So only a week later after the last one and the blood blister on my toe, 6 other blisters and 2 lost toenails were still a little raw (both literally and psychologically!) We had assessed the race profile and I thought I’d didn’t look as bad as the previous week except Ancel informed me the scales were completely different with a huge peak to 250m and overall assent of 420m. I had finished the week before with a few minutes to spare between me and the next girl so I was hoping for a repeat of last week.

I get nervy, so nervey before any event regardless of distance, type, style, and any other variable I always feel sick, full of adrenaline and need to wee a million times just in case I might need to wee on an event – which did happen once I think it was New York half marathon but I broke into a random portaloo, anyway different story – so anyways, the long and short of this paragraph is….I missed the start!

So I sprinted after the stragglers for the long course (only 13km this week) and tried to get up infront before we got to any single track which luckily there was very little of. The first few kms flew by and I had the race profile in my head and knew how many little hills before the big hill and the split of short to long was at about 5km mark. Well the steep hill was mighty steep and just went on and on, the ground was nice though the like gravelly bush not like the sand of the previous week but wide open space to spread out and power up. I’m not going to lie, hands up I walked a bit, but this was where I overtook people because – as based on ‘born to run’ by Christopher McDougall* – the energy saved walking up the hills is far greater than the time lost walking not running, if you think about it walking is far more efficient on our bodies which when out exercising we want to be inefficient to burn more calories and work our bodies harder but in an event it’s all about efficiency to ensure we keep going that long. Also when you run there is so much up and down and less propulsion on a hill that the energy goes in the wrong direction, striding out with long power walk strides gets you much further! My lil tip anyway – but read the book!

So – everything that goes up must come down, eh! Law of gravity or Newtons Law of Physics (or is that the one about action and reaction, and opposite and opposing forces, or maybe the one about energy cannot be created or destroyed but merely moved from one state to another) anyways I think we have established that (a) Physics was never my strong point and (b) my brain is full of random half facts! But in conclusion, on reaching the top of the hill I had to so down. I had been prewarned about how steep the hill was on the way down and I had my lovely innov-8 212s on I knew I would be steady and I could see Ancel tearing it down the hill at a rate of knots – one 6foot leg after the other – well I had to trust in him lean forward and stride out in the same manner minus the 6ft legs! My goodness it was scary but the weirdest thing was that on the down hills I got a really bad stitch – maybe too much jiggling on the impact of the downhills or maybe i wasn’t breathing in the same way I normally do but actually ever uphill was a little recovery to manage my breathing again! Very strange and disconcerting – it makes me panic when I get a stitch which is the worst thing to do since then your breathing becomes even more sporadic which won’t help the stitch go away.

On looking at my watch I worked out it much be fairly near the end and then