Spire Ultra 2020

I haven't done one of these for a while. The last race I ran was the Pendle Way in a Day, which I haven't got around to writing up. I will do at some point.

Rather like the Pendle, the weather at the Spire was fairly grim. I stayed at the race start the night before, and my camper was heavily buffeted by wind and rain all night, waking me up several times.

I got up around 7, had some coffee and wandered up to the main parking field to register. I said hi to Jamie & Claire, picked up my race number and goodies, and headed back to the van for another coffee. When I opened the van slide door to get rid of the coffee grounds there was a 'flutter' noise, and this was when my race number blew out of the cab where I'd left it. That was the first cock up of the day. I spent about 15 minutes looking for it, then had to head for the start and my starting 'pod'.

Walking up to the start I bumped into Ian Challan, and spent a few minutes chatting. Unfortunately it was further to the start point than I realised, and I had to get a move on to make my start time. Reaching the start, Jamie told me that he had my race number in his car (along with the stopwatch he'd forgotten) so I ran back down with him to fetch it. My race number had been found by another member of pod 6 and handed in (thank you).

We got going at 8.27, and started by dropping downhill for quite a while. I settled in at the top end of my target speed range for the day (9.5kph) and trundled along. Fairly soon the quicker runners in the pods behind us started catching up.

Somewhere around this time (just before crossing a dam) I slipped for the first time and landed on my knee. No major harm done, although after the race I discovered a hefty graze. I'm gathering quite a collection of scar tissue on my right knee.

A few minutes later I slipped again, this time on a greasy stile, and landed on my left shin on the top bar of the fence. It didn't hurt, but I had several seconds of scary wobbling as I was balanced on my shin trying to grab something to stabilise myself. I eventually managed to gain some control and resolved to be careful the rest of the day.

After that it was fairly steady sailing. Characteristically I was over equipped - because I mostly run solo on high exposed ground I'm used to carrying a lot of kit, and often over prepare for events like the Spire in more forgiving settings. At some point I needed to shed a layer, and accidentally paused my Suunto for about twenty minutes, which vaguely annoyed me (although in the evening I was able to crop a perfectly good record of the race from my handheld GPS).

CPs came and went, every 10km or so I made an effort to eat a little peanut butter, and the wind buffeted.

Coming up to Sutton Scarsdale I discovered that I'd accidentally left the backlight on my nav gps, and the battery was flat. Luckily I always carry a 2nd set of batteries, so a couple of minutes by the track fixed that. I cooled off quite a bit while I was stopped though, and struggled to get back up to pace.

From Heath to North Wingfield was fairly flat, and although I was feeling it a bit by that point I managed to keep an ok pace going, just occasionally slowing to a walk for a short spell. North Wingfield back to Ashover was harder going - my energy was running out, I'd paced a bit too high and the mud and wind had sapped my energy. I kept going, but much slower. My average speed dropped dramatically here, from over 9kph to 8.7 or so. Another runner overtook me in the last km, and gave me a much needed boost.

I was glad to see the finish at High Ashes Farm, and lots of cheering from the finish line marshals.

It was cold up at the finish, and I quickly changed into warm clothes and sat in the back of the camper guzzling coffee and shivering for a quarter of an hour or so.

Jamie and Claire and the marshals did a fantastic job of keeping the race going in a difficult year for events. Everything was well managed and reassuring, people took sensible precautions and the marshals still did a fantastic job of supporting the runners. If anything I think the route this year was better than last - the finish at Ashover makes the last few kilometres more challenging.

Back into lockdown now. Hopefully next year will be better for racing.