Having now signed up for the Downlands Challenge today seemed like a good day to try the course, which is 5 miles long, basically straight up and down again.
However, with my calf still niggling me I decided to take it easy and stop at the slightest excuse. The clouds at the start of the run, see first picture, suggest a cool day. This was not so and certainly made the running much harder. However, I got to the foot of Mount Harry feeling pretty good. The climb up, however, was tough (and as it turns out not the right way).
When I started running just over 150 days ago, getting to the top of Mount Harry seemed impossible. So, despite the climb it felt like something of an achievement. More so getting to the top of Blackcap (see photo 2), which isn’t much further, but certainly involves more climbing.
I’d convinced myself that it was all downhill from there. It wasn’t of course and the next 1.5km was the toughest of the run. There were points when I nearly gave up and walked. As I got towards the Gallops, I took a number of other turns that led me further astray, though I did finally make it to the finish like on Landport Bottom just under 50 minutes later.
The elation of finishing the course was shattered by checking Runkeeper and finding that I’d only run 7.1 km, or 4.4 miles. With the fastest person running the course last year doing it in in 28 minutes, and the slowest in 1hr 15 minutes I’m certainly not going to be troubling many people on the way round.
Still, I made it and psychologically at least that should help.
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