SPRINT Issue 59

The second half
So, I got to Henley at about 1945 – 15 minutes ahead of my pretty optimistic
schedule. There were seats, and things cooking and dropboxes and people
and smiles and coffee and seats. Did I mention the seats? Before I had quite
stopped, one of the wonderful volunteers was shouting my number and my
drop box was coming back at lightning speed. I took my vest off, put
everything down by a seat (mmmm, seat!), stuck my Garmin on charge from
the little battery pack I had and grabbed some meaty pasta. It was delicious!
I’d arrived feeling pretty hot in just a t-shirt, and had felt on the toasty side
through the whole of the first 50 miles with the sun shining down for most of
it. It seemed a bit strange getting cold weather stuff out of my drop box, but
I put on long tights (getting in a right muddle with my shoes on 2 occasions),
putting my shorts on over the top again to keep my number on the outside. I
swapped my t-shirt for a long sleeved thermal base layer, put a new t-shirt on
top (it felt wonderful to put something clean on!), and put my fleece in my
backpack just in case I needed it later.
It wasn’t quite head torch time yet, but I moved it somewhere easy to
grab. As I put everything back on, my watch beeped to tell me it had got
bored waiting and decided to save the first half of my run, thus cutting the
track for the whole race in half! Now I was going to end up with a 51 mile
run and a 49 mile run instead of an epic 100 mile run! Annoying, but not the
end of the world.
I grabbed a cup of coffee – my first caffeine in over a week – and left the aid
station.
It took me about 2 minutes to realise that, now the sun had gone down, the
temperature had dropped significantly. Another 2 minutes and I had my
mitts on, and was very, very glad I’d doubled up the layers.
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