WW50 Recce Notes

wwreccenotes4

It’s VERY well marked and marshalled on the day, I only got lost once and that was because some spectators who were previously pointing the route had vanished! You will be fine on the race but for a recce it’s easy to end up back at the car park after 5 mins!

This is the start route. If recce’ing, don’t do this.. do route 2
This is what you’ll have at the start of the next 4 loops after race HQ. It’s harder than route 1.
You’ll be running down a stony path and the turning to the left is literally a scramble up a dirt bank, very easy to miss. Carry on up the path about 20m and you’ll meet a good path, turn right
Garmins seem to get confused here as the GPX overlaps and you miss the loop. Basically at the junction turn right both times.
The route goes left up the bank rather than following the main path.
Easy to miss these steps as you’re following a ditch and looking at your feet. Especially in November with the tree roots under the leaves. You leave the woods and go up around the field. The descent down by the powerline is probably the steepest down.
Weird sort of climbing through a ditch, it’s slippy as f**k in the wet
This is where the aid station is on the day, you get to it at the end of the loop that looks like a witches head, so first time you just get to wave at people.
Before the top of this climb on the path you’ll get to a nice natural wooded bowl, hook a left and just aim for the top.
Go round the wooden hut and back down. The path is pretty tricky to find here. It’s well marked on the day.
Tree root hell
This is some of the best running you’ll have all day. Feels like you’re bloody Mo Farah.
‘The Snake’. At the top you take a little path to the right about 3m before the main path..
My reaction here was “Really? This can’t be right? Surely?”. It is. There’s no way over the tree trunk that’s better than any other. 😀
Go up the steps to the right. About 50m up the hill turn left at the crossroads. Got this wrong every single lap.
These sodding handrails are too low.
Nearly there. You need to hook a left up the bank but there’s a fair few of them. I *think* it’s the 3rd path. If you run around the bottom of a fallen tree, that’s the right way.