Hell Runner – I did it!

Originally uploaded by Spanner Dan

Wow, never before have I seen / ran through / slipped all over / waded up to my chest through quite so much mud!

It was VERY tough, but I completed the 10-mile Hell Runner cross-country race quite a bit faster than my 2 hour target – in 1 hour and 31 minutes

The first muddy puddle that you had no choice but running through was the moment I realised, right, let’s just go for this. Yes, I’m going to get ridiculously muddy, and yes, my feet will be absolutely squelchingly soaked. But 2000 other people are doing this with me, and at least it isn’t raining!

From the firecrackers and smoke grenades that marked the start to the 3-piece band marked the half-way point, it wasn’t actually too bad.

Then came the “bog of doom”- chest-deep gloopy, cold and energy-sapping thick mud, followed of course by a massive muddy scramble. After that they just kept it coming – ridiculously long, steep hills, lots of scrambling and sliding up and down – it was certainly hard to keep going at times.

Then atop another tough hill, suddenly there was another steeply-embanked 20-30m river crossing, just as deep as the first. Then more hills, more mud, and more wading. You get the idea.

But then all of a sudden it was the finish line. And I sprinted for it! I had completed Hell Runner. I felt ready for anything!! Ready for Borneo certainly, bring it on!

Hmm, not quite sure what I’ve got myself into here…

This is the first big event in my training in the run up to Borneo.

It’s going to be nature at its toughest. It’s 11 miles (longer than I’ve ever run before). That’s almost a half marathon, but I think it’s going to be much tougher with rough terrain, steep hills and muddy pools to navigate.

So I’ve got to train hard over the next couple weeks. On Saturday I did my first really long practice run – from Clapham Junction, 1.5 times around Clapham Common, back to Brixton, then twice around Brockwell Park. Mapping it out when I got home, I was pleasantly surprised that it was a total of 9.3 miles – so not far off my target.

I think the longest I ran before was Bay to Breakers in San Francisco in 2005. That was 7.5 miles, which I did in 1:06. My target is to match that pace at Hell Runner.

Please wish me luck! Or even better, make a donation to show your support – we’re over 2/3 of the way towards our target and it is certainly feeling like very hard work now!

Time to get out the devil’s horns…