Chichester Challenge 42km

Short catch up on my last race, the Chichester Challnge 42km (see, I dont always run Maras and Ultras!!).
It had rained so much over the previous few weeks, that they had to adjust the course as some sections resembled small ponds rather than wooded trails, which menat the start was delayed. Went off pretty strongly and apart from having wet feet within 200yds first few miles went ok, I was in a small bunch of 5 including a runner called Matthew (who I ran the rest of the way with) 4 guys ahead moving away pretty strongly. Couple of guys were then coming back towards me thinking they had missed a turn or sign, I checked the map and was pretty confident we needed to keep going and would come to a road, this thankfully turned out to be the case, and the two guys went away again. Going was pretty boggy and muddy in a lot of places and it was raining fairly hard which made going a fair bit harder than 2010 when I last ran in this event.
Matthew and I also decided that as this more a training run than a flat out race we would run all of the inclines no mater how muddy or boggy, which was pretty hard going on the couple of BIG hills that come very close together, but good fun.
At mile 18 or 19 we came out of the woods and one of the 4 lead guys was standing at the 4way junction and there was no sign and the map was slightly unclear (we later found out the sign had fallen down into the long grass). We looked at the map and decided to go down and right, we should have gone straight (oops). Long story short, we ran all the way down into the gulley of the hill, realised our mistake when we could see CP2 instead of CP4. We told CP2 who, as we would need to run a harder route to pick up CP4 signed our CP cards (thanks guys). We made our way across to CP4, which menat a long 1mile uphill road and lost one of the group, made our way along the correct route and thought we would have lost a load of time so we were surprised when we came into the finish to find we had come 7th and 8th!!
All in all a good event, which is through some lovely estates, some of which are only open to the public for the day of the event, and great value by the Rotary Club. I will probably go back again next year.

Happy Running,