On Saturday 19 October, Adam Chamberlin and Lucy Jay undertook this epic race along the Dorset coast. In her own words, this is what Lucy had to say about the race:
Adam and I started the long drive to Dorset at 9am Friday knowing it will take time in the trusty camper. Thankfully the weather was dry and sunny all the way there.
The campsite was completely saturated given their recent rain fall so we chose firm ground under a tree to give us a fighting chance of leaving, knowing there was more rain to come. We set up and cooked a filling pasta dinner with cashews to give us plenty of energy. The rain started at 6pm so we got our heads down early with a 4am start. The monsoon started around 1 and didn’t let up till 6am. Adam headed off at 5am to start his 101km trek and I got some more sleep.
The weather was clear by the time I got up, I headed to the arena where it was a predicted wet sponge to have my kit check and collect my tracker. Before I knew it we were off. The first “puddle” was 3km in and when I say puddle I mean a lengthy flooded footpath that passed as a river shin deep. There were regular puddles along the whole course from start to finish. Adam had to wade through a burst river waist deep at one point.
The course was very beautiful but very challenging due to the amount of rain which caused many footpaths to be treacherously slippy and unable to run on most of them. We were both lucky to not fall.
Due to the conditions, I found it energy sapping and when I got to check point 40k I was told I was 7 minutes off cutoff and my race was finished. After hanging around and eating they said we could continue if we wished. I talked a girl, who had also missed the cut off, into walking the remainder with me which we did. I finished the 54km Jurrasic an hour after cut off. I was so drained I forget to get a finisher photo. This was a beautiful and challenging course. I would recommend it to anyone but it’s very difficult to train for here in Suffolk. The event organisers “Maverick” are great and we’ve completed a few of their events and we highly recommend them.
Adam completed in a time of 15hrs and 4 minutes and Lucy in 10 hours. A huge well done to both of them for completing this monumental distance.
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