Day 11 - Hay on Wye to Bishops Castle

Day 3 of the week and another big day. 36 miles & 1,400m of climbing.

At the start of the day I was struggling to get my head around how I was going to get through the next 4 days of high mileage. However, once we started running my body accepted it needed to run again & kicked into life. The route out of Hay on Wye was reassuringly familiar. I paired up with Sarah and we settled into a good rhythm, trying to move efficiently on the varying terrain.

A fair amount of the morning was spent on roads, which meant another day of playing "Road user top trumps". We've learnt that some drivers of premium brand cars think they own the road and this trumps the need to give space to pedestrians. We've learnt to trump that by upgrading ourselves from regular pedestrians to ultra running road users. For me this involves wearing my functional not fashionable, hi-viz t-shirt & as cars approach too closely, flicking out my running poles to form a v shape. This generally forces cars much wider, as the motorists realize my carbon fiber, steel tipped running poles are going to win against the side panel of their shinny BMW. This strategy doesn't work for lorys or tractors.

Sarah & I made decent progress in the morning and ended up sticking together right through the day. The afternoon brought some nice hill running around Knighton, first on the Welsh side of the border and then into Shropshire.

All in, a good day. 3 more tough days to go this week - 41 miles tomorrow. If I can get through these three days, then the prize is smaller milage next week!😎