Last week-end, I was honoured to serve as "race director" on the Hardmoors 110, since Jon has decided not only to organise a series of 4 races, but also to run some of them...

I was expecting this task to consist mainly in driving along the course, getting a few phone calls, making sure that the checkpoints were ready for the first runners, and that any runner pulling out would be picked up. However, given the shortage of available marshalls, this proved a bit more demanding: I was due to marshal at White Horse on Friday from 18:00 to 19:00, in Kildale from midnight to 5:00 on Saturday, then rush to Sandsend to open a checkpoint at 6:00 and leave it to David at 10:00 to finally man the finish checkpoint at Filey from 13:00, until 5:00 on Sunday.

White Horse
The new race date in June means much more daylight, and the start was given in a relatively hot and sunny weather. We then drove to White Horse to man the first checkpoint. Unfortunately that meant seeing friend Mark B. pulling out of the race early after having pulled a muscle.

Kildale
After a quick stoppover at Osmotherley where John V. was marshalling, we went to setup the checkpoint in Kildale village hall at 10pm. It was rather difficult to run operations from Kildale, due to the sparse mobile phone coverage. From the broken phone conversations slowly emerged that Ann the sweeper had been lost in the moors. This started to worry me, although I knew she was very experienced and well equipped. I was also mentally getting ready to sweep myself if any one was missing. First relief came with the last runners arriving at Kildale an hour ahead of the cut-off time. As we left the checkpoint and managed to get a few phone calls through, Ann had been recovered by Pat, and all the runners were reported at the next checkpoint, Roseberry Topping. But it's only at 10am, with the Saltburn checkpoint closing with all runners in, that I regained my peace of mind. Pat would sweep the second half of the course from there on. No sleep that night.

Sandsend
A few hours of marshalling on a coastal car park at Sandsend show little happening, if talking to fishermen, until Greg arrived. Greg was part of a support crew and had already recovered two runners who had pulled out in his van. But this time he'd recovered a dog, which he believed belonged to another support crew! Since we did not know where this crew was at the time, there was not much we could do, and Greg kept the dog in his van.

Filey
We finally got to Filey to open the hall hosting the finish checkpoint. As I was trying to get a bit of sleep before a long night, the door slammed open. It was Neil Ridsdale, the first runner, breaking his own race record in 20:58. He actually believed he was chased by Scott Bradley who had been leading a significant length of the race, when in fact Scott had pulled out 11 miles earlier. Runners arrived little by little, with Jon in 4th place. A bit later, we managed to locate the crew missing its dog and after exchanging a few phone numbers via the marshalls, the dog was finally given back to its rightful owners :) .
Saturday afternoon was depressing at times, receiving runner pull-out calls one after another. The weather started to worsen, with a cold and mind-sapping mist building up. At midnight, with four runners still on their way, I decided to get a bit of sleep, as I needed to drive the next day and Shirley kindly offered to replace me. 36 hours and 50 phone calls later, 12 runners had finished the race out of 26 starters.

Well done to all of you, starters, finishers, crews, and marshalls who made this race alive! I wish everyone a prompt and full recovery, and see you on the 60 in September!

Ultra logistics