{"id":1066,"date":"2010-10-08T21:38:53","date_gmt":"2010-10-08T20:38:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/?p=1066"},"modified":"2022-04-11T21:44:25","modified_gmt":"2022-04-11T20:44:25","slug":"nine-edges-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/nine-edges-2010\/","title":{"rendered":"Nine Edges 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sorry about the lack of photos; in my defence, this day was all about getting from A to B as quickly as possible (i.e.<\/span> without photo stops).<\/em><\/p>\n

The Nine Edges Endurance race<\/a> is about 20 miles long, and takes in 900m of ascent. It starts at Fairholmes below the Derwent Dam and goes south from there along the eponymous nine edges; Derwent, Stanage, Burbage North and South, Froggatt, Curber, Baslow, Gardom’s and Birchen. I first heard about it last year, just as I started running, and decided it would make a good (possibly too ambitious?) target for 2010.<\/p>\n

For our first Nine Edges experience, Mat and I started earlier than the rest of the runners, at 08:30. The forecast weather of hail flurries and 30mph winds failed to materialise, and we set off with frost in places but not a cloud in the glorious blue sky. It’s a brutal start with 400m of ascent up to Derwent Edge, and I was relieved to see Savage puffing and panting as much as I was as we approached the first checkpoint. From there we got into a decent pace as we ran along the edge and descended towards Moscar. The trudge up to Stanage had been worrying me; I found it hard going on my recce a few weeks ago. However, on the day \u00a0I was feeling really strong and had no problems. Mat and I had stayed together thus far as our pace had turned out to be very similar. As we passed Stanage Plantation, Mat let out a pained cry and pulled up sharply; knee trouble had left him in agony. He popped a couple of ibuprofen and we walked for half an hour past Popular, over Cowper Stones and on to the next checkpoint at Burbage North.<\/p>\n

At this point it became apparent that Mat wasn’t going to be able to run any further, so I mercilessly left him to walk the rest of route and set off down Burbage valley. I made good time to Burbage South, but lost time between there and Froggatt. It was the only bit of the route I hadn’t checked out in advance, so faffing around with the map and generally not knowing where I was going slowed me down. I caused momentary excitement at the Froggatt checkpoint, as the marshalls informed me I was the first runner through! I pointed out that I had started an hour and a half before the rest of the runners, at which the excitement level dropped a bit. Nevertheless, it was VIP treatment with people refilling my water bottle, handing out Mars bars and insisting I take a big handful of Haribo. All races should be like this.<\/p>\n

Out of the trees and ascending Froggatt I started to feel a bit tired, finally alternating running with walking. However, at the top of Froggatt I got a second wind and made good time down to the checkpoint at Curbar Gap. A lapse of attention meant I ended up on the cliff-edge path along Baslow Edge, not the big flat motorway which runs past the Eagle Stone. That section passed in a bit of a haze although I maintained a good pace, but I came down to earth with a bump when I had to negotiate my way past a cow. I hate cows. We reached an agreement to just leave each other alone, so I continued on to the final checkpoint at Clod Hall crossroads. Glancing at my watch, I could see that I had about 12 minutes to get over to the finish if I wanted to come in under my target time.<\/p>\n

From the crossroads I headed up the track below Birchen edge, slowing to walk the last couple of hundred metres of what was a bigger-than-expected climb. From the top, I had the end in my sights and powered down the hill. This tactic worked well until about 300 yards from the gate at the road, where I mis-judged my footing and twisted my right ankle badly. The watch showed three minutes to go if I wanted to make my target, so I hobbled at speed down to the finish and triumphantly crossed the line. My time was duly recorded at 3h 58m; result! Despite my fears of the entire field overtaking me, it seemed I was one of the first people to finish, with only a couple of bikers and walkers there already. Savage bravely crossed the line some time later, vowing to return next year to avenge his enforced walking. Sounds like a plan.<\/p>\n


\nBoring self-analysis for anyone interested in running:<\/strong>
\n<\/em>This race was furthest I’ve ever run, and I was quite pleased with my performance. My public target was “just to finish” or “5 hours”, but in reality I wanted to be under 4 \u00a0hours. My final time of 3h 58m included 35 minutes walking with Savage while his knee was playing up, so I reckon without that I wouldn’t have had to rush to beat 4h. Target for next year is 3h 30m, but that will require some training! My main issue with running is always pace; running with someone else was useful in this case as it slowed both of us down to a reasonable speed. I also managed to deal with my other main failing,hydration. All in all, I was really pleased with both my overall time, and the fact that it really wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sorry about the lack of photos; in my defence, this...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[500,502,501,420,499,396],"class_list":["post-1066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-outdoors","tag-9-edges","tag-edale-mrt","tag-edges-endurance","tag-fell-running","tag-nine-edges","tag-running"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1066\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}