Saturday 3 February 2018

Pilgrims Challenge - Day 1 - 03/02/18 - 06:29:10

The Pilgrims Challenge is 66 miles in 2 days.  I've decided to use this race as a warm up for JOGLE:  test my equipment, see how I cope with a back-to-back run and to work on JOGLE pace - jog for 3 miles at 10 min/mile and walk one mile at 15 min/mile and then repeat.  I'm not planning on doing a PB for this distance as it's more of a training session.  Having said that the last time I did the Pilgrims Challenge was in 05/02/11 (first completed Ultra-Marathon) but I only did the first day in a time of 06:59:00.

Didn't get too much sleep and arrive on race at 07:00.  There are three starts - the walkers start at 08:00, the main group (me) start at 09:00 and the fast runners (sub 5 hours) start at 10:00.

The route is part of the NDW so having done the NDW 50 and twice done the NDW100, plus having downloaded the route onto my Garmin I should be familiar with the route.

The race starts at Sandy nr. Farnham and ends up at Redhill.

By mile 5 I power walk at 14 min/mile whilst drinking a energy drink.  Come mile 9 I power walk again at just under 15 min/mile before heading for the first checkpoint (01:34:17) where on the menu are pretzels, crisps, bananas, pieces of cake and sweets.  Mile 12 comes a hill (230 ft) so is a mixture of walking and jogging as the pace is just over 11 min/mile. 

Mile 13 is power walking again at 15 min/mile before reaching checkpoint 2 (split time 01:58:14 and total time 03:32:31) at mile 17.  Mile 21 is power walking again but the pace drops to just under 17 min/mile.  Mile 24 is Box Hill (518 ft) so no chance of jogging up this hill but power walking means it's just under 15 min/mile pace before reaching checkpoint 3 (split time 01:25:41 and total time 04:58:12).  I'm meant to be power walking for the next mile but I decide to give this a miss and spend half the time jogging and half the time walking up a hill and this means that mile 25 is just over 12 min/mile.  Mile 28 is meant to be power walking and I give this a miss and then comes mile 29 and the final checkpoint 4 (split time 01:03:55 and total time 06:02:07) at 284 ft so decide to power walk this hill at just over 15 min/mile.  Heading into Redhill for the last few miles is downhill and my quickest min/mile is the last mile at just under 8 minutes and I finish in a time of 06:29:10.  This is in line for what I planned for JOGLE as if JOGLE was the same distance this would take me 06:10 jogging and walking plus 5 minutes at each checkpoint (4).   

At the end of day 1 I finish 93rd of 244, 32nd out of 151 for the over 40's and 83rd out of 183 of all men.

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