Ill Concieved Plans Poorly executed

A hilly Run on a cold day

Normally on a Saturday morning I would be going through my morning shamble towards the swimming pool but this Saturday was different. Instead of wandering blindly toward the water I was sat in the car heading toward Guildford being woken up by "Dance Anthems Volume 6 - the drum beat continues" pumping out from the stereo. Yes I was heading for a race. It was number 2 in the G3 series. The G3 is based around running up 3 big hills (hence the 3) near Guildford (work it out). This one was to take us up St. Martha's hill. It wasn't going to be a flat course that was for sure.

The whole thing kicked off from Newlands corner, a well known view point that gives a panorama of the surrounding hills, not that I was looking at the scenery. It was cold, frosty cold and I was trying to stay warm by curling into a ball in the front seat of the car and falling to sleep. Oh yes, I can tell you a thing or too about being motivated and ready for a race. Five minutes before the start and it was time for the flurry of action known as getting ready before my "warming up jog" to the start line. Which lead nicely into the start of the race without a break.

The course started by going gently downhill. This was really quite pleasant apart from the nagging thought that this was a hilly course and that the further down we went the further up we would have to go. In fact for the first half of the route the general trend was down with one or two rises just to add interest or pain depending on how you view these sorts of things. It all went skyward just after the 5 Km mark. A ginning, and some would say, sadistic marshal stood there wishing us luck on the hill. It started gently for a couple of hundred meters and then it just reared up and smacked me in the face. This was not a path to be running up. Fast walking was the order of the day, followed by slow walking and a bit of crawling for those of us who lost there footing on the sandy soil. After a lifetime of struggle up the North face of St.Martha's Hill we reached the church and level ground. It was time to start running again if only the burning calves would allow it. The route started to go down again but cruelly it went past the return route where the faster runners where struggling up the hill. The temptation to change track was great and if it wasn't for all the people around I would have been sorely tempted just to hop across the path. This of course would have cut out the water stop and I was sorely in need of water at this point. I bit the bullet, ran down the hill, drank the water, and then did a very bad impression of someone running up a hill.

Now I was at the top, Newlands Corner is on a rise; therefore it must be flat from here to there. How deluded can one person be? Of course the course went down hill, downhill a long way before rearing up again just 1 Km before the end. This was an evil twist that had most people around me part walking, part stumbling and defiantly not running. At least the last few hundred meters were sort of level so that you could actually run over the line and save some pride