Ultra Trail du Leith Hill - Winter Tanners 30mile

Winter Tanners - 11 January 2015
It's the second time I have done this event - I won't call it a race as there are no prizes for coming first - and I was hoping to finish this time in better shape than last year.  Last time I had also done Portsmouth Marathon just before Christmas and had not done much else other than parkrunning in between.  This time I had managed a sub 4 time at Portsmouth, did all the parkruns I could and fitted in a couple of 9 mile recovery(!?) runs in between.  Last year at Portsmouth I felt awful at 24 miles, though that was OK as there were only 2 to the finish, but at the Tanners I felt awful at 10 miles with 20 to go! This time I think I am in much better shape in terms of overall fitness than this time last year.

However, following on from Portsmouth Marathon 2014 I have also had some injury issues with some minor ankle niggles, tight quads leading to ITB and knee aches and a hint at an Achilles problem - December was a high mileage month.  However, with a lot of attention to stretching, foam rolling and even a first go at Bikram Yoga, I managed a 9 mile run without problems.  The final decision on whether to run or not was left to Saturday afternoon after another assessment and massage session at Reform and Renew Osteopathy.  Abby and I gave my legs the green light to go. Actually that's not quite true - I gave myself the green light to go and Abby kind of laughed.

The Winter Tanners is run by the Long Distance Walkers Association (LDWA) Surrey group and is a Challenge event meaning you can walk or run and you are given detailed written instructions to follow between checkpoints, of which there are 3 on the 30 mile route.  The route changes each year so you can't learn it and the written instructions are only published 6 days before the event, so any overly competitive people have little chance of scouting the route or putting out markers. So, no course markings and very little out on the course.  At the checkpoints there are refreshments (biscuits, cake, squash and water, tea and coffee at Checkpoint Charlie).  There isn't even a mass start, so no bunch of people to just follow. People get going anywhere between 7:30am and 10am with the aim of finishing before dark, but even that is not critical - if you finish after 7pm you can phone your finish time in to the organisers.  The other amazing thing is it is really cheap - £4 (members), £20 (non-members), but membership is only £13, so you could do the Tanners and the Punchbowl marathon as well, which is another LDWA event for the price of one half marathon.

Preparation
Preparation for this event is a bit more important than a regular marathon.  You can be out on course for many hours (last year 8:30) wading through mud, up steep hills, rough ground and out in almost all weather - they only cancel the event if it looks like the marshals can't make it out to the Checkpoints because of snow.  So the kit list needs to be a bit more extensive than just skimpy shorts and a vest.  I had planned to take my generic camelback with 1.5l water, a few gels, malt loaf, chocolate and, as I'm trying out ultra running food, a scotch egg.   My kit also included my new Ronhill showerproof jacket, a base layer and t-shirt, tights and calf guards, toe socks and Salomon Fellraisers (grippy but not waterproof) with Dirty Girl lycra gaters.

You don't have to feel like you are on a road to nowhere
with preparation like this!

In the days before the event I downloaded the route instructions and marked the route on to a blown
up version of the OS 1:25000 mapping.  I like to have this as a backup to the notes to help visualise the route and in case I get lost.

Race Day
I had my kit all sorted, or so I thought.  I was due to get a lift to the start with friends Hannah and Paige and I got to Hannah's house by motorbike at 6:45, to unload and sort myself out. I then managed to set aside my phone and wallet and left them on Hannah's kitchen table and to top things off, I also realised that I had forgotten to put on my Garmin watch. Oh well, I was just going to have to run this one naked!

After parking and getting race kit on we walked down to the start hut to register, this year using chipped cards to scan in at the checkpoints instead of just race numbers.  Hannah and Paige were going to do the 20mile course walking and I thought I should start as soon as possible to give myself a chance of getting through the 30 miles close to their time.  Just outside the hut I bumped into Martin Bushell, former event director at Alice Holt parkrun and now also an ultra runner.  We decided to run together which turned out to be a great stroke of luck for both of us.

Weather leading up to the day was mixed, very windy and with heavy rain, but the day itself was calm and fine, cold but with little frost on the ground.  We set off following a combination of Martin reading out the route notes and me filling in details of the lie of the land and distances to the next feature off the map.  We matched pace jogging along on the downhills, flats and gentle rises and walking up anything steep or very muddy.  We quietly sorted out a pace that suited both of us; what I'd call trotting, as we were mostly on bridleways.

At Checkpoint 1, Chadhurst Farm and the first of the
well stocked aid stations

The route this year started off roughly due south and into the low winter sun past Fetcham Downs and on to part of the North Downs Way to the east of Ranmore Common and the Denbies Wine Estate where the Bacchus marathon is run, then crossing the Pilgrim's Way passing Westcott to the first checkpoint at Chadhurst Farm at about 8 miles.

 From here the next mile was low lying and like all the low lying areas on the route, was really muddy. an apparently pleasant grassy field was pock marked with hoof marks filled with icy water followed by trails of slurry mud or sticky chalky clay great for adding pound to your feet.

Leith Hill Tower

However, this first muddy section soon gave way to the first big climb of the day and the approach to Leith Hill.  Here the trails headed up on sandy paths through deciduous and pine forests occasionally breaking out into the open with views across the wooded valleys.  It's here you really have to appreciate why you are slogging up a great big hill, stop just focussing on putting one foot in front of the other and take a moment to enjoy the countryside around you. Allow yourself a few seconds to take all this in, give yourself a little mental boost, another little reason to tell yourself "It's worth it" and carry on.

The woodland trail finally took a right turn and kicked up for the last push up to the top of Leith Hill, at 294m above sea level is the second highest point in south-east England.

From Leith Hill.  The stats may not be that spectacular, but the views were amazing. 

The route then headed west from Leith Hill dropping over 200m on to more low lying muddy trails before heading north just beyond the half way point and the on to the long, long climb up to Pitch Hill (257m) and the Hurt Wood.  The route gets within 500m of checkpoint 2 and then takes a cruel turn to climb and incredibly steep path, surely made by mountain goats with a sick sense of humour.  with lungs and legs crying in pain we came out to another spectacular view on Pitch Hill at the LDWA Founders' Memorial Toposcope

View east from the top of Pitch Hill

Checkpoint 2 at the Friends of Hurt Wood car park,
manned by keen ultra runners 

From the top it was a short few hundred metres to Checkpoint 2 at 17 miles which seemed to be manned not by LDWA members but ultra runners, as they spotted my Dirty Girl gaiters from a distance and had me and Martin down as fellow ultra runners in need of handfuls of fig rolls and jaffa cakes.

From the car park, another short climb had us at the top of a long gentle trot down through Hurt Wood and north to Peaslake and then up to Abinger Hammer just beyond 21miles.

On the walk up out of the village I went through a mental checklist of how my feet and joints were doing.  Feet were damp, but not sore, ankles OK, right Achilles OK also, left knee was a worry at the start and had been sore on some of the descents, but now was feeling good too.  Possibly this was due to my hips and pelvis being very sore and taking my mind off all the other aches.  Hip flexors and lower abs seem to be the bane of my life on long runs and today was no exception.  All other pains paled beside this constant ache that I had been suffering from about 15 miles.  However, the constant pain didn't change, didn't get worse and it was therefore easy to just tell myself this was something I could manage and just get on with it.  A steady "ultra jog" at about 10 to 11 minute miles was still possible with walking up hills.

We had a nice long jog along good gravel covered trails for a couple of miles and I felt like we made good progress on this section, before we headed north to re-cross the railway and get back up to the North Downs Way on a steeply climbing wooded path.  We were now within a mile of Checkpoint 3 and as we climbed up the valley side I could see the winding concrete track that was the approach to CP3 last year.  I thought of how bad I was feeling at this point last year compared to now, how much of the hill we had already climbed and how much I was looking forward to a hot cup of coffee at the checkpoint, and I was soon feeling good enough to jog along to the bottom of Steer's Field and the last little climb to the checkpoint.

Checkpoint 3: Restoring ultra runners to human form for 37 years!  

Checkpoint 3 can be an emotional place with people so buoyed up by the restorative powers of hot tea and coffee, biscuits and fruit that it soon lifts their spirits.  The marshals are rightly praised for standing out in the cold for us all day and the mood among the runners and walkers is very positive with the realisation that the last of the big hills is behind us and there are less than 5 miles to the finish.

Tanner's hatch - it's where your Ultra journey really starts

Here I managed to get a call in to Hannah and Paige, who were about a mile away from CP3, before we set off to turn down into Ranmore Common and the jog down to Tanner's Hatch.

This is a significant point on the route as it is both the place where the founder members of the LDWA first met to set up the association and the point where a mere marathon runner turns into an ultra runner.

Beyond Tanner's Hatch another mile and a half of narrow trail and muddy field brought us back on to the gravel track we came out on and the last mile back to the finish, this time done at a steady if aching trot in glorious daylight, rather than last year's agonised limping walk in the dark.

Back at the hut by Leatherhead leisure centre, we checked in and awaited out finish certificates. Checking Martin's GPS watch, he told me that he had forgotten to start it until we were half a mile into the run.  We had finished in a time of just over 7 hours 20 minutes.

Martin checking out the quality of my mapping at CP1.
The field behind him was where the mud really started.

This was almost confirmed by the time keepers who rather generously took an additional hour off my time - they were trying to do a lot of mental arithmetic under pressure!  Still, I'll guess at an official time of 7:25 which I am very pleased with as it takes 65 minutes off the time I did last year.  I think it was just as muddy and there were even more hills this time.

Hannah and Paige came in about 1:30 behind me, just over 8:30 for walking the 20 mile route including stopping for lunch.

Thanks to Martin Bushell for the company along the way and to the LDWA organisers and marshals for making this such a great event.