forest with the kids going wild and lots of shouts of encouragement. I got a small cheer for springing up on to the bank and off I went again.

The course zig-zagged through the forest and then spat us out in to the biggest mud patch of the lot. It was just about shallow enough that I was able to force my legs through it instead of having to army-crawl. The presence of children was the only thing stopping me screaming out a constant commentary of foul and disgusting language.
I had no idea how far I had still to go. My GPS watch had lost signal on a couple of occasions (Something it has never done before) and was telling me I had at least a kilometre left. So imagine my relief when I rounded the final corner and found myself staring down the finishing straight. "This one is shattered" I heard someone comment in the crowd. Not having that, I thought. I summoned up my last reserves of strength, put on my war face, and sprinted to the finish.

Doing my best to sprint impressively through the finishing line

I crossed the line in 1:05:14, 19th position. Only 3 people out of about 340 went under an hour- that's how hard it was. In the last pain barrier they'd run in Parkwood, the winner had done 43:06, the Frickley course was at least 5 points higher on the evil-psychopathic- genius scale. I was gutted to have finished outside the top 10, which is, of course, a ridiculous emotion for my first (and probably only) mud run. Having to empty my shoes cost me, but then, everyone else was dealing with the same problems, maybe they just ran on with shoes full of gravel?

The leader board.

Stig of the dump, or possibly me, not entirely sure.

After I crossed the line the MC pushed a microphone in my face. It took a minute for me to catch my breath and indulge in some "witty" banter. I waffled something about having sunbathed for 20 minutes half way round and regrettably cracked the obvious and almost certainly oft-repeated mud-being-good-for-the-skin-"joke" . Afterwards I was sorry I hadn't thought to accuse the organisers of breaking the Geneva convention.

The mud pack at the spa I had booked left a little to be desired

Lessons I learned from this race:

1) Check out what I have let myself into BEFORE I turn up.
2) Train for the race. Road running does not prepare you for this kind of insanity.
3) Football socks, tied at the top would have been a much better idea than the shoes liners I was wearing
4) Sod vanity, next time, a short-sleeved and unflattering compression top is favourite!
5) It's amazing how much you want to punch people when they shout things like "It's not called the pain barrier for nothing" 6k into the run when you are totally shattered. Luckily enough, even if I were so inclined, I wouldn't have had the strength to commit the ABH I would have liked to at that point.
6) £100 pairs of Saloman goretex trail trainers are not much help in these situations. That said, they stayed on in the face of extreme provocation and never felt like they were about to be lost in the mud.
7) Running wicking athletic gear such as lyrca shorts and compressions tops under a shower whilst constantly squeezing and massaging them for half an hour will not remove this sort of mud, in fact, it didn't seem to help much at all, the water coming out of them was still dark brown.

After the race I spent quite a lot of time saying how I would never enter another event like this, that it was too much and I would rather do pure obstacle races in between my road and trail races. But predictably, I now feel like having a crack at another and trying to get in to the top 10 with some more specific training.

The event on the whole was very well organised. There was no queuing when I registered around an hour before kick-off. The car parking was well organised and very close to the start. I felt a few more port-a-loos could have been provided, but it didn't take long to get in one. The MC did a good job and kept up the energy well before the race. I was a little disappointed that there was no beer tent, but I did leave fairly quickly after the run so I am not sure if the registration tent started serving later. The medal and tech t-shirt are very nice designs and felt like suitable winnings at the end.

Damage report:

Thighs quite sore for about 3 days afterwards. Ankles felt like they had been battered with a cricket bat. Cuts to the back of both ankles. I am still picking splinters out of my hand 5 days later. Thankfully, little else!

All in all a well run and enjoyable (in a sort of masochistic way) race. This was a very serious challenge and the name "The Pain Barrier" is very well deserved. Would I recommend it? Hell, yes, if you're as big a nutter as I am.