Last Sunday saw the start of Dark & White's Autumn Series of trail races. The first race long course took the form of an 17k extended loop of Carsington Water, a reservoir near Wirksworth.
I started well, moving at a decent pace on the well surfaced path around the reservoir. However, at the northern end where we crossed a road and started to move across fields my pace slowed somewhat despite my best efforts. I'm not sure of the cause, but my best guess is a lack of decent training in the preceding weeks, coupled with a summer of relatively short (10k) fell races. Fell racing might sound like good preperation for a longer trail race, but the two types of race can be very different. Trail races in my experience are mostly runnable at a good pace, with the odd short walk, whereas fell races with few exceptions involve a degree of walking and marked changes of pace. So at Carsington I was running not only further than I am used to but for longer as well and at a steady pace. Right, thats my excuses out of the way.
But basically I was crap.
I finished in 79th place out of 152 finishers, 20th out of 32 in my age group.
Not happy.
Paul.
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