Hi, thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

Hi everyone,

 

Well if I’m writing this I must have made it back in one piece!!

After 24 degrees and bright sunshine all day in the Yorkshire Dales on Saturday, Sunday dawned and....it was overcast, cloudy and only 14 degrees ...........wahey!

A 5 minute drive from our accommodation to Catterick Garrison and we had an hour to go before the start, most of this was spent begging for safety pins to attach my race number, panic over number sorted, concentrate on the upcoming event!!

So first off a massive thank you to everyone who sponsored me for this challenge (I could have been doing a boring run around Selby if not!)

You can see how much I (we) have raised so far here...    http://www.justgiving.com/Mike-Harvey/

Now the race (or my attempt to make it to the finishing line!)....

The race went really well up to 3 miles.....then I decided that I thought I had done something really stupid taking on a challenge like this.

There seemed to be a lot more hills going up then there were coming back down...so imagine my relief at hitting 5 miles in 44 minutes!, only 5 miles  more to go.....

Then we come across the rusting hulks of tanks, soldiers covered in camouflage crawling out of the undergrowth, planes overhead, spent ammunition cartridges on the floor.. an endurance race or a war-game....errmmm??

Now that I have finally been passed by 2 Paratroopers carrying 35lb Bergen’s (rucksacks), after they started 5 minutes after the runners, the thought of getting caught by any more of these soldiers must have had the desired effect, I pushed on!

The last steep hill (the one we all thought we had heard about pre race!) according to a marshal at about 8 miles was a ‘hands on the knees’ job, a 45 degree incline with no chance of running up it, here I passed one of the Paratroopers who had passed me earlier.

This joy was to be short lived, another half mile down into a water obstacle - 2 feet of cold muddy North Yorkshire Dales water and the 4 or 5 marshals (Paratroopers) made sure you weren’t going around it, you were going through it, passed by the Paratrooper again!

Now to THE last incline, we had previously been lied to!  A 50 to 60 metre climb at an angle a lot steeper than the last, back to the pushing off my knees with my hands.  The Paratrooper must have known something he was up and away over the top before I was half way up!

Finally was this it, a lot more military staff shouting encouragement, “only 300 metres to go!”, this was the British Army, they do have a very dodgy sense of humour, was it really only300 metres??!!!

 But there it was the finish. One final effort and a 10 mile time of..................1 hour 23 minutes 27 seconds!!!

Yes, nearly 5 minutes off my previous best 10 mile time, and as I’d told Emma I’d be lucky to do it in 1 hr 45 mins she nearly wasn’t there to photograph the event!!!

I’ll be off back next year (12^th September for anyone who’s interested!), sponsorship not needed, I’m going back because in a way I enjoyed it!! (sadist!!)

Once again thanks for sponsoring me on this worthwhile cause.

Mike

 

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