Seeing as several members have expressed an interest in joining in a team next year I thought I’d scribble out a race report although whatever I end up writing below won’t do the event justice.

What is it? Well, it’s a 24hr (midday Sat to midday Sun) event that takes place over a five mile trail circuit – it can be walked or run, as a solo entrant, in pairs, or teams of three to eight, and the idea is to do as many laps as possible within the 24hr period. There were about 3,500 entrants in 650 teams plus the solo runners/walkers this year. One thing that’s nice to see is the wide spread of abilities taking part, there were a good number of serious ultra solo runners running who apparently regularly clock over 100 miles and there’s also people walking the course, either way it’s lap after lap, in the wind and rain, through darkness, hunger and tiredness.

Our team of four planned (well, sort of!) to run, eat, shower, and rest, run, eat, shower, rest etc, but in the end none of us got a wash until the end (yes the air was a bit fruity in the camper van) and the only sleep to be had was a poor quality half hour snatched here and there. I’m not sure any of us perfected the eating strategy either – by my 5th lap my stomach felt like a washing machine sloshing around on a half load!

At the end we’d covered 27 laps (135 miles) and were placed what we considered a respectable 31st out of 52 teams in the Male of 3-5 runners category.

We all departed the camp site absolutely whacked but with a buzzing sense of team achievement and we all want to return next year.