Edale Skyline 2012

In short: Very painful - collapsed over the line with cramp. Really enjoyed this great event though. In full: I only found out I was in this two and a half weeks before the event so I had to do a slight Martin Yelling's Patented Inverse Taper (MYPIT) so I was never going to do well. I also went abit too hard on an eight mile run on the Friday before the event on Sunday. During the race the mistakes were that I took the first descent too fast and I should have taken it easier on the power hiking ascents. With all of this put together I had a bad cramp at around 12 miles which one of the marshals saw. He tried to talk me into dropping which I told him was just the encouragement I needed. I ate some food plus some gel and took some water which made me feel quite sick and it didn't immediately help. At the top of Jacob's Ladder someone had lugged 10 litres of water up which I was very grateful for but shortly after, at around 13 -14 miles on the ascent upto Pym's chair, I had to stop and wait for more cramp to pass. At this point I decided to drop but after thinking I realised that it would be easier and quicker to carry on the race course and drop down Grindslow Knoll rather then exiting down Jacob'd Ladder. I started to feel a bit better although I walked quite a lot of what should have been runable paths. At Grindslow Knoll I was very close to escaping down the Knoll straight to Edale but it was only three miles left and I felt quite a lot better so I decided to continue. I'm glad I did because I was able to start running more and the cramps had pretty much passed. I caught up with a lady who was in a bad way with cramp and we shared the rest of my gels before absolutely caning the last descent. On finishing I downed some water, tried to sit down, and collapsed in agony with cramp in my quads, ham, and calfs. Oh well, 4:4:59 and the fasted finisher wearing vibram five fingers.