With my first 55 miler fast approaching and recceing solo going well so far. On the back end of 2023 I was umming and aaring about entering the lets run recce. This recce takes you from cod beck down to helmsley which is literally the final part of the 55 into the finish line. You mostly do this part in the dark so we started at 4pm.
For those who do not know who lets run are. Lets run is a running shop ran by Shelly Gordan who is a prolific trail runner. They hold the event the pathfinder which I did back in october last year and are absolutely lovely people to run an event for.
Now back to the recce.
I booked on to get on the bus from helsmley because I had no clue on how to get my car back from cod beck. You get your race brief then you get split into groups by pace. This caused me a massive spike in anxiety because I had no idea what sort of pace I would be doing on the day. I knew my slowest was around 7:30-8 min per KM. I approached the fast group and asked what kind of pace they would be doing and much to my suprise 7:30 per KM was going to be the pace with recce for a sub 11 hour on the 55. The groups are ran by three marshals, made up of people who have either ran the 55 or haven’t ran the 55 but have done that part of the route many of times before.
My training estimations where around 10-12 hour based off training pace, but like we always say. That can all change depending on the conditions!
What was nice though, is if you overestimated yourself you can wait for the next group and jump into there. Like they said, this was not a race, it was a recce.
Though I pushed myself out of my comfort zone and I started thinking I had sorely over estimated myself here, I kept pace quite well. They stopped every so often to explain the parts of the course where you could quite easily take the wrong turns and lets run had set up check points that would mimic the check points in the race itself which was nice.
There is one bit which I am concerned about and that is when you get into the check point in osmotherly. You go down to the village hall, shoot up and to get back on the cleveland way you have to find this little alley which leads to a methodist church. Apparently quiet a fair few people go wrong there and you could tell why.
This is the osmotherly methodist church entrance. The church is a bit back from here on the trail but you have to try and find this little alley in the dark!
Once you manage to find the little alley, you are then ascending out of osmotherly back up on the moor. Now I actually enjoyed this bit (not the climbing), but as you got to the top the steady descent into sutton bank went quite quick. Before I knew it I was back on familiar ground and knew where I was.
It’s a shame that paradise farm wasn’t open because I could have done with a piece of cake or a pint! It is a georgeous little cafe by the way and highly reccomend it if you ever visit the sutton bank national centre.
The rest of the group that I was in decided to race off at this point because as we got to the top of the horrible white horse steps to start the final 9 mile leg into helmsley, the 2nd group was just approaching the aid station. Now I don’t mind getting on faster but it was a recce. The whole point is learning surroundings as it was technically a 40km training run. I just kept my pace that I was doing which was between 6-7:30min km and just stuck to comfort as I wanted to mimick most of my training. I also had a race the weekend after so was saving most of my race pace for then.
I did catch up with them on the last 8km into helmsley as they had knackered themselves out but I still had juice in the tank!
The whole point for me was to test everything that I knew and have energy in the tank at the end. That is when I knew that I had everything sorted and I could get this done. Now, I couldn’t find my good head torch and had to go for one that I found in the drawer which was a big mistake! Could not see for the life of me and had to get my phone torch out at one point just so I didn’t face plant rocks down a descent. One of the marshals gave me on of their spare head torches which was one of the fancy petzl ones. NIt was a great light but did not enjoy the reactive light when it shined on something reflective. You could probably turn that off but I wasn’t about to go messing around with someone else’s head torch.
On the final make way into helmsley, I decided to use my second wind energy that had been reserved over the course of the evening which was mostly feuled by the massive handful of peanuts I got given and some fish and chip crisps. The rest of the lads were walking at this point and I shot up the inside which got them all back into running to the final 5km into home. I wasn’t about to sprint in but I did want to use up whatever I had to see if I did have more energy afterwards.
Now the recce finished at helmsley car park but the race stops a lot futher into the town itself. So for me to still have energy thinking I could run further was a good sign. Though probably by that point I will be cursing Jon and Shirely of Hardmoors for not making the race finish sooner!
Recce pace was 8 min per km. Distance: 40km. Time: 5 hours
At the end one of the guys said that if we didn’t have the long stops and the talks we would have been around 4 and a half hours on that one. This actually filled me with confidence for my marathon out in saltburn because if I can do the same pacing and feuling which I plan on doing then I reckon I will be in for a good marathon time.
I wanted to touch in on the LED lights. Now petzl at the moment is one of the leading brands and I was going to buy one for the 55 miler. A couple of the guys on the other hand use LED lensors MH10’s. They said that on medium power they last a fair bit and if I ever do the 160 or whatever then they will last the two nights of running. They said compared to the petzl’s I could be changing the batteries often on a bigger ultra. Now that got me thinking to the bus because two ladies that were sat in front of me were saying how they had to keep changing batteries on their lights. Now I don’t have the pateince to do that nor would my hands stay warm enough at night to fiddle around with the casing. I have been looking at the led lensors and you can get the MH5 for around £40 and the MH10 is around £60.
Overall depsite the anxiety and fear of doing such a thing and pushing myself out of my confort zone. I am happy to say that I feel a lot more relieved going into the 55 miler. I didn’t know what I was expecting with the recce and I am glad I did it. I also reccomend if you are entering the hardmoors 55 at any stage to do the recce with lets run and get some valuable night running in and some much needed guidance. Alternativly if you are enetering any type of race and a company or person is doing an oraganised recce I urge you to sign up and join them. It is sucha good experience and a way of leanring the course without getting lost or a confidence boost that you will do just fine out there.
LCW FITNESS 