The Witton Weaver Ultra Challenge: May The Fourth Be With You

Normally I would be writing this blog and posting it on a Sunday night. However, this weekend I travelled to Whitley Bay with my old football team, soccer to the US readers, for an end of season party. We all had to go in fancy dress. Seeing as it was Star Wars day(May 4th) I brought out my trusty Clone Trooper outfit.

We met in the pub at 8am for breakfast and then travelled by coach to Whitley Bay which is on the north east coast of the UK. It was really good to see my old pals. I played football for them for over 15 years and sometimes I get the urge to come out of retirement and play again. However, running is now my main love and I don't regret making the decision to quit football.

What has this got to do with my usual training report? Nothing really apart from its the reason I couldn't do normal training run on Sunday. Plus I fancied using the title that I have put and showing you pics that aren't just about the running. I'm a massive Star Wars fan as you can probably tell. My son loves the films too and he's even started reading my collection of Star Wars books. Im very proud of him for this. Mind you everything he and my daughter does makes me proud.

As I was going to be away on the Sunday, myself and Wayne went for a run after work on Thursday. Wayne said we would put two loops together but he wasn't exactly sure how long it would be in distance. Bearing in mind only four days earlier I had completed my first ever half marathon distance.

We started the run at 5pm and ran and ran and ran and ran and ran until we stopped running at about 9.15pm. Total distance covered for the Weavers Hobbiton/Darwen Tower run was 16.52 miles!!! That's not a typo by the way. In the space of just four days we had ran over two half marathons!!!! I could have killed Wayne for this!! I couldn't walk properly by the time we finished. I have never experienced fatigue in the body like it before.

The run started off pleasant enough as it was the usual terrain of the Hobbiton run that I have talked about in the previous posts. However, this time we were adding on a trail I had never been on before. This involved running up a lot more hills which was pretty difficult especially after mile 10. The good thing about our runs is that really if you want to quit, its a hell of a long way back to the car. There were plenty of times during this run that I wanted to quit, believe me.

I have included the usual photos of our run. They are in a chronological order so you get a feel for the changes in the terrain. The tower in one of the pics is called Darwen Tower. This was about 12 miles into the run and it was the first time I had ever experienced 'the wall'. My body and mind were exhausted, I felt miserable and needed energy. I hadn't prepared properly for this run and had only brought two energy gels which I had to ration. They ran out at the tower.

At this point my running technique had gone out of the window and I was in survival mode. Wayne had to knock on at someone's house to ask for water it had got that bad. As we drank the water, we came across an honour bar that was outside a house. I had never seen one of these before. It was a fridge stocked with goodies such as pop, chocolate cakes etc.. Wayne said these were for walkers that did the Witton Weaver trail hike. All the hikers had to do was put a donation in the box and they could take their goodies without the need for a shop. What a brilliant idea except for the fact we both didn't have a penny on us!!!!!! We could probably have taken the goodies and driven back to that point to pay later. However, our consciences got the better of us and we trudged off empty handed except for the water we had asked for.

What would you have done in this situation?

After we finished the run I was mentally and physically drained. Looking back we should have been more prepared for this run. However, I have now done two half marathons in four days and I'm able to blog to you all about it. It's a fantastic achievement for me considering I had never done that distance until last week. Maybe the title of this post (May the fourth be with you) does have some relevance after all. I used the Force in my mind to get me through both of those runs. Without being mentally strong it would never have been possible for me to complete what I have this week. Maybe the force is strong with me?!

Enjoy the photos and the rest of your week guys!