Having always fancied the idea of the Colworth Marathon Challenge, but never entered due to it clashing with the Greensands Ridge relay, this year Paul Douglas and I decided to take the rebellious plunge and enter Colworth! For those who are unfamiliar with the Colworth challenge, it is a series of three back to back multi-terrain races, which add up to a total of 26.2 miles. The Colworth 5 is on the Friday evening and, yes, you guessed it… it's 5 miles. This is followed by the Colworth Trail race (8.1 miles) at Midday on the Saturday and the Colworth Half Marathon on the Sunday morning. All three races are almost entirely off road and all three are challenging in terms of hills and/or terrain… just the way we love it! 

Having never even attempted two back to back races before, I was unsure how my body would cope with three and, therefore, trained really hard for it and was feeling really strong and positive… until three weeks prior to the race(s), when I managed to put my foot down a hole on a training run and damage a ligament in my ankle. Luckily the Pyhsio was able to immediately pinpoint the exact location of the damage and give me some pretty intensive treatment just in time (daily pinching of the TENS machine from the stable yard also helped enormously)! I was also given strict instructions to do absolutely NO running prior to the race and to simply keep fit on my bike, to minimize impact… my Physio is a runner himself, so knew exactly where I was coming from and how important it was for me to race after all my hard work in training. Despite assurances from both the Physio and my unofficial (but excellent) Coach (PD), that my most influential training had by this point already been completed and maintaining my level of general fitness was all I had to do, this made me rather nervous, since the only way I had ever previously trained for races was by running… and three weeks is a bit of a long taper, when you have to race three days in a row! Anyway I did as I was told and went to the start line on Friday evening very fresh indeed, but also with a completely revised objective of simply getting through the weekend, with absolutely no regard for times. 

To my amazement, I ran the hilly 5 mile course (in extremely hot and humid conditions) feeling really strong all the way and didn't feel my ankle at all. I wasn't aware at the time, but I actually PB'd by over 1.5 mins and finished 5th V35 lady! Later that evening I did start to feel a bit of pain in my ankle again, but it wasn't too bad and I still felt positive for the rest of the weekend (with the help of plenty of ice, the TENS machine, lots of Rock tape and 2 ankle supports)! Saturday was really hard… it wasn't too hilly a course (although still pretty "undulating"), but had an extremely uneven and very rutted section of a couple of miles or so, which we did twice (out and back)… on the way back it was much worse, as we'd had a lot of rain overnight on Friday and after everyone had run through the section once (and the leading groups twice), it had also got really churned up and muddy. Lots of people took a nosedive within that section (including PD… oops, did I mention that?!)… I didn't, but still managed to pull my right calf so severely that, although I finished the race (running on adrenaline I suppose), I could barely walk to the car from the finish. So it was even more icing, TENSing and taping on Saturday evening and really was touch and go as to whether I'd make the start of the half marathon on Sunday. The deciding factor in lining up (feeling very negative about even getting round this time) was knowing that it was a two lap course, so I'd never be more than about 3 or 3.5 miles from base at any time… plus the previous courses had been extremely well marshalled, both in terms of numbers and support, so I was fairly confident at least that I would be rescued if the worst came to the very worst! For the first time ever, I actually managed to start near the back of the field and stay there for the first few miles, without getting swept away with the atmosphere more quickly than I should have done (as I usually do!) and, although I could feel quite a lot of pain in my calf, I refused to get carried away and push it too far (constantly reminding myself that the one and only aim was to finish) and thus the pain gradually decreased and my tempo gradually increased and I started to pick my way through the field. I finished the half marathon in 1:48:09, which wouldn't really disappoint me too much for a hilly off road half anyway, even without an enforced 3 week taper period and carrying two separate injuries for the race, so I was pretty happy with that! 

My total time for the whole marathon challenge was 3:31:57, which put me in 68th place out of a total of 182 finishers… 12th lady and 7th V35 lady. Paul's total time was 2:58:17, which gave him 14th place overall and 7th V40. Despite my own personal issues and challenges, I thoroughly enjoyed every second of every race and would highly recommend the challenge (although I'd be lying if I said it wasn't intense)! It was really really well organised and marshalled and had a fantastic and friendly atmosphere. There's even the option to camp there for the weekend, with barbeques and evening entertainment etc. Such a great shame that it usually clashes with Greensands, as it would be fantastic to get some teams up there… perhaps we could start a little campaign to remedy this for future years if enough people are interested??? The date of the 2014 challenge has been confirmed as 20th-22nd June.