Crafty Fox half, 2019

It all started so well. The start line had about a dozen fit-looking chaps ready on the front line. We started, and they all dropped back and I was leading after about 50 metres.

With Mark A and Susie P at the start

Unexpectedly ahead

This is a slightly unnerving place to be so soon in a race.  But on cue, a couple of minutes later a guy in blue cruised past me.  Great, I thought, someone to follow.

As we ran up the first hill, we started hitting gates that proved quite fiddly to open.  I made a bit of a meal of going through one, and bloke in blue was suddenly a good distance ahead.  Through some woods, out the other side and onto a long straight path at the top of a ridge.  I was comfortably in second place, with the sounds of closing gates receding behind me.

That was when it all went wrong.  I was looking closely at the next gate, trying to work out which side the latch was on, and II missed an arrow pointing left.  I went through the gate and carried on in a straight line, not worried that I couldn't see Mr Blue as a Land Rover was driving ahead of me and would have been blocking his view.  It was a steady downhill drop and I pushed on at a good pace, albeit feeling increasingly nervous that I hadn't seen any signs for a while. Eventually I reached a road and with no signs to be seen, I knew I'd gone very wrong.

Feeling very cross with myself, I tuned around and headed up the long drag to where I'd gone wrong.  By my calculations it was a 3.6km diversion with 80m of descent and then re-ascension.  I went through the gate, and joined a throng of runners on a narrow track.  I had a difficult job to maintain any kind of pace while I dodged and weaved around the runners ahead.

Over the next half an hour or so there was much leaping about on narrow tracks as I slowly moved up the field.  The runners ahead slowly thinned out, and as I took the long drag up to Bulbarrow I had to work noticeably harder to overtake others.

From Bulbarrow the views were huge and magnificent.  From here it was all downhill - over the downs, through a few rutted fields (thanks for the tip-off, Mrs S) and out on to a road from where I could see the finish.  I managed to reel in a couple more before leaving the road and pushing through the final fields to the finish line.

20 minutes behind schedule... sorry love!

The lovely Mrs S was looking very anxious, as I knew she would be - this had been a big incentive for me to push hard and prevent unnecessary worry.  For what it's worth, I finished my 26.95 km half marathon in 2:02:16 - here are my Garmin stats.

Honestly, what an eejit I'd been.