After Rocky Raccoon I took a week off pretty much entirely and then did a couple of hours at the start of the next week which felt ok. I really didn't know what to expect in terms of recovery time & I had lost around 5 pounds during the race but these went back on pretty quickly so I figured it was ok to resume training. The South Downs are undoubtedly my favorite place to run in England. The views from the narrower, steeper sections are stunning and the trails well kept and hard. You can be on your own up there for hours on end when the weather turns bad. The Steyning Stinger Marathon contains 4 climbs up and back down the downs and the course profile is jagged but all runnable as they rarely exceed a mile in climbing length. This race was hard and hilly and the weather wasn't the greatest being very flat, cold and windy. I got to the start line around 15 minutes before take off and there was no one around, just a running clock and a guy with a clip board. When I asked what was going on he explained that you could start when you wanted and your time would be adjusted upon finishing. Good idea as most were using this as a training run of some sort (MdS etc) given that PBs were certainly out of the question. He also mentioned that there was going to be a 'mass start' in ten minutes time which I might as well wait for. I did and all told there were around 40 of us starting together at 8 30.
He shouted ready set go in school sports day fashion and we head off up the hill almost straight away. The laid back nature of this race was great. You turned up and started when you wanted, ran some great trails with regular aid stations. If you missed the cut offs they would simply advise you to miss a bit of the course and carry on anyway. I was ok until 20 ish miles and then i started to bonk a little. The last 4 miles were the hardest, up and then straight down the other side back into the village. It was very hard to gauge where you were in the race at any time as lots of people had started up to an hour before us. Despite this I thought Id done ok and subsequently ended up around 20th out of 150 in 3 46. I see that Jack Denness is running in the Sahara again this year. Great news. Jack is as a personal hero of mine following his repeated Badwater triumphs, most notably the one contained within the film Running on the Sun.
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