hellrunner by name…
So did the infamous Hellrunner race live up to its’ fearful and daunting name?
Well, after this year’s most violent storm it was certainly going to be wet and with your intrepid gang of three (Ian Lee Emery, Grant Wyatt and me) starting alongside Gordon Ramsey (Ramsey’s Running Nightmares, anyone?) the air was definitely going to be blue. Just to make sure we were going to get soaked the heavens opened at exactly 10.20am and cheerfully obliged. Thanks. Probably.
The start was a right laugh as ‘the devil’ was there on stilts towering over the runners and blood red smoke billowed from the leading quad bikes as the 3000+ entrants took to the trails. Our plan, as such, was to get a bit of a pace on and, in order to avoid the bottlenecks that would obviously occur with such a large field, be closer to the sharp end than the blunt. And by and large that proved to be the right thing to do. Needless to say the ground was very, very, very wet and even though we all knew what was coming later in the race, I was continually surprised at the lengths that all runners (myself included) were going to in avoiding getting our feet wet! Thankfully this only lasted a mile or two as the race descended into the mudathon we had all expected. The thing about the puddles though was that you had no idea of their depth and on a couple of occasions the runner next to or in front of you would all but disappear as the puddle turned out to be a pot hole! Laugh? For sure until the next victim was yourself.
And what we were expecting finally reared its ugly head at about the eight mile mark – the bogs of doom – a 25 yard trench of muddy, cold, stinking pollution with the crowd leering and shouting above. Nice. And being a midget the water was up to my neck. Even nicer. But at least there was only the one. Yeah, reet. Two more popped up in the last three miles, each feeling colder than the last. Mmmm. The final escapade of the sand dunes known as the hills of hell proved to be OK and it was with a bit of a sprint that Ian and I finished in times of 1.25.44 and 1.26.01 respectively. Grant, also finishing with a flourish, came in a couple of minutes later in 1.28.51. All in all top fun, not too shabby times for a tough 11 mile XC race and we’re all planning to do it again next year.
Hell run? Nah, not really but an excellent, well organised XC run with more than enough hills for even the most dedicated of fell runner and a few man-made obstacles thrown in to keep it fun. Go on, you know you want to?
2011 Event Update:
1.20.48 saw five minutes off last year’s time but this, together with the minus four degree start temperature took its toll and resulted in a 30 minute enforced recovery in an ambulance. It was only the mention of a drip that got me the hell outta there!
