With many family connections around Morecambe Bay and spending lots of time up there over the years, I have always thought that I really should do a bay crossing sometime. Last year, whilst queuing for fish and chips in Hest Bank, I noticed an advert for the “Cross Bay Challenge” a half marathon run across the sands from Flookburgh to Hest Bank. This seemed like the perfect opportunity.
At the time, whilst I occasionally ran, I wasn’t serious about my running and was carrying a bit of extra weight, but did a few runs up to ten miles and knew I could get around the course. I knew I wouldn’t be particularly fast, but thought that I could probably do a half in an hour and forty-five minutes on the road, but across the sands might be a little slower.
Come race day, I set off at seven and a half minute mile pace, but by three miles was starting to struggle with the rutted surface and standing water and finding the running pretty exhausting. I took the first water station as an opportunity to walk a few hundred metres and the same with the second at five miles.
Crossing the main channel of the River Kent at between six and seven miles was another opportunity to walk and whilst I tried to run the second half of the race, it became a war of attrition and much of the rest of the race was spent running half a mile, followed by walking a hundred metres then running another half mile and walking a hundred metres. I staggered over the line in a few seconds under two hours.
So what happened after that? A few weeks later I ran in the Rochdale Harriers 10k and had another disappointing performance, so decided to do something about it. I joined Rochdale Harriers and began training regularly, three or four times a week at first, then as much as six days a week. By September I wasn’t struggling quite so hard to keep up with my training group and felt confident enough to enter a few races. My first 5k was in twenty-one minutes and forty-six seconds, far from spectacular, but an improvement. I also tentatively started doing a little fell running and cross country. Despite a few injury problems towards the end of the year, my times were slowly falling and the New Year seemed to bring a substantial improvement. In February, I went below twenty minutes for 5k for the first time and continued to chip off more and more time through March and April.
March was a big month race wise, a 10k with PB potential at Trafford and an opportunity to run a fast half marathon at Wilmslow, both successful, breaking forty minutes and an hour and a half respectively for the first time. Fast forwarding to July, I had run nearly fifty races since completing the Cross Bay Challenge in 2010, I was around a stone and a half lighter and felt I could put in a much better performance, but was still a little nervous.
I knew I would not get too close to my half marathon PB, but hoped to beat my 2010 time by a decent chunk. I travelled up to Hest Bank on the morning of the race with my club mate Jill, dropped the car off at my Mum’s house and walked down to the finish to get the coach to the start line. In 2010 there had been around three hundred and fifty entrants, thanks to some very positive publicity in the running press, numbers had swelled to over five hundred and fifty this year.
At twelve thirty, after a short safety briefing, we set off in hot but breezy conditions. Starting at the front of the pack, I did my usual trick and set off fast, actually leading the race for a short time. I soon dropped my pace a little and settled into a position around eighth or ninth. Out on the sand I soon felt the heat and was working quite hard as I passed through the first mile in six minutes and twenty seconds. Too fast I thought, this sand must be slowing me down by at least twenty seconds a mile, so don’t overcook it, just keep it below seven. With the slight reduction in speed, I began to feel a little better and manage to do the next five miles between six minutes forty and six minutes fifty, despite some difficult sand conditions. The first lady came past me at around four miles, I thought about giving chase, but decided I needed to run my own race.
The main crossing of the River Kent took place at between six and seven miles, this involved wading a could of hundred metres of water that was above my knee at its deepest, this would add at least a minute and a half to my mile split. As the race turned towards Morecambe the wind became more difficult, progressively getting more difficult as the race went on. The race continued across various combinations of sand and water and at ten miles I was hurting, but the last years racing had taught me that I could hurt and carry on, although my pace was obviously slowing, in part because I had a strong wind in my face. Frustratingly a couple of people passed me within the last half mile and I could do nothing to respond.
I crossed the line with an official time of one hour thirty-one minutes and twenty-eight seconds in twentieth place an improvement of twenty-eight minutes on my 2010 performance. As expected, not as fast as my half marathon personal best set on fast Cheshire roads, but much closer than the eight to fifteen minutes slower that most people reported. I took from that the feeling of being in good shape.
