White Cliffs Challenge 53.4 miles

This was a self navigation challenge on Bank Holiday Sunday 2018. It did not stop raining heavily all day and all night. Starting and finishing in Deal it was a 53.4 mile triangle course, along the coast, then inland, then back out to coast, on and off the North Downs Way, England Coastal Path and 1066 Route.

I met with Robert Cameron-Wood at the start and we basically ran together all of the way in the atrocious conditions that were the first 20 miles along the White cliffs through Deal, Dover and Folkstone in headwinds of 45-50 miles an hour with occasional gusts that blew us up in the air, or onto the ground. Add in face-hurting horizontal rain and the first 3 hours were horrid!

We ran with Malcolm for about 15 miles. Then at CP1 we split and the hilly inlands were as wet but not quite as windy. I'm writing this some months after running it and although it was miserable, it was good banter and certainly character building running. We made CP3 just before nightfall. I'm not sure why the start time was mid afternoon. It would have been good to start at say 7am, then get done before nightfall. It did mean that with the dark clouds and crap weather, that it was dark very early.

We were pootling along just fine. I'd used my GPX file as well as the navigation using the directions and we didn't get overly lost. With 30 miles done, my heel started to hurt. RCW said it was likely Plantar fasciitis, I thought not. It transpired to be. What was uncomfortable at 30 miles became unbearable at 48 miles. That said, a fast race walk/stomp/run got us round in 5th place, only a minute behind 3rd place, who started out an hour earlier....

A fry up at the end and the long drive across Kent and time for the recovery process.