The sea at Rye

wave advance, a photo by ultraBobban on Flickr.

Hopefully this is the sort of scene that will await next Saturday evening as the waves hit the shore at Rye on the Sussex/Kent Coast after 50 miles of a brand new Ultra run organised by Mike Jones at Saxon Shore Ultra Trails.

I've received an email today promising maps at the start but am going to spend the rest of this lovely Sunday afternoon perusing over check points and the course.

This week has been about recovery and after 2 marathons last weekend and 6000ft of ascent, I opted for a quieter week of 70km as I had pretty sore calves. Work has been a beast this week and late finishes have transpired to grabbing fast short runs at 8.30 every evening before dinner....not ideal.

I continue to be perplexed by this vein of form I tapped into last weekend with 2 x faster marathons than the previous year as I lined up for my local Crystal Palace Park Run. Those of you who know CP Park Run will know that in the 5km 2 loops of CP Park is 236ft of ascent. This is more than the 200ft at Greenwich making it probably the hardest Parkrun around.

My 19 min 53 5k was safely in the PB cabinet from a fast and flat 2009 course but only a minute slower with some big hillage in the way and 39 seconds off my PB with a 21.09 by my watch and a rather erroneous 20.48 from Parkrun time keeping.

So a 9 mile warm down and a nice gentle 10km this morning.......linking up my local parks with some hills and back routes leaves me feeling OK about the NC50 next weekend.

Once I recce the maps and plan my strategy (i.e. trail shoes or road) I will bimble down to Rye at 5.00am on Saturday and get the bus to the Ashdown forest and run back with the rest of the entrants.

I've never run an actual 50 mile race before. I've done a 45 and much bigger ones, so I'll be interested to see how I go with this distance.