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<\/p>\nFriday night – Hayfield May Queen 3 miles. We’d arranged a meet up race to celebrate John Hunt just turning M60…. He’s well prepared having tapered down from his normal 70 miles to only 50 for last couple of weeks & in his carbon trail shoes. Front of the start line, as always, but I very briefly get ahead out of the park “come on John!”. Onto the road though & he’s quickly past “come on Tom!”. I try to keep up but he gets away in the run in to main climb. Onto the descent & the route cuts back so I can see John is a good way in front but I’ve got my own race having passed two on last steep section of climb and can hear pounding feet behind getting closer…. I hold on to finish with blown quads in 0:25:36 against John’s 0:24:23, 1-0. Homemade ginger & rhubarb birthday cake John’s reward.<\/p>\n
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Saturday – Mount Famine, 5 miles via the new route. More farm track so his carbon shoes again. Classic start to this one as you line up along a footpath with a steep muddy, bracken Elle Bank to your right but it’s up the Bank we go. Again I get ahead of John striding up the Bank but by the top the blown quads cause me to back off. On we go and onto the new section down some concrete track and I can hear carbon thwacking behind me then “encouragement”. John waits to let me go through the big cow shit puddle at bottom first, presumably so I can locate any unseen pot holes to sink into. Then he strides past but this time I cling on running when he runs, marching when he marches! This works until South Head but then the ridge home requires speed and I steadily get dropped. Still in sight at the finish though, 0:50:46 to John’s 0:49:54, 2-0. Also Joanna & Paula winning the female team prize and Keith racing.<\/p>\n
Sunday – Lantern Pike, 1.2 miles. John declares he’s already won a prize if the most stretching counts. I’ve roughly worked out the 3 Days series points and have John 2 points ahead but I’m quietly confident as once you sprint down the first field it’s so steep going up that overtaking doesn’t gain much time and my long legs may give an advantage descending through the bilberries. Away and I’m ahead of John but this time it’s Glossopdale Chris who comes past on the climb so I hang on to his ankles then push him round the trig before the plummet. It’s back the same way so I can see the gap to John as he shouts abuse! I’m redlining & skid over in mud losing a place then run into a gate latch to give John more chance, he says he was catching up at first but not enough on the final steepest section. My fear was in the final field climb back to the pub finish he’d catch back up but luckily not and he even got overtaken in a 3 way last sprint. John declares the person who overtook him was also a ‘3 Dayer’, so I might gain 4 points to level out our score…. I’m tempted by the pub. 0:15:05 v 0:15:41, 2-1.<\/p>\n
The birthday suprise for the weekend was John saying “it’s not just the 3 Hayfield races but there’s time to get down to Shutlingsloe according to Dickie” so off we go! It’s the Wildsboarclough village fete as well and a couple of heavy downpours to spice things up for another downhill start, stream crossing, very muddy bank and then the normal climb\/descent from the Roaches race up Shutlingsloe. Front of start line again and there are quite a few others doing the double (less the quadruple). I jump backwards on the shout of Go which doesn’t bode well along with a dead leg from that gate latch, John’s fast off and I get dropped straight away. Into the stream, slide up bank then look ahead to assess the gap. He’s in sight so again adopt tactic of run when John runs, march when he marches on the climb. Off the top it looks about 30 seconds lead so I’ve just got to hope he trips up! No such luck as he’s there with James at the finishing wall cheering at my last gasp effort to catch 2 other racers. 0:23:23 v 0:22:30. Top kudos goes to Amos, Jules and Gabriel though for brilliant racing!<\/p>\n
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So (obviously) also 4 x M60 wins and 3-1 in the Birthday Championships. Happy Birthday John!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Friday night – Hayfield May Queen 3 miles. We’d arranged a meet up race to celebrate John Hunt just turning M60…. He’s well prepared having tapered down from his normal 70 miles to only 50 for last couple of weeks & in his carbon trail shoes. Front of the start […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":504,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-859676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dpfr.org.uk\/wp_dpfr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dpfr.org.uk\/wp_dpfr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dpfr.org.uk\/wp_dpfr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dpfr.org.uk\/wp_dpfr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/504"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dpfr.org.uk\/wp_dpfr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=859676"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dpfr.org.uk\/wp_dpfr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":859697,"href":"https:\/\/dpfr.org.uk\/wp_dpfr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859676\/revisions\/859697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dpfr.org.uk\/wp_dpfr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=859676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dpfr.org.uk\/wp_dpfr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=859676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dpfr.org.uk\/wp_dpfr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=859676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}