The pinnacle of the running season for the Charfield Chuggers was this weekend and as always it lived up to expectation. So much so Tony has already signed up for next year’s event less than 24 hours after finishing. What I love about this OCR event compared to all others is the complete package!
For me this is a weekend including camping, a worthwhile distance and atmosphere.
Learning from our previous events we packed efficiently and with the addition of Tony’s trolley the distance from car to campsite was made easier.
Camp Charfield Chuggers. I think a flag and T-Shirts are needed for next year!
Pre-race evening carb meal!
Pre-race team picture
The morning of the race arrived and as always we allowed just over an hour to get changed and have some porridge oats! We were part of wave 6 and started the race at 9.15. The first few miles passed quickly with much of the early miles made up of simple up and under obstacles and trail running.
I think it’s fair to say as we become more experienced runners over the last few years I would say for probably the first time ever we didn’t let the early race excitement get to us and we stuck to a sensible running speed throughout and this paid dividends towards the end of the race with hardly anyone overtaking us in the finale miles and us overtaking many teams.
The finishing line slide.
Notable events include…
- Dave breaking his leg after 14 miles, then making it to 19 miles and blaming me for his bad leg despite him crashing in to me. Then after a hospital visit getting told its actually a bruise.
- Tony was able to jump 20ft into water, climb high rise nets and swim through swamp water but put a fireman’s pole in front of him and takes some persuasion. Fortunately, Dave was able to help motivate but I can’t write what he was saying here.
- I managed to get my foot caught halfway up a net and needing someone to unhook my leg while balancing on the other one.
- Dave having a good laugh about Ben failing into the swap water so much so he then fell face first into the same swamp.
- Tony adding the gas element to the underground tunnels.
- The final thing I can remember is Dave sprinting past me at 15 miles only for him to tire and me slowly catch and overtake him 30 seconds later.