High Peak 40

Last weekend I went up to Buxton for the High Peak 40 where perfect conditions awaited the lucky starters. Admittedly 'lucky' wasn't the word I was using pre-race - after my poor run at Bradwell something between apprehensive and scared was more appropriate, after all I was back in the Peak District but this time had another 8 miles to do.

On the plus side, training had gone well in the previous few weeks and in the race itself I got talking to another novice called Dave who was going at a similar pace and we ended up doing the whole course together. This made life a lot easier and the miles seemed to fly by chatting. To be fair to Dave I think he was taking it a little easy as I was saying bad things about the hills and he was running 'The Beast' down in Leicestershire the next day - certainly mad enough to be an ultrarunner!

As it turned out the hills were manageable, for the first time ever we were actually willing there to be more so we could have a break from running! There was a fair amount of roads but this was offset by the lovely scenery and the incredibly friendly checkpoints. As well as great encouragement we were even made a cup of tea near the end (sorry to destroy any notion of toughness).

Another aspect that I particularly enjoyed was the signposting - there was never any doubt about the right route which took the pressure off, 40 miles is quite far enough. The only negative point for me was feeling a tightness behind my knee after 32 miles that reduced me to a hobble when walking but was manageable enough when running. 8 days on I can still feel it but the limp has gone now so hopefully I'll be able to start training on it later in the week.

My final time was 8:24:33, quicker than Bradwell so I was fairly satisfied. Only one more race to go in the series now, the Round Rotherham, a nice 50 mile jaunt - for the first time since joining the team I'm actually looking forward to it!