Pedders Way Ultra

Saturday 22nd January saw club member Manuel Nicolaus take on Pedders Way ultra (48 miles). Here is his race report ;

It is Saturday the 22nd January 2022. The air outside is frozen and the grass is white with frost. I got up at 5:30 to have a cup of tea and a bowl of porridge. The weather forecast predicts a cool but sunny day so I put on 2 thin long sleeve layers and my arm warmers. Leg wise, I went for normal running shorts and some long leg warmers. Shoe wise I went for the Inov8 Gfly 300. I arrived at the race start at Knettishall Heath Nature Reserve near Thetford around 7:15am.
There, I collected my race number and tracker very quickly from the lovely volunteers, dropped off my drop bag and felt ok about it all. The race briefing from the race director was to the point and highlighted all the main points covered in the pre-race document. While walking to the start, it was nice saying hi to Rosie and Phil . Phil and I run most of the way together to the 27mile checkpoint. The first 20 miles just flew by. Having some company and a chat always helps though. At this point, I realised that it took me only 3.5hours to get to this point and the idea came to my mind to run the first 26miles under 5hours. Having this little personal race within the race gave me something to get my teeth stuck into. I pushed along quite swiftly. Shortly before reaching the 26miles, Phil had also caught up with me again and we both went for it. Coincidentally, the 26miles point, was also the distance to the Castle Acre priory and made for a lovely picture. A mile later, and we reached the checkpoint. I had some lovely soup and some babyfood I had in my drop bag. I also filled up my water bottles again. I think we were in and out of the CP in 5min. Shortly after Phil and I parted ways as I wanted to take it easy from this point onwards to work on my walking instead of running speed. I tried to stay under 9min per km to the end. The second part was quite straight forward and stayed closely with a lady called Tracey who finished the race with me. It was good having Tracey nearby as she helped me navigate the trail in the dark where I was unsure which way to go. We both finished in 10hours and 26min. Overall the trail was nice and easy to follow. The weather couldn’t have been better for January. Everything looked so nice in the morning frost. The frost also kept the soil hard at the beginning, and only some sections were muddy during the day. Overall, a lovely day out that finished with some yummy 😋 beans on toast 😀.

Well done Manuel Nicolaus #teamlrr