Stick in the mud

 Sunday 26th January and finally 2013 sees it's first Purple Book outing. With Peru looming ever closer, everything else in life is taking a back seat but there is always room for a spot of randomness as 100 days of silence is just not an option in my book.
The 'Night Terror' would see me travel to an off road driving course, the slightly tamer version of the one used in GRIM (the event I missed back in December after dropping a fridge freezer on my leg the day before racing!). The brief was enticing as ever, an off road jaunt with copious amounts of thick mud and pools of near frozen water at night. The night terror bit was supposed to be due to people dressed up as scary people and jumping out at you along the way. Not sure if I blinked and missed that bit but apart from a few runners dressed up I was surrounded by the usual tech top and jogging shoe brigade.

I managed to stick out like a sore thumb at the start. Like a complete idiot I forget the one key piece of kit for a night run, the head torch. Before going I made sure everything was packed - spare clothes, food and drink, sat nav... All I could muster was a key ring torch which I keep on my backpack. This held me back right from the off, on the way from the car to the signing in bit I managed to find a nice deep puddle full of gunk to get the trainers ready for what was on the way! The guy on the tannoy kept reminding everyone to 'check your head torches', yours truly flinched at every mention. Being torchless helped mark me out from everyone else, along with the fact they were all wearing illuminous clothing and looking highly seasoned joggers while I was stood alone dressed in black with trousers slightly too short for me. My Kung Fu stretches looked more impressive then theirs so I wasn't too bothered. The bitter wind blowing through the start shook us all up though and wiped any smirks off all the faces. As we all made our way to the start I turned the tiny torch on and pretended to be adjusting it on my head when passing any officials. I managed to do the whole race with only one telling off from the marshals so no huge bother.

The small torch I had was about as much use as a water pistol when tackling a fire but the lack of head torch didn't really pose a problem as I made sure I was always jogging near someone else who was wearing one. The course was two laps of a mainly muddy track, some of which was ankle deep with around 4 water sections. One of these had recently broken ice in it. We were all to to go slowly into this one as it had a real risk of giving an injury. The first time in felt like getting kicked in the shins, the cold water and impact of the ice didn't half hurt! With every subsequent dip in the water my feet felt the worse for it, more frozen than before taking longer to thaw out each time. Despite the mud and freezing water it wasn't as grim as I was expecting. I thought the weather would be awful, terrain steep and punishing and of course laden with scary characters jumping out to scare the willies out of you; nope, not really and nada. You'll be hearing no complaints from me though, still a great feeling knowing I'd crossed the line in a time I was happy with knowing I had a lot more in the tank. First Purple Book event of the year and I loved it, bring on the next un :)

Runner number 532 ran 7 miles on mud in the dark and took 1 hour, 16 minutes and 9 seconds finishing 196th out of 516 finishers. That'll do me :)

Rossifer x