I took a conscious effort to reduce my running between marathons and only did a few “short 5’s” in August. My PF seemed a lot better and so I started the Pathfinder without taping, again in the Brookes Vapor 10’s. Route described in last years report and was unchanged. Some of it was familiar, but the navigation was strictly followed, as always, as detours could be difficult to recover from. The weather on this one was hot, 26-28°C, but thanks to rain two days earlier, the fields were not being harvested, unlike last time I did this event. I arrived bang on start time, but registration and Vaseline application meant that I started a few minutes after everyone else, so had to do a bit of catch-up. In fact no-one was in sight for about 10 minutes. I then gradually cut through some of the field, even overtaking the Majors at 5miles. Not seeing them again for many hours, I was thinking my recovery from the PF was well on track and maybe I could maintain a decent speed. I was a bit disappointed and surprised then to see the Majors coming towards me near mile 22! Fortunately I was still on course, but they had missed one turn and, luckily for them, was a turn which cut out an intended loop. I don’t think it gave them much of a distance or time advantage, but my lead was gone and I could not keep their finish pace. They finished a couple of minutes ahead, which cancelled out the couple of minutes I was late at the start. No chip times or clocks being available, I took their finish times as mine. 6:04. PF seemed a lot better and no problems in the following days. Abingdon in October is looking a lot more likely (5hr cut-off) to be achieveable!
As before, the event was multi-distance, mulit-locomotion with about 60 or so running the 42k. Of those ~20 were 100 marathon club members. This is a very good event, for navigation, and very affordable at £4, and very local, being just the East of Huntingdon. Entry was still possible on the day. Highly recommended.