Race report: Hardwolds 40

Another weekend and another race to tick off for the year!

Last weekend I toed the line for the hardwolds 40 ran by Hardmoors and once again enjoyed a great event. I was planning on doing the 40 in 2025 but brought it forwards incase I couldn’t afford it with my newly bought house and impending mortgate payments. I must admit training for this after the 55 miler was hard. I think I burn’t myself out with running, trying to do long runs and working. I gave myself a different approach to my training so I wouldn’t feel crap. With moving a house as well and packing all my live belongings is was quite difficult to even maintain a training schedule so to say the least, I was not that well prepared for this.

Training looked like this for me:

• Focus on riding the bike more
• Keep a sort of steady run schedule
• make sure strength training is kept up with

It was weird to say this actually worked in a weird way. I had changed my gym during this time and tried weighted runs with a pack on. Not sure how well it helped but my legs have definitly felt stronger and even in that race I was keeping good pace for someone who had not trained that much. Next ultra I do though I am keeping with the same format but definitly running more, my quads hurt like crazy and the route had a fair amount of road in it. I don’t mind a bit of road but that was a bit too much especially with trail trainers on! It was one of those races where people where debating if trail shoes were the way to go or road traininers for more cushion. My altra mont blancs though still had a fair amount of cushioning in them despite going through the rinmger on the 55 miler. I am quite happy to say that I will be keeping with Altra mont blancs as my ultra shoe.

I went into this ultra with no salt tablets. Not sure how much that played a big factor, but on the last half of the race, my calfs kept going out from underneath me, and the weird pulsing sensation nearly crippled them. Funny enough, this was only on the road sections and not the trail bits, which was a bit strange. I would like to find out why though, but that is a different issue for a different day. Nutrition and hydration wise, I took a way different approach to this than the 55, and I think it wildly helped in my success to push harder in this one. I took on board from the last one to eat around every 6km and from talking with others, having one flask of electrolytes and one flask of pure water. I actually felt quite good surprisingly, and my hands didn’t swell up like they usually do. I do think I may have been taking on too much with the bottles, and I was trying to take on more by draining by bottles before each checkpoint. I love my mountain feul and wish they would do a tablet form for in between drop bag stations for easy grabs. I didn’t try this out this time round as I sorted my bags out at 11pm again and was too knackered to even think about it. Plus, all my shite was in boxes, and trying to find a mountain of running kit in a load of packaged up boxes was difficult, to say the least. Next time I race, I am going to try the electrolyte tablets from high five in between checkpoints and make up little bags of mountain feul for the drop bag check points. Again due to ill preperation I had to carry my entire pouch of mountain feul on my back for to fill up on the drop bag points.

In replacement of the salt tablets I heavily relied on peanuts to get my salt levels up. I was hamming those things in like my life depended on it at any given aid station with them available and tried not to choke on them.

I would like to thank Anthony who got me in on the sub 11. The aim was 10 hours in that heat I was glad to make it in just under 11. Tim who gave me painkillers when the road got too much for me and my calfs decided to just give up on me. Also to Graham who got me through the pathfinder 25 but had to DNF at the first big check point on the 40 which I was gutted for.

Overall good experience and with everything I learned on the 55 miler coming together for the 40, I think I have now found my magic formula. I look forward to the next race even though I am doing a 25 mile challenge with the LDWA for the next one. The aim is to get exploring new areas and hopefully make my way to racing up in the lake district. I would love to do the lakeland 50 but I am a far way off that for now and need to get some serious training in for the fells. May even try the 3 peaks marathon that goes on in the dales if the good fourtune keeps up with me.

Think this was as I was getting to the first on the road checkpoint before the big one

Results: 77/161 19th overall Female 15th in age category