NOVEMBER 2023 Monthly Running Challenge

We started in the middle of the night. The weather was horrible. It was the most amazing, but toughest, thing I've ever done. I never want to do it again, but I want to do it again. I had a really stupid fall just over 2 hours in. You're so busy not falling, or getting blown, off the side of a muddy mountain in the dark and then you're on a seemingly easy path and you slip and land on your backside. Typical. The fall itself wasn't an issue but my calf cramped up and I spent 5 minutes sitting on a rock in the middle of the path, having to shout out to people coming up behind so they didn't run me over LOL. Everyone was like "let me help you up" and I was going "no, no, I'm fine I just can't get up right now". Once I did get up, my calf still didn't want to play and it took around an hour for me to be able to start running much, luckily that was the stretch that was mostly tiny little goat tracks I wouldn't have wanted to go fast on anyway.
I had gone out way too far forward in the pack and too fast for the first few km, so at that point, the fast runners had left me behind but I was still quite a way ahead of the back of the pack, and I was pretty much all alone in the woods in the dark in a storm, feeling sorry for myself and wondering what the hell I was doing there instead of tucked up in bed. Then I heard something. A violin. Playing the Lord of the Rings theme. It was 3.45am. I know because my first thought was I was hallucinating but it seemed unlikely after so little time, so I looked at my watch to check the time. I was in the middle of nowhere, it was the middle of the night, and someone was playing that on a violin. I'm a huge LOTR fan, btw. Such a special moment.
The photo isn't mine, but someone posted it on facebook:

As you can imagine, that brought me back to life and I was almost at the climb up to a village so would have been walking anyway. For context, this ultra is a 132km loop around a beautiful valley that is particularly stunning at this time of year because it is full of chestnut trees and the autumn colours are amazing. Not that I saw much daylight, only the last hour or so of my long run. The route goes through all 15 villages in the valley, and basically you go down to the river, up to a village, back down to the river, up to the next village, and rinse and repeat over and over and over again. My part had the most distance between villages, it was 20km to the first, then there was another 5km later, and then nothing again for 15km during which we went over the highest mountain in the area. Dawn broke as I was on my way up that, but I didn't get to see a beautiful sunrise because it was cloudy and foggy and windy and drizzling and yucky in general. I was, however, way too hot because I'm used to running in shorts but someone persuaded me I needed long tights. Note to self: trust your instincts and stop listening to other people. Coming down the other side was frightening because it was steep and slippery and I don't do well on technical descents at the best of times, let alone when I've been out there all night and my legs are dead. My knees just didn't want to bend anymore, so I probably lost some time there. Still, I finished just under 8 hours which was an hour less than I had thought it would take me.

'Dawn' on the final climb:

Almost there!:




Then I had a 2-hour journey back home (winding mountain roads, bad weather, ugh), and by the time I'd eaten and showered it was noon. Managed to sleep for around 4 hours, more food, then because the tracking systems weren't working I decided to get myself to where I needed to be to meet the other 2 team members for the last stretch, which was 45 minutes away. Again, thick fog, darkness, rain, winding roads. I think actually the car journeys were the worst part of the whole weekend, even the team drama.
The other 2 members are great friends but had been brushing me off all summer, I have no idea why apart from the fact that I'm older than they are. Luckily, I'm very friendly with all 3 members of another team, and had trained with them.
After sitting around for hours (luckily there was a café open just by the checkpoint) my friends arrived to start their final stretch, and as we discovered when the girl in my team running phoned her friend, she was only about 10 minutes behind, so they decided to wait for us so all 6 of us could stick together. Safety in numbers and all that. Well, off we set and the other 2 in my team just raced off ahead, leaving me behind. The rules clearly state that those final 10km must be done as a team. I hope they wouldn't have done that if my friends hadn't been there with me, but I'm not sure. We didn't see them again until we reached the home run, and they were standing on the corner waiting because they couldn't cross the finish line without me. I was so mad, I told my friends to go ahead and held back a bit so they would finish first. There was almost an argument with my team about that the next day, until I pointed out that we should have been disqualified because they went through the checkpoints without me! We finished in 24 hours 33 minutes as the 7th female team (of 10) with my friends 6th about 30 seconds ahead of us.

My official team coming in (yeah, me in the middle, nobody offered me a matching jacket):


With my friends a couple of minutes later:


I am hugely proud of myself and my friends for surviving and doing as well as we did. The teams all finished, but I heard that there was a 50% DNF rate for the individual ultra as people decided to quit at sunset rather than spend a 2nd night out in those conditions. Though mild compared to a lot of places, this is southern Spain and we're really not used to that kind of weather.
I was pretty confident that I could do it but the weather made it more worrying beforehand and tougher during, and I was super happy with my time.
At first, I was very upset about the team thing, especially when the other 2 started posting photos of just the two of them on social media and writing long thank-you speeches to their partners and each other and our club for all the support they claim they have had (none of which came my way). I'm more or less over that now, though still cross about the lack of team spirit or even common sense (so dangerous to leave someone behind) but am changing to another club anyway so will just put it behind me.