From Petra Bijsterveld…
Another month, another Punk Panther ultra in the diary. Today’s iteration was the Harrogate Hustle, a 36.2 mile / 2570 feet clockwise circuit of Harrogate and Knaresborough starting and finishing at the Harrogate Showground. Basically a straightforward combination of the Harrogate Ringway and the Knaresborough Round, two existing routes on paths through woods, farmer’s fields, along the river Nidd, and along some tracks as well as quite a few bits of road. 20 mile and 13 mile options were also available. Fellow Harrier James Dobbing and I ran the ultra today, I do not think there were any other Harriers there.
The weather was perfect, about 10 degrees and the sun came out as the day went on, it felt quite spring-like for the first time this year and I enjoyed looking at the snowdrops everywhere. Underfoot conditions were dry, and very different from the mudfest I had slogged through when I reccied the route a few weeks ago with a friend. The route does not have a huge amount of elevation for the distance and is very runnable, apart from some sections in the Nidd Gorge which are amply supplied with tree roots there is not much to stumble over. This set me the challenge of keeping a decent (for me) pace going, I did find it quite hard as in all the 36 miles there are only a handful of short bits where I felt I had a genuine excuse to walk, so compulsory running it was! In a way almost as tough as a road marathon.
Despite having reccied it I had in my mind (before today) that it was 35 miles (as advertised) and I was going to aim for a sub 7 hour finish time, i.e. covering 5 miles an hour including 4 checkpoint stops and any calls of nature, something I have not achieved before on an ultra. As soon as we started I realised it was just over 36 miles and that I might not achieve that time. So I adjusted my goal and simply aimed to go through the 35 mile point sub 7 hours. Just blowing my own trumpet, but looking back at my Strava I am pretty impressed with the metronomic pace I managed to maintain, I went through 5 miles on the hour, 10 miles at 2 hours, and the same all the way until I reached 35 miles in 6:58 (job done!), just a mile and a bit from the finish which I reached in 7:13.
From somewhere around mile 4 or 5 I ran all the way with a runner called Steve from Lincoln. The field had spread out quite quickly and I was running on my own, but we were thrown together after a minor navigational mishap of the party of 3 he had been running in, and somehow we stuck together without ever discussing it, we were evenly paced and enjoyed each other’s company without chatting much, and I probably had the added attraction of having the navigational upper hand as I had been able to recce the course. It definitely helped me to stick to my own target pace having someone else there to keep me accountable. We started to overtake people at a regular rate from about halfway and were not overtaken by anyone else. As in my last ultra in January, it seemed the right thing to go across the finish line together after so many miles in each other’s company.
(1 5:22:50 Anthony Gerundini)
17 6:39:54 James Dobbing
27 7:13:12 Petra Bijsterveld
66 finished