Exe-rated runners!

Exe-rated runners!
The successful Harriers team, en masse, at the Erme Valley Relays, July 2013

Wednesday 1 August 2012

A bit more than 6 Moor Miles...

On Sunday 29th July I, Ellie Sutcliffe, was once again the sole Harrier out on the race circuit. With a dearth of events in the local area, the closest race on offer was the Plymouth Harriers organised '6 Moor Miles' at Yelverton on the southerly edge of Dartmoor.

On the start line I knew very little about the course as there was no route map or hill profile uploaded on the website, nor was there any indication of the sort of terrain we would be running over, other than the vague description of 'moorland', and so I set off from the race HQ at Leg O'Mutton corner on a bit of a magical mystery tour!

We had only been running for 5 minutes when the heavens opened and we got instantly soaked in the most torrential downpour. With shorts sticking to me and rain blocking my vision, I pressed on over the undulating route which was dry underfoot to start with but quite boggy by the end of the downpour!

On the first steep downhill stretch I got overtaken by another female runner. She gained about 50m on me and whilst this distance did not increase and I was able to keep her in sight, I could not manage to close the gap. Having driven back from North Wales the previous day and sat for 8 hours in the car I had severe clutch ache due to the delightful Saturday-changeover-day-on-the-M5 experience and my legs were pretty stiff and so I found the whole race quite a struggle.

The worse bit was when we got to 5 1/2 miles and I started to crank up the pace in a push for the finish, only to get to the 6 mile mark and there to be no finish in sight! I pointed this out to a marshal and he said, 'almost there, just '200m to go', but this man's distance judgement was clearly suspect as it was in fact a full 1/2 mile (800m) further to run and the race measured in at 6.5m and by the end my lungs were bursting after a 1 mile push for the finish. 2nd lady and 21st overall out of 253 finishers in 43:48. This gave me an average pace for the race of 6:50m/m, so although it felt tough the route was in fact no where near as hilly or demanding as the Haytor Heller, where I only averaged 8:30m/m!

A great little race, well marshalled, entirely off-road and a truly fantastic set-up at race HQ with £1 bacon and sausage baps, 50p cups of tea, 50p slices of cake and a free post-race massage on offer. What more do you need for a great event?!

The start of the 6 Moor Miles race: you can see the big black cloud that was shortly to deposit a ton of water on us looming large in the background!

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