Well 2 really, one in particular, and lots of other racing to pick up on. First a question: If you noticed an event called the Lavatrail Marathon would you a. sign up for it b. think it was a joke or c. go to double check that you know what lava is before thinking surely they must have made some sort of mistake?
Anyway – a bit of tidying up from last weekend first. Culvin Milmer nailed down a top ten finish in the Ringwood tri and is lining up Justin and Neil in the Sika Duathlon in 2 weeks – could be a race on I think. When I wrote the last post, the 10k results from Bournemouth were not up so I missed Clare McDermott’s excellent pb knocking several minutes off her previous best time. And Callum McD competed in his first 5k and posted a brilliant time – we think about 22 minutes – despite the Heart fm aerobic warm up overunning so that he arrived at start late as Neil wasn’t prepared to leave until they’d stopped playing the scissor sisters.
Trevor Prince has been posting very consistent times regularly at the Park Run in Poole and has reduced his pb to just under 26 minutes. This is an excellent free time trial event on a Saturday morning.
So on to this weekend and the crazy marathon types were up their tricks with Liz Hall in her first marathon clocking an excellent 3hr43min time in Brighton – a brilliant run which sets her up very nicely for an assault on Challenge Vichy in September.
And finally – here’s Dave Pratten’s account of his weekends activities – I refer you to the title of this blog – and congratulate Dave on an excellent win!
I signed up for the Lavatrail Marathon race because we were on holiday in Lanzarote when it was scheduled. Turned up to pick up my race number and timing chip on the day before the event to be informed I couldn’t compete unless I underwent a full medical examination. We spent the next 8 hours driving around clinics/medical centres and hospitals trying to get me examined to the required standard. Eventually had examination including ECG, lung capacity,blood pressure, fitness test ( 45 squats in 60 seconds HR taken before during and after, time taken to drop to resting Hr etc,). Fortunately I passed and was given certificate to race.
Following morning realised what I had signed up for i.e. 42k across lavafields, 3000 plus metres of ascent,very scary descents and temperatures which were 31degrees over last section of race. My fellow competitors all seemed pretty serious in terms of appearance and kit, racing snakes and Salomon X labs were standard. Turned into hardest marathon I have ever run. Loved much of it, the challenge and spectacular views from the tops of the 5 volcanic caldera that we climbed. Did not enjoy some of the descents. Fell too many times, lost a lot of skin but gained a number of cactus spines. Finished in 4:42:23, 17th out of 90 starters, but won a trophy for the ‘coffin dodgers’ over 50 category.
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