'What am I doing here?' This is the sort of existential question many people have posed themselves, from Aristotle to Bez from the Happy Mondays - although to be more accurate the latter is probably more likely to ask 'How the f*** did I get here?' Anyway its not the sort of question one should be asking oneself while sat on a train on the way to the start of ones second ever ultra marathon - a 3 day, 84 mile epic along the Ridgeway National Trail - The Druids' Challenge. I was nervous to say the least, my first ultra had been a fantastic local event, it was my first time and its first time as well, it was over two days, it was flat. This was a well established (its fifth year), 3 day epic over hills and mud (a lot of mud, I was to discover). It was a long way from my home, it started near Tring - all I knew about Tring came from a leaflet I once picked up at a beer festival and all I could remember from that was that a beer called 'Side Pocket for a Toad' was brewed there, or perhaps that was somewhere else... Oh and I'd be racing (among others) Danny Kendal, the highest placed Briton ever in the MdS. However this fazed me less since in September I had raced a double Olympic champion in the Great North Run so I was used to losing to great athletes.
Anyway as I'd only bought a single I decided against turning round and going home and got into a minibus at Tring station that dropped me at a barn on a farmyard where a lovely lady gave me a number and some safety pins and explained my name was only highlighted in yellow because I was in the 2014 MdS and not because they thought I had the plague.
The changing facilities seemed to be 'find a quiet corner in the barn' so I did and was relieved to find that actually once changed my impersonation of an ultra runner looked quite good, I was blending in nicely. I found a couple of my fellow MdS competitors and was immediately concerned to find one was running with his full MdS pack. I had my MdS pack but it was kind of on the empty side... Anyway at about 10:30 Neil Thubron, the driving force behind XNRG, the organisers of the Druids' Challenge, gave us a combined pep talk, safety briefing and weather forecast - at which point I put on my waterproof, a good move and one I would repeat each day of the challenge. We were then driven to the bottom of Ivinghoe Beacon, where we had to walk to the top just so we could run down again. This was my first introduction to wet chalk as a running surface and my first impression was that greasing it would probably make it less slippery. So at sometime just after 11 we were counted down and sent off, down the Beacon and on our way to Watlington.
One of the 'rules' of the Saltmarsh 75 was that all competitors must occasionally look up and appreciate the countryside. I so wanted to this time too, unfortunately the countryside wanted to kill me and so I had to spend most of my time looking down into the mud and chalk and running through all the wettest, muddiest, slipperiest bits anyway. When we got onto a road and I could look round I saw Tring railway station again... In all seriousness it was a lovely route despite the rain. This was my first time running properly muddy off road and once I gained some confidence I was able to look around and enjoy the scenery. I hadn't really looked at the actual route beyond the elevation profile and so I had a surprise when I suddenly found myself in familiar territory. There is a Highland dance competition held in Wendover each year and so I have visited several of the pubs and shops (mainly pubs if I'm honest) in Wendover and was quite bemused to find myself running down its main street past said pubs and shops.
Sometime after Wendover I found myself being mesmerised by the bright pink flashes on the running tights of a runner some 100m or so in front of me. I followed them in a sort of hypnotic trance for around 20 minutes until she slowed a little and I caught up with her. We had a bit of a chat and I discovered her name was Sarah, she was also doing the 2014 MdS and she was running for Cancer Research UK! This was her first ultra and she was going well. However it was starting to get towards the end of the day and she was worried about being alone in the dark and so decided to stick with me for the rest of the day - to be fair to her she had only just met me and so could be forgiven for assuming this was a good idea and that I had any sort of sense of direction.
Sarah was primarily a road runner, something that became evident as we left the Ridgeway to go into Watlington whereupon she took off like a woman possessed - or perhaps she had just realised the foolishness of linking up with a strange man in the dark - anyway we fairly raced into the finish taking 5 hours 37 minutes for the day. My target had been under 6 hours so I was very pleased with my days work and we headed indoors to take photos of our muddy shoes.
Once I got into the school that was the overnight halt it became clear that there were those that knew the ropes and those that didn't. I didn't and so didn't get a gym mat to sleep on and had to squeeze my wet clothing between everyone else's to dry. However a shower, some pasta and apple pie (not in the same dish, although I would still have eaten it if it was) later the lack of gym mat wasn't a problem as I crawled into my sleeping bag to sleep. Neil proved just what a class outfit XRNG are when he brought round chocolates and ear plugs for everyone just before lights out. Day 1 completed, what would Day 2 bring?
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