Druid Challenge - Muddy Funsters
Well, I made 20 miles before all the wheels fell off my wagon.
It opened in thick mist (and stoats hunting bunnies) and the first half was decent: everyone was walking the hills and saving their energy, so my strategy wasn't out of place. When the mist lifted it was only to allow proper rain.
Halfway through, around the White Horse, my right knee (o Judas knee) went sproing. After some pissing and moaning, and some experimenting, I was able to carry on to the next checkpoint with a mix of walking and some weird short-step running called the "Ironman shuffle".
After that, things froze up more and I was in walk-or-die mode. The next few miles were weird, a single file of knackered walkers in a stark hilltop-and-mist landscape: it looked like the pogrom scenes from Fiddler On The Roof. I was expecting Cossacks to come riding out of the mist.
...and that was followed by a few miles of wallow through churned mud, and after that - with the finish on the horizon, dammit, my other knee went and I was reduced to shuffling like an old lady who needs a poo. At under 1kph (and occasionally in tears) there was no way I'd reach the end before the end of the day, so I had to call my minions and get helicoptered out.
Gutted that I DNF'd.
Happy that I did my longest run ever, and did an epic bloodyminded carryon. Kit was perfect, etc etc.
This one is not 'unfinished business'
So what went wrong? Let's start with trying to scale from 10k to marathon in ten weeks. That was optimistic. It was based, if I'm honest, on my experience with cycling where you can do that. Of course, on a bike, you don't carry your own weight, and a bike that will do ten miles will do a hundred. On a run, you do. It's more important to do close to race distance. In addition I wasn't at race-weight, so I was carrying more - but that's secondary.
I'd trained offroad up at Woodbury, but not in the weird clingy chalk mud that the Ridgeway has. That stuff was like a rink and at times my shoes clogged and I was reduced to hilarious mincing. The knees didn't like that. Rain, cold - that was fine. But wallowy mud really hit.
What's with the knees? Flexibility! The old short hamstrings mare up when extending the leg, and the grumble spreads until any torsion (like correcting foot position in mud) is quite ouchy. With repetition, ouchy gets to "unable to bear weight" and it all goes wrong. Descents were brutal. That right knee's betrayed me before - time for some proper flexibility work, alas.
Druid Challenge - a set on Flickr After a sleep and a slow walk to the shops (to get ice packs) it's clear that the usual battered feet, toenails, ankles, shins etc are there, just hiding under the Knees of Death. The left is just sore, the right's taken some soft tissue damage. Ice, rest and slow increase in activity to get it healthy, then I need to chase down a physio and address the causes.
Huge respect to the Druid ultra guys, who are all weird smiley buddhists. The toothless one who grinned fangily and told me to "march through it" in the Checkovian hills was cool; the guy who did all three days in Fivefingers was awesome. The little Asian girl who steamed past me twice (checkpoint pit stop overlap) and the strapping tall lass with thighs like salt beef (it was cold, mumblers were the wrong shorts, Grommit) were also inspiring.
Going to lie down for a bit...
