Wendover Woods 50 miles
Part 3 – Easyjet don’t fail me now!
On Friday 7th July I’ll be leaving the WPC early to catch a flight back to Gatwick, trundle home and swap the car for the Campervan and then head off to Aylesbury to camp. Hopefully I’ll get a good night’s sleep as on Saturday I’ll be running (although more likely crawling) 50 miles through Wendover Woods for the third part of the “slam”. The fundraising is nearly at £1500 now, which is amazing!
The route is 5 loops of 10 miles and you can see from the picture how loopy it is. It’s also full of evil hills and the overall height gain is over 3200 metres (10500 feet in old money). It’s so evil we get an extra couple of hours to complete it – which means that the final cutoff will be at 00:30 on the Sunday morning.
The scale on the route profile slightly distorts the steepness – but it feels that bad when trying to run it! I’m hoping that the weather isn’t as hot as the SDW100 as the trees and hills will make it even worse with no breeze to cool us down. Hopefully I won’t bring the heat of Barcelona back with me!
Barcelona
part 2 – World Parkinson’s Congress 2023
On the 3rd July I will be heading off to Barcelona for the World Parksinson’s Congress 2023. About 4000 people will be attending to share all sorts of information and ideas. The programme is over 150 pages long which is a lot to take in when trying to work out which sessions to attend over the three days (Tuesday is a “pre-congress working group” session).
Easyjet have already forced me to change my travel plans having cancelled one of my flights – luckily I am flexible on my outward journey (see part 3 for why the return leg is a bit more time critical). The WPC organisers have sorted out my hotel and a couple of friends are also going so I won’t be a total stranger while on tour. We’re meeting up with the NHS crew for a meal one night (Lebanese – yes I know, sampling the local food!) just round the corner from my hotel, which is quite handy.
I’m packing my running gear and hope to get some early morning runs in before heading into the conference centre. I was planning on exploring in the evenings and taking pot luck on restaurants that take my fancy. I’ve never been to Barcelona and I’m really looking forwards to it!
Overcooked it – a post in three parts
This update comes as a trilogy as I think it works better that way. So here’s part 1.
Over the weekend of the 10th and 11th June I helped as a volunteer at the Centurion Running South Downs 100 which goes from Winchester to Eastbourne. On the Friday morning I had been Daddytaxi and taken my son to Gatwick airport for a 6am flight, which meant leaving about 2am. I didn’t bother going to bed and when I got back I tried getting some sleep but one of the neighbours decided that Friday was DIY day. So after failing to get any rest I headed off to Winchester, well the Matterly Bowl to be precise.
It’s a fantastic location from which to start a race. It was a hot afternoon as we set up Race HQ in preparation for 350 runners. It was so hot the labels peeled off the toilets. God knows how hot it was inside them!
The evening was spent parking cars so the keen entrants could register early. After some pizza it was off to bed as it was a 3am alarm call on Saturday (yes, another short night). I was on car parking duty for the morning too (I blame my co-worker for the interesting arrangement towards the end!). After the race started I headed off home to have a shower, and then went over to Southease Youth Hostel, at mile 84 on the race route.
It was a sorching hot day, and the car thermometer registered 31 degrees. I did not envy the runners at all!
We set up the aid station, which is in a open sided barn next to the Youth Hostel. The hot weather impacted on the race, which meant we had a two hour gap between the anticipated race time and reality.
Eventually the runners started trickling in, and we dealt with their requests for drinks and food while giving them a pat on the back, or hugs, or a kick up the backside if needed. The race had suffered a huge drop out rate during the day, so when the sun went down the remaining runners (with only a couple of exceptions) made it to the finish. Working on an aid station gives you a great buzz from helping the runners on to their goal – sometimes you make the difference between a buckle (which you get for 100 miles) and a DNF.
Our aid station stint was from 4pm on Saturday through to 7am on Sunday. So that was another night without much sleep – and I paid the price on Monday. In spite of trying to sleep on Sunday night my body clock was so out of whack I took Monday off to catch up and get some kip.