Lakeland 100
An Iconic Race in the Making
Nick Gracie (Team Aberdeen Asset Management) / 19.08.2008
The Race
The race starts in Coniston and heads West to Seawaithe and then North to Braithwaite via Boot, Wasdale Head and Buttermere. It then heads East to Keswick and onto Dockray (the half-way point). Theres a bit of a dog leg around Pooley Bridge and Howtown to Mardale head. You then start heading for home via Kentmore, Ambleside, Chapel Stile and finally back to Coniston. Sounds a long way – it is, but it’s a great way of seeing the Lakes.
The 100 mile race starts on Friday night at 7.30pm so you have a few hours of daylight to settle into the event before it gets dark. The navigation is not too hard as you are always on good tracks but there are a few tricky areas, though they should not put anyone off and you are allowed to use GPS if you want. It really helped having Steve Birkinshaw in the front too – I spent much of the race looking for his distinctive Inov8 shoe prints in the mud to make sure we were on the right route!
The weather for the first 12 hours was great and we had a beautiful sunrise over Keswick, however the second half was a little wetter and by the finish there was torrential rain, thunder and lightening and many of the rivers and streams were raging.
The race was tough but very enjoyable and I think the organisers planned the distances between checkpoints wisely. No leg was too long or too tough and the checkpoints all contained happy smiley people and plenty of good food to keep every section manageable and encouraged you on to the next piece of the puzzle!
There was a total of 6800m of ascent and descent which is a fair amount but there were only a few big climbs and certainly no monsters. If anything the consistent long runs downhill were harder (especially for my London based road running legs).
Judging by the higher than anticipated drop out of 60% (19 of the 31 starters for the 100) it proved a little tough for a few but I think we all probably underestimated how hard it would be. 100 miles is never that far on paper but after running for 80 miles those last 20 are real killers. From the few long runs I have done there is always a point when it really hurts – you hope it’s as late on as possible but invariable it’s the final few miles that make these events so hard.
SleepMonsters
