Our two intrepid runners John "three races a day" Boothman and Lucas "ironman" Payne decided together to take on this challenge which is a 55 mile race, including 6,561 ft of ascent. John was determined not to go off too fast but, as can easily happen in a race, he got swept along with the crowd and completed the first nine miles to CP1 at an average pace of 5.81 mph. This was much faster than his target pace of 5 mph. Lucas went off even faster, finishing the first leg at over 6 mph. By CP2, there was a 12 minute gap between our runners and this is very much how it was throughout the rest of the race. Sometimes, John would close the gap and then Lucas would extend it again. On the tops, all the runners were exposed to prolonged periods of extreme weather. The wind would bring you to a standstill and your supply of water completely froze up. The last big climb was Roseberry Topping, by which time, the gap was down to eight minutes, but John's water had frozen up again and he entered a real bad spell. He forced some food down and drove himself on finishing quite strongly. In the meantime Lucas pushed on finishing in 11h 14 m 54 seconds a full 22 minutes ahead of John. Given that they were up against specialist runners and the conditions on the tops were horrendous, this was a remarkable performance from both of them.
27 Lucas Payne 11:14:54 (31st overall)
34 John Boothman 11:37:39 (40th overall)
343 started. 164 finished. 179 retired.