The Heaven and Hell Half 6/04/08
The race gets its name because it is very much up and down – very roughly, two miles gently down followed by two miles less gently up, two miles flat, two miles steeply down, two miles steeply up and three miles gently down. The two climbs are supposed to be 400ft and 700ft. But this year the “hell” bit came from the wind. It was bitterly cold, and gusting the whole time – even if it couldn’t make up its mind which way it was blowing. I ran in hat and gloves and with three layers on top, and still felt cold! Far too cold to take anything from the three water stations, and I felt I almost had to apologize to the many marshals for forcing them to stand around waiting for us. Pace judgement became a mystery – you could be going up with the wind behind you quicker than going down with the wind in your face, and go from flying down driven by the wind to virtual standstill going up. Still, it was a good scenic course on narrowish country lanes the whole way, with the hillsides looking pretty in their snowy coats.
One of the good things about our sport is that it gives you every opportunity to switch from hero to idiot in no time at all. Having run my guts out at Dunbar, I then found myself attempting to run this hard too, and shouldn’t have been surprised when I ran out of the puff at about the six mile marker. This was a shame, since the next couple of miles were steeply down, and could have been very fast. Then there was a brutal turn, from going down to going up into the wind, and miles 8-9 and 9-10 both took me over ten minutes to get the course’s highest point. The long hill stretched the field out, so that I was very much on my own for the last three miles gently down to the finish, for a 1:46 and 51st place out of 115. At least there was a happy ending – since the “heaven” bit of the race’s title could equally apply to the vast array of free home baking waiting for us in the hall: possibly the highest calorie Sunday lunch of the year!
Report Richard Dennis
Photos from roadrunpics. Many thanks to David Bauchop for these great images taken at the race - you can see loads more on the roadrunpics website here
