Good Friday Hill Race 2011

I took my camera and took some pictures during the race.. such a relief to stop and take a few snaps haha, those hills were soo tough.. I must have blocked the memory of how painful it was from last years race haha. I've tried to arrange the pictures into some form of order, it was pretty much an out and back course with a loop at the furthest point and the finish was slightly different to the start... Anyway, most of the hills pictured I went up and down at some point during the race.. Not sure how much speed I picked up on some of the downhills, one of them was so steep I was so scared of falling!

Before the race

This was the second or third hill, I kept the guy in yellow in my sights for a lot of the race but eventually he pulled away and I couldn't keep up

I saw the lead runner on this hill last year so this year I was pleased not to see anyone on it as it gave me hope that I was doing better than last year!

This hill was easily the worst going up and down. The pictures don't do it justice, it is SO steep! I took a few of this one to try and give some perspective..

The view from the top!

Then you turn the corner and your heart breaks a bit 'cause you see this hill, this is one of those evil ones with a fake summit too, ouch!

This one felt a lot steeper in real life too! There was a little boy cheering at the top of this one with his mum and dad and he shouted to me 'I can see you sweating'.. thanks little boy haha

And then we were done!

7.3 miles of hills in 1:14:29 44/49 I was the last woman but I beat a few men. It was a very male dominated race only 6 women ran! Also got 6 minutes off last years time! No splits 'cause Mike wore the garmin though... I need my own, I would have loved to know my splits!

Sweaty tomato

Got home for some Roxie cuddles in the garden

I'll hopefully have some photos from the race organisers website soon, I'm pretty sure some people snapped some of me though god knows what they will look like... I tried a few self portrait style ones but they were really too bad to post. I wish I didn't look such a state when I run, one of the volunteers even asked me if I was ok to finish, I was thinking yeah fine I always look this awful lol... Oh well!

I Did It!!

Oh my gosh I didn't realise just how hilly the hill race was going to be...haha maybe that's naive but I don't think there was any flat land! I expected it to include hills but not to be all hills.. I was wrong! It was all on trails as well which I'm not too used to but I enjoyed, there were some lovely views and I loved the race atmosphere the speedy runners at the front crossed by us at one point and were cheering the slower ones on and I got to see Mike briefly so it was nice for us both to know we were both doing ok.

I can't even begin to describe how tough and steep the hills were though, I ended up having to walk up a lot of them. I felt like such a fish out of water at the start, although my bib number says 383 the numbers must have carried on from a previous race, there were 54 runners and Mike and I were the only runners not affiliated to a club! I was ahead of a few runners for most of the race but they passed me right near the end so unfortunately I came last. The competitive side of me hates that, but I didn't drop out, and a few people did, I'm happy I finished it and I was only 30 seconds behind the women who passed me, I just couldn't quite keep up at the end. I was chatting to them at the beginning of the race and one of them had been running for 10 years and run in national cross country championships so that made me feel better about coming last, there was really tough competition on a tough course. Everyone who we spoke to at the start about it being our first race looked at us like we were insane! They were all saying, you do realise how hilly it is don't you... It was probably good that we didn't realise just how hilly it was until we were doing it else we might well have chickened out!

Anyway I'm going to have to leave you with that very brief race report as Mike's little sister is on her way from down south and we don't get to see her very often so I'll be off the computer for a while. I will leave you with a few pictures! I think my final time for the run was 7.3 miles in 1.20 the official results aren't up yet.. please don't judge the time it was soo hilly!

Ready to go

Outside the registration area.

That's me in the distance.

Almost there...

It's over!! Phew!

Have I Gone Mad?!

I might have done something crazy....

Mike and I were just looking for local races as neither of us have ever raced before and we'd like some race experience before our half marathon.. I spotted a race for tomorrow... The Good Friday Hill Race!! 7.3 miles of hilly fun! Here's the route. Look at those scary contour lines! I vaguely know the area as somewhere we used to go sledging as children for the steep hills haha, I don't think this is going to be easy but I'm really excited! It's a really low key race, only £2 to enter, I think it's only going to be the really speedy dedicated local runners running it so I think I'm probably going to be the slowest runner but I'm just going to finish it, I'm not going to worry about timings. I won't be able to wear the garmin anyway so I'm just going to run and keep running.

Aaargh! Wish me luck!