Tag: mountain marathon

27 Sep 2015 – Rutland Marathon

The first Rutland Marathon by a new company, OK the Bad: having to pay £6 on top of the quite dear entrance fee was terrible, feed stations were a bit bland, T-shirts would’ve been nice, feedback from the company by email and the FB site wasn’t very quick, the ten o’clock start and where it started from was very poorly handled. The Good: despite the course looking a bit boring it was enjoyable, the marshals were upbeat and friendly, plenty of feed stations and they did give out gels. So the day didn’t start great, my intended 18 mile Cycle to the start became a 30 miler due to closed roads and bad signage. Today was about getting my dear friend Andrea of Barrow Runners her good for age (Sub 3:50) so luckily pressure was off.

Despite the frosty and foggy start it turned into a hot blue skied day, despite its beauty anyone who regularly runs with us round Rutland water knows it’s not flat and 20 or so miles in its a killer.

So with such lovely weather everyone has come out so runners are constantly dodging dogs, people, cyclists and hopping over at least 20 pace slackening cattle grids. The Hambleton Peninsula comes in around mile 15 and for those familiar with its incline’s they just don’t get any easier!

The last few miles are tough and Andrea has fell behind but I’m still confident of her making her time with room to spare. I press on ahead some of this has to do with myself actually feeling it tough the last four miles and I admit when I crossed the line I found it harder on my legs today than the Railway Ultra!

3:49 hrs, I come in at 18th place, 3rd in my age group and very consistent (the printout is really good), sadly Andrea comes in at 3:52 having had a terrific race and its very fair to say had it been a normal road Marathon she’d have been much nearer to 3:30 which tells you how much harder this was. Well worth the experience and supporting a local race, be nice to see a few more Stiltons give it a go if only for the lactic challenge!

Running the half Marathon were Michael Cooke and Laura Pickard with much appreciated support on the course from Ben Pickard and Mike Brighty.  [Rob]

12 June 2015 – Rab Mini mountain marathon

Rab Mini Mountain Marathon – Dovedale

Two Striders Andrew Easom-Bentley and Simon Bottrill left behind a rain soaked Melton Mowbray and headed into Derbyshire for what was a glorious summers evening in beautiful surroundings. This was to be a really well organised event and no sooner had we arrived at the start (The Old Dog Pub in Thorpe) we collected our dibbers, were handed a map, formulated a quick plan and were on our way. 

Racing as a pair we had a 2 hour time limit to find 15 locations marked on the map in and around Dovedale with points awarded for each location dependent upon difficulty. With little time to warm the legs up we immediately started to climb and arrived at our 1st location within minutes, this spurred us on and very soon after we had reached the 2nd. From there an ankle breaking decent brought us to the River Dove and we wasted far too much time trying to find our 3rd location. 

We soon got back on track but the delay caused us to rethink our strategy opting to do the big ascents in order to gain more points. The warm evening air combined with the climbs made finding the next 5 locations tough going. We managed to complete our challenge in 2:04 having made it to 8 location and covering 8.4 miles (with just under 1700ft of ascent) coming in 44th place out 107 competitors.  [Simon]

7 Feb 2015 – Rab Mini Mountain Marathon

Andrew Easom Bentley & Mike Bryan took to the snowy hills of the Peak District to take part in the Rab mini mountain marathon. We had a map, compass and 4 hours to get to as many randomly placed check points as possible. Each check point was allocated a number of points between 10 & 40 depending upon how far away they were or how difficult to navigate to. The winner of the day managed 440 points in 3h 57, we were delighted to come in 58th out of nearly 200 runners with 286 points after a 4 point penalty for arriving 4 minutes over the allotted 4hour time limit (not bad at all) . To sum up a fantastic day had by all. [Mike]