Two years ago I ran the Lakeland Trails marathon and it was a hot day. I missed last year's event, so it was back again to Coniston with the prospect of another hot run. Melanie did the half marathon last year and was keen to do the marathon this year - it would be her fourteenth marathon in just over a year, amazing !
In the Lakeland Trails there are usually two events, the Challenge and the Race. They follow the same course, but the Challenge goes off a bit sooner. It allows people to finish earlier in the day if they want to and also helps the organisers because the slower runners tend to enter the Challenge (but by no means are all the runners in the Challenge slow !).
I have been entering the Challenge for a while, it is good to see the faster runners finish. The difficulty with the Challenge at this event is that you must register the day before and the Challenge starts at 7am. It was this last point that Melanie was not too happy with. We had the alarm on for 4.30 even though we were staying not too far away in Kendal.
Saturday was hot all day and the forecast for Sunday was getting hotter every time we looked at it. So Melanie gradually came round to being relieved that we were starting early when the forecast was for it to be cooler (but still pretty hot).
Luckily the forecast wasn't quite accurate, as it was cloudy until about 11.30 on Sunday, though it was very humid. Still that was better than being cooked by the sun. So after getting to Tarn Hows and up most of the hills and down to the south end of the Lake, the sun finally came out and it became very hot. We then climbed up to Beacon Tarn and the climb was longer than I remembered. But we made it back to the finish and about twenty five minutes faster than my time two years ago.
I have to say that the race organiser, Graham, excelled himself at the end. The finish at any Lakeland Trail event tends to go round a field or park before you go under the finish gantry. This time we were approaching the field containing the finish via the next door field which was a campsite. I was hoping that there would be a gate we would run through that would lead us directly into the finish. There wasn't, so we ran past the the finish gantry (and slightly uphill !) and then finally turned into the finish field. Do we go directly to the finish gantry ? No, we run right round the finish field (and it's a big field !) until we get to the lakeside and then head towards the finish gantry. Do we turn in when we reach it ? No, of course not, we continue round the edge of the lake before finally turning into the finish. An amusing finish to a lovely scenic event, the terrain is tough to run on at times, but I would strongly recommend this race.
To cool down at the end, lots of runners including us, ended up in the Lake, that felt good.
Anita and Kathryn ran the half marathon and they started at 10, so they had a hot race !
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