Endurancelife CTS Northumberland

This event has been held for about six years I think, but I have always resisted it because of the price. I have tended to do the Belvoir Challenge which is lovely event. However, it does involve an overnight stay, so when you add that in, the Endurance Life event wins. I have never run some parts of it, so that was also an attraction.

The event attracts people from all over England, I met someone from London, two from Sheffield and one from Brighton. There were a few local runners as well and some of them I have met before.

The route is essentially go east from Alnwick to Alnmouth and then follow the coast north to Bamburgh. They supplied a GPS of the route, but they changed the route in a few places. Luckily, the course was exceptionally well signed - they had even put up signs indicating this was not the path to take in case anyone was tempted to take a path off the route.

I left the house pretty early (5.30) and drove to Bamburgh. This meant passing Alnwick but we had to go to Bamburgh to register and be bussed to Alnwick for the start.

I managed to get to the Castle

in time to see Jules and Helen and Dougie off on the ultra, before going back inside to register for the marathon

It was pretty windy outside and we went out there for the briefing and I bumped into Claire from Fetch who kindly offered to take my photo for this blog

Then it was onto the bus and off to the start at Alnwick on the Harrier League cross country course

We had been warned there were no toilet facilities at the start which meant that everyone spread out all over the place - there were no bushes.

The first leg to the coast was attractive countryside, passing under the A1 and London Edinburgh railway line. We ran on the main Alnwick - Alnmouth road for a couple of sections, but these were relatively short, it was mainly trail which got very muddy in places. I got to the Alnmouth checkpoint 7.2m in 1hr 10min which I was happy with (we had devices attached to out wrists which we put into a box at checkpoint so we got a printout at the end showing when we got the the checkpoints)

I was surprised we didn't get onto the beach at Alnmouth, the route stayed in the dunes and went up the hill to the golf course, which then led to a very muddy and steep descent down to the beach at Foxton Hall. The route went off the beach and then onto a trail to Beadnell, familiar from the NEMC Coastal marathon. Then it was the usual route to Longhouton, with some lovely views

I reached the the checkpoint at Howick (13m) in 2hr 14min so this was all looking good at this point. I was conscious I was a bit tired - I had looked at my watch earlier and had seen we had covered 10m when it felt a lot more than that - not a good sign .... 

There was more trail all the way to Craster and on to Dunstburgh Castle

And then more trail through the dunes avoiding Embleton Beach (one of my favourites 😕 )

all the way to Low Newton. We did run near a nature reserve which I didn't know existed so that was interesting. Then up towards Football Hole, where it occurred to me that I usually run round this area in the summer and the route was much muddier than it is in the summer.

I reached the third checkpoint (18.5m) in 3h 35min - that was 1hr 23min to cover 5.5m from the last checkpoint, a drastic slowing down. My legs felt there was nothing left in them and I was walking far more than I would normally have done on that terrain. Then it was another long walk/run to the bridge over the river that flows into Beadnell Bay

And finally onto the beach you can see in the last picture. It turned out that running on the beach wasn't that easy (though it looked lovely 😀). 

The tide was in so it was a choice of running on soft sand (no) or dodging waves in an attempt to run on harder sand. I didn't always manage to dodge the waves so I ended up with wet feet, which wasn't too much of a problem, it had warmed up and the sun was out.

I walked/ran all of Beadnell beach, through some of Beadnell and then down onto the beach again. This was more tricky to run with rocks and stones close to the high water mark. Then we came across the route's major obstacle, a river coming into the beach but because the tide was so high the sea was going into the river. The result was a crossing where the sea got up to the top of my legs

The 'beach' after this was hard to make any quick progress on, it was rocky. This didn't last too long and we approached Seahouses, with a view of the finish at Bamburgh Castle just over 3m away

Down onto the beach between Seahouses and Bamburgh and the final checkpoint. The 'beach' here was tricky to make much progress on

If the tide hadn't been so high this would have been easier for runners to make good progress - not me, my legs had gone so I was walking all of this anyway. Finally the finish arrived, 5hr 53min for 27m. Pretty poor considering my time at 13m - 2hr 14m.

What went wrong ? Well maybe going to a posh meal at work (very enjoyable) the night before hadn't been the best idea. But sometimes you just can't figure it out. The Hardmoors 30m went much better than I expected, but this one went worse than I expected. Hopefully the next one (seven days time...) will go better.