Without giving too much away . . .
July 16th, 2008 by lunaman. . . I’ll be running 40 miles this September to celebrate an appropriate birthday.
The High Peak 40 race is on September 20th this year, in Buxton. This will be the furthest I’ve ever run in a day, and probably the furthest I will run until I’m 50. This madness is inspired by the great fun I had at Swaledale, running on tracks and through fields in beautiful countryside. It may hurt the quads but it’s a lot more enjoyable than running on dual carriageways in Antwerp! Next year, the plan will be to return to road marathons, and get my times down further, but for now it’s ultra madness.
I’ll be seeing a lot of local footpaths in the coming two months, as I increase my long runs up to 33 miles.
Of course, for some purists, a race isn’t officially an ultra unless it’s 50 miles or over (so twice the marathon distance). But as this route is largely off-road and has 5,000ft of climbing, I think we can be forgiven for calling it an ultra. After all, no one outside the small band of loonie runners even knows or cares how far a marathon is, so who’s counting!