Spitfire Scramble 2019

15 July 2019 - By Marc Underdown

Its not I start writing posts at 05:30 but then I don’t normally go to bed at 17:30 the night before!

Our weekend started on Friday lunchtime setting up our base area and tents. We managed to get a good spot next to where the race route comes through the campsite around 3.6 miles in to the lap. Four team members stayed overnight and took part in the what is becoming the traditional pre race drinking session!

By Saturday morning everyone else arrived as the excitement and trepidation grew. If one thing is certain the 24 hour period is a long time for a running race.

Stuart Darney led off the Jog for Jasper team (Male 3-5 cat), Terry Alabaster for the Run of the Mills team (Male 6-8 cat), and myself for the Walls are Down (Mixed pair cat). I think we all ran quicker than we were supposed to!

Laps were churned out as the afternoon unfolded. Following Terry, Danny Connor, Mat Pearsons, Alex Stuckey, Stuart Mills, Steve Watson, and Tony Wallen all took  their turns. Scott and Sean did the same for the Jog for Jasper team, and Brigid naturally followed me!

Larger teams naturally did single laps throughout the race. The Darney’s all did at least one double and one triple lap sequence. Brigid and I unsurprisingly did mostly multiple laps through the first 12 hours.

By midnight, it is obviously dark and by now the two key difficulties of such an event show themselves. How will sleep deprivation affect you, and have you got your nutrition strategy right to fuel the later runs? Previous experience suggests the latter is a very fine balance. Obviously this had the biggest impact on Brigid and I and fair to say we had mixed experiences.

This is where it is important to be able to adjust your plan and find a way forward. As dawn broke everything became a bit easier as our body clocks naturally adjusted to daylight. Everyone did some amazing running through the second 12 hour period. Of course we got slower -that’s supposed to happen – but that doesn’t mean the effort was any less.

Despite eight of the twelve runners being new to a 24 hour race format, our teams did brilliantly. The Run of the Mills team only had 7 runners and were competing against eight man teams so to finish 4th (30 laps) is amazing. Likewise Jog for Jasper were at an even bigger numerical disadvantage with only three of them compared to teams five, and 6th place (26 laps) is an incredible result. Brigid and I?- we only went and won (25 laps)!

Big thanks to all the friends and family members who came to visit us, your support was very welcome and allowed those who had forgotten lots of things to have them brought up!

Well done to all the team members who supported each other. Time to catch up on sleep, rest aching muscles and look back on a great 24 hours. I’ll hopefully add the individual lap times below later.