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!

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…

I had intended just to go along for the fundraising, but it turned out that a few people didn’t turn up, so I was able to run in the end. Finding this out five minutes before the start, I quickly got changed and fastened Rebecca Shepherd’s number to my bright blue Capgemini t-shirt.

Dan and Ali after the race

It was a great race – much better weather than last year – and always really motivating to run in such a huge crowd.

Checking the results today, to my delight it appears that I (running as Rebecca Shepherd) came 472nd in the Women’s race! (and 3rd amongst the 29 Capgemini women!)

If I had been wearing a man’s number, my time of 27:46 would have put me in at 4550 out of the 11,721 men, or 18th out of Capgemini’s 61. So quite respectable for 5.6km, but actually quite a bit slower than last year’s time of 25:00. I clearly need to step up the running in my training.

I’m in absolute awe of Alex Pilcher from Capgemini who came 13th with an incredible time of 17:46. Well done Alex!

Many of the Capgemini runners were running to raise money for Borneo for this. In total, almost £400 was raised through this event alone. Thank you so much to everyone who raised sponsorship and everyone who sponsored them. We’ll be announcing the winner of the prize for greatest amount raised tomorrow.

Dan and Ali after the race

Last month, I started using MapMyFitness to track my training progress. It’s a pretty powerful application, allowing you to map routes and log all of your training – whether it’s running, cycling, hiking, swimming or exercise in the gym.

A couple of features I really like in the mapper:

1. It automatically fits your route to roads and paths – so you get your full distance, not just the estimation you’d have if you had to use straight lines.
2. It shows you an elevation profile of your route. So that really hard hill on my cycle to work is only actually a 5% gradient. That’s enough to wake you up in the morning, believe me!

It also allows you to set goals. So I set a goal of cycling 150 miles last month, which I achieved (with only some pain)  by cycling to work about twice a week. This month, 300 miles is my target!

My only gripe is that – unless you get the Premium version – it’s completely advert-ridden. Apart from that it’s a very useful tool for keeping the motivation up.

Does anyone have any experience using the “Premium version” or any other tools for tracking training?

Me and Dad climbing up Mt Arkle

Properly started training for Mt Kinabalu now!

As well as cycling to work 4 times last week (which feels great – try it!), just spent a long weekend in the Scottish Highlands – on the far north-west coast – which is absolutely stunning.

Did two mountains – of course nowhere near the scale of Mt Kinabalu yet, but hey, building up slowly to November!

On the first day, went up Stac Polly – steep climbing in the heat of the sun and definitely a bit scary up on the craggy top.

On the second day, my Dad and I (and Sadie, our dog, who is also a great mountaineer), went up Mt Arkle – a long, hard and very rocky ascent up to 787m, where we were rewarded with spectacular views.

Great thing about the far north of Scotland is it only really slightly hints at getting dark, so we were walking until about 9pm, which felt like late afternoon!

It’s also stunningly beautiful and very wild and remote. I thoroughly recommend it to anyone who likes the outdoors.

That was 787m. In November, our challenge with Mt Kinabalu is 4100m. It’s going to be tough.