Dandies forever!
A team from Devon take on all comers in a 44-mile relay race along the coast in Cornwall
The start line was pumping, in more ways than one. Music was blaring, people were dancing to keep warm, the wind was wild, the sea a frothing, churning mass of waves, dotted seals bobbing their heads out of the foam, the waves hurling themselves against the rocks.
None of us had slept much that night, our tents rattling and shaking madly in the wind, the rain firing down like machine-gun bursts. At least my tent hadn’t come unpegged. George, our leg two runner, had had to get up in the middle of the night to stop his tent blowing away.
We were in Cornwall for the Classic Quarter relay, 44 miles along the coast from Lizard Point to Land’s End, split between four runners. We had thought that in June we might be worrying more about suncream than being blown off the cliffs, but hey, this is the British summer; you never know what you’re going to get.
All week, our first leg runner, Colum, had been fighting off a cold, and on Friday - the day before the race - he finally confirmed that he wouldn’t be able to run. Luckily, another friend, Charlie, was free and willing to join the team. Charlie was a strong runner, which was great, as we had been hoping we could be competitive near the front of the race.
The event was organised by EnduranceLife, and both Dan (on leg 4) and Colum (on leg 1) had finished in the top 3 in half marathons organised by them in the past, while I had finished in the top 10. And George was probably faster than me. So, some back-of-the-envelope calculations had led us to aim, perhaps overly optimistically, for a top three finish.
Charlie was as fast as Colum, usually, but he hadn’t done much running since the Manchester marathon in April, and he then told us on the drive down that that was partly because he had been struggling with tiredness - he had even been to the doctor about it, and his helpful GP had suggested that since he had recently turned 40, perhaps it was time for him to “reconsider his relationship with running”. In other words, that maybe he was now simply too old to run so much. Wow.
Luckily Charlie was having none of it and had instead started taking iron supplements. Well, he had started taking them that very day. Hopefully the effects would be instantaneous.
Our other problem was that Dan had been struggling with a back injury and had barely trained in four months. We were a half-crocked team, but still, maybe we could still finish in the top five? George was looking worried about our prospects. “The main goal is to have fun,” I counselled wisely. He seemed to relax a little. “Then the second goal is top five.”
