Ridgeway Race Report; CP5 to CP6

Crew car, originally uploaded by ultraBobban.

Say goodbye to the crew car. After Goring where Jezza arrived as we left, although I didn't see him we walked for a while to let the food go down. After a mile or so of crossing the Thames and roads,we hit the trail again. I turned my headtorch off as Dave's was bright enough and the stars and the moon were out. Up to Bury down (Down was up!) and as we approached the 50 mile mark Dave started to nose-dive into a patch of not feeling great.

We were up on the downs and it become very open with the relentless gentle up and down that we had been used to on Neolithic. It was too steep to run up to Bury Down so much of this we wlaked. Dave was dropping back so I tried everyhing to gee him up, asking questions and whittering on about stuff. We approached and overtook a runner who I had to block out mentally. he was so negative about everything and I had to work hard in my head not to let the negative thoughts creep in just as I could have been feeling crap too. I had to drop back and keep Dave away from him as Dave was not feeling great and this negativeness could really kick him in the goolies. We let him pass but we were conscious of the ticking clock and made our way towards CP6. As we got there we picked up 2 other runners. One was an essex girl who told us of the Jungle Marathon that she had run. Her and her mate from "team Jungle" had met and run the race that Mark Hines wrote a book about. We listened in and I was in very high spirits at this point. I left them with Dave to have a chat. Dave was not chatty but they were. I took the opportunity to head about 500m in front of them to do some thinking, keep my head positive and have good run walk posture, making sure that I was tracking towards CP6 by cutting off apexes and not going wrong with the mapreading.

A mile from CP6 we went under a road bridge with the most minging murals on. It looked really grim. Up the hill and the word was that CP6 had hot dogs. I had a call from Susie to let me know that. They had left CP6 to go to the hotel. Unfortunately we missed them. Up the hill towards CP6 I ran all the way and arrived about 5 mins before Dave. Cup of coffee and 2 hot dogs later I was right as rain, fueled by cheap flat coke I was read to rock and roll. Dave on the other hand, looked grey. He managed a cup of tea and off we went.