Duddon - DNF

My third ever DNF, and all have been longs. I’m still not sure quite what went wrong but I felt more awful than normal from soon after the start. With hindsight I felt pretty flat and tired on the Friday night. We’d gone over straight after work to the Duddon to the Rucksack Club hut, High Moss, as some friends of ours were celebrating their recent marriage there for the weekend. I ate well, and kept hydrated and had an early night, and possible another sign, I slept like a log. Normally before long races I sleep fitfully as I have some pre-race nerves, but I didn’t on the Friday night.

I had a reasonable warm-up but considering it was a long race on a hot day I didn’t bust a gut, and then suddenly we were off. The first climb up past Wallowbarrow was horrible, but I’ve never enjoyed it, but I normally pick up on the run to Grassguards. This time, nothing, I just felt terrible. Still I kept on, but struggled after Grassguards too, and started going properly backwards on the steep ascent up Harter Fell. By the summit, I’d pretty much made my decision to bail at Hard Knott, but gave myself one last chance to see if I could run off the lethargy on the descent. Unfortunately I couldn’t even run downhill, so bad did everything feel. My two sore ankles were playing on my mind, as was the up and coming Three Peaks Yacht Race, so that was that.

Some friends who were racing had partners at Hard Knott Pass, and Geoff and Mandy gave me a lift down to Cockley Beck, and then after a short walk I hitched a lift with a guy who already had another DNFer Dan Duxbury from Ambleside. And so it was that I DNF’d at Duddon.

I did manage to have some fun over the weekend though with a good gathering on Saturday to celebrate Rae and Helen’s marriage. Lots of food including copious amounts of cake and other pudding goodies! We had originally planned to go climbing on Sunday but the weather broke slightly and I didn’t have any concentration so we popped back over the hill to home and went out in the afternoon on our road bikes for a steady 30 miles. I still felt pretty flat on the bike, like I had no oomph!