Report by Nicole Brown
Race Date: 26th October 2019
I’ve had a really disappointing year of running. It was going great until July when I realised that my target race for the year, The Peak District 100, fell on the same weekend as a friend’s wedding.
I was gutted.
I’d trained really hard for the PD100, which I should have ran on August 30th. I totally lost all focus, gained 10lb in around 3 weeks (I kept eating like I was ultra-training!) and just felt really, really blue.
I made myself enter the Jedburgh 3 Peaks Ultra back in August to give me some sort of a target. I have a soft spot for the Jedburgh Ultra. It’s the first ultra I ever experienced as crew, back in 2012 and it was the first ultra over 30 miles I ever ran back in 2015. The idea was that I would train for it to get me back in the saddle.
That didn’t really happen.
So I found myself on the start line, hoping that I could still drag my sorry butt 38 miles within 10 and a half hours.
I’ll be honest, against all odds I had a brilliant day.
The weather forecast was atrocious until 2 days before the start. It was actually a perfect Autumn day. I know my kit and food choices inside out, so I was happy with what I was carrying.
I had forgotten what an absolutely beautiful route it is. You essentially run about 17 miles to the bottom of The Eildons, then you do 3 challenging peaks and run back. If you have done a 30 ultra and you feel that you’d like a race to help you step up your distance yet can’t quite yet believe you can do a 50 miler, then this is a great race to do.
It was exactly the race experience I needed to get back on it. I finished running, overtook lots of folks in the last 10 miles, had some great conversations and caught up with some ultra pals.
In the few days after the race I felt strong and could keep training. It has made me feel really positive about training again. And it has made me set some really huge targets for next year, that I feel very excited about (whispers *Hardmoors Grand Slam…*)
The race was won by Andy Bryce in 5:14:23. There were 219 finishers.
I did it in 10:27:59.
Link to full results here.
