Druid Challenge - Day 2

I didn't so much wake up Saturday morning. To have woken up would have required that I had at first been asleep. I found it impossible to sleep in a school sports hall with about 100 other people and with light coming through the slit window of the one door out to the corridor. The corridor light stayed on all night, and every 5 minutes it seemed that someone had to get up and go to the loo.  Whenever they did even more light would flood into the sports hall.  Some people tried to close the door quietly behind them, but some simply allowed it to slam shut after them. The constant movement back and forth across the hall meant sleep was nigh on impossible.

When I made a move to get out of my sleeping bag in the morning my legs made it very clear that they were not to willing to spend another day running. I ached. However, I'd been in this situation before and knew that once I was mobile my legs would loosen up. So I shuffled off to the dining room for breakfast.  I filled my belly with porridge and toast ready for the day ahead.

We had 27 miles ahead of us on day 2.  The walkers were off at 7am, and the first group of runners at 8am. The next hour really seemed to drag whilst the rest of us waited for our start at 9am. When it was time for us to be on our way my legs decided to complain some more. They seemed to be telling me that there wasn't a hope in hell of them making it through another long day of running. It probably took about 3 miles before my legs started to feel just about ok. By about 6 miles I felt in pretty good shape and was optimistic about maintaining a reasonably good pace for the remaining 21 miles.

The start of day 2. I'm wearing the yellow T-shirt and red cap.
No.91 was the overall winner.

Day 2 could be broken down into 4 sections. The first 11 miles were the most undulating and consisted of about 4 or 5 short steep hills. We then had a 7 mile flat section alongside the Thames. From mile 18 to mile 23 we went up and over one big hill, with a total climb of about 140m.  The final 4 miles was a long steady slog on a slight incline to the finish.

Once again, I managed to go on a slight detour at about the halfway point and added another unnecessary 1.5 miles on to my day. My excursion set me back several places and also left me feeling a little demoralised, especially as once I had back tracked and had seen the Ridgeway sign that I had missed I couldn't believe that I hadn't seen it. It was so blatant. By the time I reached the big hill after the Thames my legs had pretty much packed in once again. Running uphill proved impossible, so I was reduced to walking all but the slightest of inclines. I did manage to pass a few runners on the last section, which made me feel slightly better about my overall performance.  I finished the day in 26th place in a time of 4 hours 44 minutes.

Thankfully, the weather was a little kinder to us on the second day. We had some rain, but it was mostly just the odd isolated shower. The ground conditions were also a little better, but there was still a fair amount of mud about, so we all pretty much finished the day looking filthy.

We were transported by minibus from the finish to Wantage Leisure Centre, where we would spend the night. The hardest part of the day was trying to extract myself from the minibus, as my muscles had completely seized up on the 25 minute journey and I was welded to the seat. I wasn't the only one in this predicament. Once out of the minibus we all limped towards the leisure centre to collect our bags. Clearly we must have looked like a sorry state of human beings, muddied and walking like the living dead. A young girl was overheard saying, "mummy, why are there a lot of tramps in the sports hall."

Our accommodation at Wantage Leisure Centre