I thought I'd run this twice before, but because of an often clash with my birthday, the last time I ran this race was 2017 and I had a chance to do a decent recce beforehand. I remember it being tough, but beautiful and I love a team relay.
This year I had been training hard for the Vegas Half Marathon and my fitness was starting to come back, so when Danni was asking for people interested it seemed like a great time to sign up. I ran a 2 hour 8 minute time at the Vegas Half on the 27th February and on the 26th March I ran a 24.31 minute parkrun at Pontefract and was finally feeling that after injuries and illness I was getting my fitness back, only the following day I inevitably tested positive for Covid after avoiding it for 4 days after Alan had tested positive.
We were both fortunate to "recover" pretty quickly with us both testing postive for around 10 days and not needing any additional medical support, but trying to run or be active afterwards has really been more challenging that I would have predicted with my garmin proudly declaring recovery times of 60+ hours after a parkrun!
All credit to Danni for managing to arrange a team, the logistics and chase us all for payment and signatures and I was allocated leg 6 again (handy as I didn't get a chance to recce) and she had also paired me up with Jed who I've run with a few times in Groups 3 and 4 before catching Covid. I knew I'd likely be slower than the last time I ran the relay and so was slightly worried when I saw Jed had run a 1 hour 34 Leeds Half Marathon the weekend before the relay! I told him that he'd potentially hate me by the end of the relay as I'd not managed further than 7 miles post covid!
I prepped my kit the night before digging out a running rucksack, the print out of the route, a compass, full body waterproofs, hat and gloves...and no-one checked my bag this time. I also downloaded the route onto my garmin to help if I didn't remember where we were going from the last time.
We planned our travel logistics and I drove to Leeds and picked Jed up and then we got stuck in a very long queue of traffic for the Leeds match, fortunately we'd left a load of time (meeting at 12pm to hopefully get there in 30 minutes) we managed to find a parking space on the road near the start and I grabbed a packed of crisps and used the toilet in a pub nearby.
Registration was swift and we had about 45 minutes to wait before the mass start and we watched a few teams pass over the baton as we waited for 2pm to arrive.
They set us all off and we piled off down the grassy hill and into the woods where there were a few traffic jams at tighter parts of the route. It was a really warm day and the sun had come out and so we got to run across bluebell lined paths and up and down slopes to the path along a field.
Fortunately much of the route was familar to me as I do have a decent memory for recalling routes I've done previously, even if it's been a few years, but having a few people up ahead to follow (and occasionally behind to tell us when we were taking a slightly wrong turn) was really useful.
I had conveniently forgotten just how hilly Leg 6 is with around 477m of elevation across 17.2km route. I got through the first 10K reasonably swiftly in just over an hour and seven minutes with Jed not having to wait for me too much (although I suspect he was very much running at a slower pace than he could have done!) but then for the next 7km I really needed to employ the tactic of walking up all of the hills and indeed along a fair chunk of the flat sections.
The views as usual were beautiful which almost made the fact I had to walk like a Gorilla up at least 90% of the uphill sections worthwhile and running down the long stretch onto the last section of the canal at the end was definitely good fun!
We got around to the finish and took a slight detour along the road rather than the field, but were able to spot a rather tempting looking ice cream van and we finished in 2 hours 21 which is a good 20 minutes slower than my last attempt, but I'm really glad I managed to get around and finish it.
We rewarded ourselves at the ice cream van and took a walk to the bus station to get a bus back to the start to pick up my car. Note for future runners the 508 bus goes from Leeds right to the start and it's only 10 minutes walk to the bus station which can make car logistics a bit easier.
I still feel bad that Jed had to slow down and walk/wait for me as much as he did, but I think we both had an enjoyable run out through Halifax and as much as I might regret it later, I do still think I want to do it again...only this time I'll definitely train more and try my best to avoid pandemic diseases!
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