Just before 4pm I bump into Pattie, who's in running gear, looking for the running group. I nip up stairs to get changed, drop the room key with the kids and head out. By now we are 4 at 4pm - Richard is there and so is Edmund, looking like he knows what he is doing and he is clutching a map.
Edmund is up for a 5-6km loop, but Richard and I are up for more, as is Pattie. 100m in we come to a complete stop at the first sign-post as we do the whole what route thing all over again.
I spot Katja with her group of walkers heading home and that's the childcare handover done - your daughter has the room key, she's in the cinema! Nice one.
Meanwhile back at the sign post some kind of decision is finally made, my input being up first, so we can run down to get home. Deal done we're of at Kenny pace on zombie heart rate run. 9/10 min miles, but hey it is up! And more up. All the trails I spot are denied as we push on up. Here is a typical view of the route.
At 3km the wise Edmund chucks the map at Richard and announces he's heading back. What a great call that turned out to be.
Richard was confidently guiding us with the map. Richard was a star on the first climb, encouraging Pattie to make it to the top, which she does. Turns out that Pattie is also doing the Geneva half next Sunday and she's already done a few halves. Richard has done two marathons and I was treated to a step by step account of them both. I was fatigued just listening to them!
We go over the top and Richard studies the map and encourages us to go for it as it is all downhill from here back to Prenovel. We let rip, after the 10 min miles uphill the 8:30 mile pace on the way down feels very quick. The down feels strangely longer than the climb.
At 6 and a half miles we hit a village and it dawns on Richard we're off the map and have basically failed to loop back to Prenovel, but continued in a straight line over the hill and down into the valley on the other side. Some colourful language ensued that can't be repeated here. A glance at the map feature on my Garmin confirmed that the deal was exactly that. 1 hour out and a mountain to climb to get back. Opps. To give you an idea of what that involves, check the hill profile. We're in the bottom of the middle valley.
We now have 3 miles to climb the 1,000 feet we'd just tanked it down. Pattie was a star. She dug deep and worked the arms and tried to float up the hill.
Somewhere on the hill Pattie and Richard decide to call me Skippy the Kangaroo as I'm feeling light on my feet and bouncing up the hill. I think that was a complement!
I was trying hard to keep them running (I did not fancy walking in the woods in the dark much) and zipping between Pattie and Richard trying my best to encourage them with running stories and positive metal images.
In response to the early days Kenny chatting on the hill story, Pattie smiles at me as says, “I’ll be Kenny!”.
I told Richard there was an angel gently lifting him up the hill. He looked me in the eye and replied, “yes Niall but can you tell her to stop sticking that sword she carrying into my left calf!”
By now they've probably worked out that my kms are actually miles and I'm using the Garmin to make sure we get home on the exact same route we took out.
Finally, I get Pattie back to the centre and it is around a mile back to the last junction so I need to run hard to get back and make sure Richard takes the correct turn and no matter what I say or do he simply refuses to run anymore. He is adamant he's left his last bit of strength on the hill, miles ago.
Total distance was 13.4 and time taken was 2hours 20mins. The statistic that I loved was the total climb, 1,014 feet! On a typical Harpenden run I was lucky to get above 300, so that was some pretty serious hill running we did.
But lots of fun, lots of great stories and what a great way to get to know someone! Richard is a top bloke, even in agony and after the intro about the standard for the run, he kept smiling all the way back to the centre. That's something he can be seriously proud of!
Guess who's organising the running outing at next year's weekend away? I’m thinking I might volunteer for that job.
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