Now everyone knows more about Uzbekistan than they probably wanted too, its time to talk about the race! We all assembled on the start line at 6:45am for the final briefing and Uzbekistan National Anthem, and at 7:00am the first Global Limits ‘Uzbekistan – In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great’ race started!
Stage One was 32km with 1790m of climb and 900m of descent according to the roadbook. I tried not to start too far forward but ended up towards the front anyway as the race soon settled down. I was trying not to go too mad at the start but after a few hundred metres Peter came trotting past me. I wasn’t expecting to be able to stay with him all day but I thought maybe I should wake up and not let him get too far ahead.
The mountains of Uzbekistan were very pretty and quite unlike others I’d run in. The paths were also very runnable. Obviously I couldn’t simply follow the clear and obvious marking and after about four and a half miles I managed to miss a very large arrow pointing me from one trail to another. Fortunately I noticed the lack of markings and quickly doubled pack to pick up the correct route again.
I was pretty happy all in all. Although the scenery was very different to Fuerteventura (there was a lot more greenery for a start) the trails were not dissimilar. As many of you will know, I have been running on Fuerteventura for nearly 12 years and have done, I would guess, about at least 2000 miles out there so although I’d never been to Uzbekistan before, much less run there, it felt kind of familiar.
By the first checkpoint the long uphill section had started. I had brought my poles along specifically for this stage and after about nine miles I deployed them. They definitely helped as I was now keeping pace with Kurt Dhont, a great runner and winner of the Paris – Roubaix Espoirs in 1994. This is the ‘Under-23’ version of the Monument classic Paris–Roubaix bike race. Fortunately the fact he won in 1994 meant he was now 54 and so I wasn’t racing him for my age group trophy. I did occasionally spot the person I was racing, Peter, up ahead but I couldn’t get any closer to him, indeed he was gradually increasing his lead over me.
After about 14 miles I was a little confused to see another runner ahead of me in a blue shirt. Kurt was in white, Peter was in black, so who was in blue? After several miles I caught up with the mystery runner and found it to be Valentin Mayr, a young Austrian. He had be quite away ahead when he missed a turn. He re-joined the course not far from where I first saw him, hence his sudden appearance.
With less than two miles to go I caught up with Valentin and passed him. With less than a mile to go I could see the camp by a lake – the only question was how far round would I have to run before the course would turn towards the camp.
Suddenly Valentin was behind me telling me to get a move on as we could get in in under four hours. I had kind of realised this was vaguely possible a while ago but since I thought anything under five hours would be good for the day I had settled for ‘around four hours’. However with Valentin’s encouragement we did indeed get in in under four hours, 03 hours 58 minutes and 22 seconds officially. This was good enough for a surprising joint fifth place with Valentin. Bryan Gensits of the USA was first in 03:32:10, Benjamin Rodgers of Great Britain was about 5 minutes behind him, Kurt was about 15 minutes behind him, a couple of seconds ahead of Peter. The good news for me was that Peter was only 5 minutes and 16 seconds ahead of me, reasonable damage limitation I felt. Michael Traub was next 17 minutes later.
I took advantage of the lake to clean the dust off my legs. Other’s went somewhat further and had a complete bath/swim.
Sharon finished about an hour and a quarter after me in an excellent 23rd place overall and 8th female.
The lakeside setting was beautiful and fairly insect free. This may have been due to the fact that it appeared to be home to approximately three million frogs, every single one of which had much to say for itself. I didn’t see any but I heard loads. In Bhutan Karl and Aaron had had an incident which involved evicting a frog from their tent. I did suggest they could put their knowledge of frog eviction to good use but we came to the conclusion that by the time they’d evicted the last frog then a) the first ones would have come back and b) they would still be there when the camp became the first finishing point of next years race.
The following day I got up with my Garmin telling me I’d had an excellent nights sleep. to be fair it wasn’t bad, the earplugs reduced the sound of the frogs to something similar to a dodgy air conditioner in a slightly run-down hotel, but I wasn’t sure it had been as good as Garmin thought.
We had been briefed about the stage the previous night. I had also checked the route profile and it was overall quite a lot of down. According the road book Stage Two was 38km long, 830m of ascent and 1650m of descent. I was hopeful of doing fairly well as I felt good and, whilst technical descents tend to slightly terrify me, I’m OK at running fast downhill on any sort of reasonable track, another legacy of the miles spent running on Fuerteventura.
After leaving the lake the course was almost straight into a very long steady downhill section.
I wasn’t as fast as Bryan and Benjamin but I was holding my own with Kurt and Valentin. By my standards I was positively flying – I saw four miles go by in 29 minutes, according to Strava my third mile went past in 6:51 minutes! The underfoot conditions were good but there was a layer of very small gravel over most of the tracks, which caused a tiny bit of shoe slip. This meant my heels were getting a bit sore but I was sure it would be fine and carried on as fast as I could…
The day also had some not inconsequential climbs. I had decided to leave my poles behind to have the minimum of encumbrance on the downhill sections. I still think this was the right choice but it did make the uphill sections a little more challenging.
The route passed through a few villages and so I passed quite a few Uzbek people. Although I couldn’t really talk to them I smiled and waved, and they all smiled and waved back. As these villages were well outside the normal tourist spots, we may have been the first foreigners some of the people had seen, certainly I noticed that many of them took photos and videos on their phone.
I finished in fifth place in a time of 3 hours 47 minutes and 43 seconds, less than half an hour behind the stage winner Bryan. Benjamin was second, Valentin third and Kurt fourth. Michael was sixth and Peter seventh. I had finished fourteen minutes ahead of Peter and was so leading the MV60 category. The stage had been 6km longer than Day One but had taken me just under 11 minutes less time to complete. I had been fast – but at what cost?
This was revealed when I took my shoes off. My heels were very sore. The skin on my right heel had split and was hanging off. My left foot was better – the skin hadn’t actually split- but not much.
Sharon finished about an hour and a half later, 24th overall and 6th female. As I couldn’t really see the base of my own heel (and I didn’t have the nerve to try and take a picture) I asked her to have a look and see if she could tape it up for me. The look on her face suggested my feet were a bit grim and whilst she agreed to tape them up, she called Dr. Ryan over first to get some advice. At the race briefing we were told it wasn’t the job of the medics to fix our feet but they would advise us how to do it ourselves. We had got our selection of tapes and wipes out but after surveying the damage Dr. Ryan offered to patch me up himself. I cleaned my feet as much as I could with some antiseptic wipes and sat with my feet up for an hour while the raw flesh dried out a bit.
Dr. Ryan returned to our tent with his medical bag and set about cutting the obviously loose skin off my heels. Although we had a fairly decent set of medical stuff, he had two vital ingredients we didn’t have. One of those was a pre-tape spray to make the tape stick better. The other, and the most important was Second Skin, hydrogel squares to protect and cushion the damaged areas. I’ve looked up this product since I came home, it’s 95% water. The other 5% is pure magic. Dr. Ryan stuck the squares over my heel and then taped them in place. He then put a layer of KT Tape over the top to provide more protection for the damaged area.
After he had treated both feet, I put a pair of socks over the tape and put my sandals on (socks and sandals, at that moment I was truly a Brit abroad). I stood up. I walked around. There was no pain. Not almost none, not a little bit, if I didn’t know what state my feet were in I would have assumed they were uninjured! Note I hadn’t taken any pain relief, the repairs were genuinely that good!
Our camp that night was on the sports ‘field’ of a village school. The school children found us very interesting and, like all small children, slightly funny.
The next morning was quite chilly. Because the only way to get to most of our camp grounds was along a similar route to the one we were running, our bags had to be dropped quite early and we had to be out of the tents, in order to give them a chance of arriving before us. I went and stood by the stove that provided our hot water in the morning to try an keep warm until it was time to start.
The third stage was 41km with 1430m of climb and 2020m of descent. Looking at the profile, it was hard to believe there was that much climb but Stefan assured us it was so – however I think most of us recorded less climb. Ordinarily I would have looked forward to another day of down, but would my heels?
The day followed a similar pattern to yesterday. Bryan and Benjamin took off and I managed to stick with Kurt and Valentin for the first hour or so until they pulled away from me.
The first 17 miles was undulating, no really big climbs or drops.
After around 17 or 18 miles, the days big descent started into the valley we would be camping in that night.
Dr. Ryan was at a checkpoint in the valley. He commented I was running well but he noticed I was more on my forefoot. He was absolutely right. Whilst my heels were OK, in order to try and protect them I had altered my downhill running gait slightly to try and land a bit more on the ball of my foot and reduce the impact on my heels.
Quite surprisingly I passed a small enclosed area on an otherwise seemingly remote track. It seems to translate as Redhill 10th – 12th century. I’m guessing it was some kind of shrine.
I was on track for my third sub-4 hour day. However some things are more important than times. We had been told the tortoise was a native wild creature in Uzbekistan. Up to now I hadn’t seen one. however I almost tripped over one trying to cross the road so I just had to stop and photograph it.
Despite the tortoise, I still finished in just under four hours and again in fifth place, 35 minutes behind Bryan in first. Benjamin was second, Valentin third and Kurt fourth. Michael was only five minutes behind me in sixth, and Peter a further two minutes back. Sharon was still going well, 20th overall on the day and fourth female! Our campsite tonight was quite compact but was the only flat piece of ground in the vicinity apparently. It did feel very secluded as we were in the valley.
I had spoken to Dr. Ryan about my feet. He told me to take the dressings off and wash them and he’d see how they were doing. I used a trick I learned on the MDS. You take a water bottle and cut it in half length ways. This makes two ‘baths’ you can put your feet in and fill with water to get your feet clean. Global Limits use a ‘three bucket system’ to try and minimise the spread of germs. After using the toilets or before touching any communal things like the hot water flasks, you wash your hands with soap in the first bucket, rinse in the second, and then rinse again in the third, which contains a small amount of disinfectant. Sharon borrowed the soap for me and so I was able to present Dr. Ryan with some very clean feet to work his magic on.
Reassuringly, Dr. Ryan didn’t think my feet had deteriorated at all compared to the previous day. They had been a slightly uncomfortable by the end of the day but nothing to painful. My slight concern was that my calves were very tight due to my attempts to run more forefoot, but nothing felt actually broken.
With my feet rebuilt and dinner eaten, there was nothing to do but try and sleep ready for Day Four, the big one, 40 miles across the plains of Uzbekistan. This promised to be a very different experience to the one I’d had so far…
The Only Way Is Pennine... 