Picture this, it’s Saturday 9th of November, you’ve been outside an awful lot today because the weather has been glorious. You’ve got a race tomorrow, yes it’s in the mountains and the weather’s changeable but it should be fine, right?

Wrong.

Checking the weather forecast and there’s a worrying yellow exclamation mark next to the forecast. Maybe it’ll be because of unseasonably warm temperatures? Or, it is November in Poland afterall, maybe it’ll be cold over night and there’ll be a frost. Oh, it’s for heavy rainfall.

Sunday morning and, with the race being close by, we were able to stay in bed that little bit longer, listening to the rain pouring down outside. Motivation a little lower than normal, excitement as high as ever we got ourselves ready, packed the car and set off through the pouring rain to register, get our great starter packs (some very useful arm warmers) and then hang out until the race was ready to start.

With about 10 minutes to go the congragation of entrepid runners collected. There were 200 people trying to get as close to a fire as possible for the warmth, whilst being in the right spot to start the run.

The countdown on, the sound of 200 sports watches being started up simultaneously rang out across the town. We were off. And after the short climb up from the start point to the first part of the course we were in for a treat, nearly 3km downhill on a relatively smooth and not too muddy trail. Bliss. We were able to cruise along at a lovely pace amongst the rest of the racers.

The rain wasn’t so bad at this stage and plenty of people were starting to take jackets off in a bid to cool down. A significant number of us definitely getting our temperatures all wrong. Clearly very hard to judge at 6 degrees and rain. It’s definitely easy to overdress.

At the 3km point the race turned. We were no longer on a lovely, easy downhill cruise. Instead we were on a very long, dragging uphill along the slopes of the mountains we would be climbing later on. Unfortunately this change in direction also corresponded with a significant up tick in the amount of mud, puddles and generally tougher terrain. This meant the next 12km to the start of the first proper climb were going to be tricky.

Slowly we started to loose the people in front of us and the racers behind were out of sight. It’s an odd thing to be running a race with 200 people in and being completely alone on the trails. Beautiful as they are, it’s always nice to have people around to keep spirits up.

We were still in cruise mode and came up to the 10km mark in just over an hour and ten minutes. A pace we were very happy with and we were going to be well within the cut-off at 19km on top of the first climb.

The clouds were definitely coming down as much as we were going up so things were starting to get even more damp and certainly a little bit cooler. The jackets were coming back on, gloves were being dug out and hoods were being put up. It was only around half one but it also felt like the torches might need to come on too.

Around 12km in, suddenly Liam pulled up. A familiar sharp pain on the side of his left knee. Hopefully it was just a twinge from a slip, these things happen all the time. A little bit of stretching, a short walk and we’ll be as good as new. Off we went. 13km in the pain had intensified, it hadn’t gone away.

It, from prior experience, was definitely an ITB flare up. If you’ve not experienced the pain from an ITB flare up, it’s enough to make you cry.

A decision needed to be made there an then, do we push on to the checkpoint and see if we can get medical attention to stave it off, turn and head back to the start or do we drop out of the trail and try and head down into a nearby village?

We decided to get our heads down and get to the check point. Uphill was significantly less painful than down and getting to anywhere else would’ve meant going downhill.

On we pushed, the weather was worstening as we started the climb, the clouds coming down and the rain still incessantly filling the path with, essentially, a river. Still we pushed on, we’d definitely come too far to not make it to the check point.

Finally, the climb started to lessen, we knew we were close but there should be a monistary somewhere around here. Eventually the shadowy shapes of the buildings started to loom out of the mist. As the climb lessened so the knee pain increased so by the time we managed to get to the aid station we were at a crawl.

A cup of tea, some medical attention and getting wrapped up in foil blankets to try and protect against some of the worst of the foul mountain top weather and we were ready to go again. Ready to see if we could push on. It’s only 14 more km, we were over half way. Two steps and that was realised as not possible, descending off the mountain, some up and down before climbing and descending another mountain just wasn’t going to be possible.

We threw in the towel. This was not the way we wanted to end what has been a brilliant season, truly it the race lived up to it’s name. A real lament.

We’ll be back again next year. The organisation was fantastic, the crew, who’d been up on the mountain top for nearly 10 hours, freezing cold and soaking wet were incredible. We highly recommend it!

Now is planning for next season. We’ve already got the first race booked in, Kraków Marathon at the end of April. What else, well, that’s to be seen.