Well done @tunster and Mrs T. Early season Ultra in the mountains is always going to be hard work. Hope you are enjoying a few days off to relax and recover
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Yeah itâs been widely reported and I suspect most of us know way more about it than the âsports journalistsâ 
Sean Ingle is Kate âIâm not a cheatâ Carterâs husband.
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She has really captured the publicâs attention, which is fantastic. However, people I talk to have no idea just how hard the Barlay Marathons are - They see 100 miles and think UTMB, or other long Ultra Runs, whereas BM is a league of its own
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The race does separate the wheat from the chaff 
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On Friday I have the Swiss Easter Back Yard Ultra. This will be my 3rd time, having done 14 laps in 2022 and 16 in 2023, I am aiming for 24 this time round, If I tell enough people that I am planning to run 24 I may be less inclinded to drop out a 5am.
Unfortunately the organisers have decided that the old course, which was already tough wasnât quite hard enough
Each lap now has around 170m elevation and to make it more interesting, the first steep descent is 30% average down an earth bank, the second is a set of very uneven stairs.
Weather is looking stunning 17 degrees on Friday, with a low of 11 degrees overnight and 20 degrees on Saturday
My strategy this year is to go slow with just enough time for toilet and food at the end of each lap
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You should come to Normâs, that has 250mtrs vert over just 5.5kms 
Good luck on Friday. Does it start at 3pm then?
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Starts at 1200 on Friday
250m Vert over 5.5km is brutal
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Yeah, I only lasted 7 laps, missed starting the 8th by about 20 seconds. I wasnât overly unhappy about it 
Do you have a crew to prepare stuff whilst youâre on a lap?
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No crew, but a friend is coming to support at 2am
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Mrs Tâs race on Saturday had 1500m across 43km
I told her this morning that the ETC which we are doing as part of UTMB week, has 1500m in 15km - so essentially 3x as steep as what she has just done.
She went quite quiet 
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Thanks @Matthew_Spooner
The backyard looks like a toughie given that those descents are so steep - they will start to tickle after a few laps
Fallout Ultra, quick report
So Jan and a couple of her friends did this on Saturday. Its organised by the same people who do the Escape from Meriden event and is similar in the respect that distance is measured as the crow flies. The concept is that there has been a Nuclear Explosion and you, the employees, need to get to the âsafe zoneâ before you are enveloped in the expanding cloud (there are actually 30 mins at the start before the cloud starts). This means that within 12 hours you need to be 40 miles away. Of course no one can run in a straight line so effectively this is closer to 50 miles; one of Janâs friends found a route which was just shy of 48 miles, though with some canal sections.
They really enter into the spirit of it all. Hazmat suits are optional. You are encouraged to take Iodine Tables, which looked very much like Jelly Babies. The registration is in a village hall where they had running 1950s US public information films about what to do in the event that the bomb goes off. (Who knew that covering your head with a newspaper would protect you from Nuclear Fall Out!!)
The race starts at Chilton, a small village just outside of Didcot. Team Janâs plan was to head north which would take them through Abington, then Oxford and onwards into the countryside. I had worked out 7 checkpoints where I would meet them with food, drinks, clothing and encouragement. Everyone wears a tracker which stays green as long as you stay ahead of the cloud. If the cloud catches you up then it turns black as you have effectively been vaporized. When you reach the âsafetyâ of the 40 mile radius the light does something else (cant remember) ; all very clever. You can carry on, with the person who gets the furthest deemed to be the employee of the month. After the event all employees will receive a medal, the type dependant on whether they were vaporized or not.
Following it on the tracker was actually quite a lot of fun as the tracker also shows the expansion of the cloud. As with Escape from Meriden runners went in all directions, though the route we had picked was used by a number of others.
The day itself went well. Jan stayed with her friend Dawn who had the GPX on her watch, whilst Dave, Dawns husband was ahead. There was a continuous headwind and intermittent heavy rain, though by the afternoon the rain cleared to leave just the wind!! The race starts at 10am so you have got effectively until 6:15 / 6:30pm of daylight. The difficulty here was this was the canal section and we knew that there was no path on the canal rather just a muddy path. So I think that everyone put on a âspurtâ knowing that they a) needed to be ahead of the cloud and b) would slow down later on once off road/ in the dark/ knackered.
So for most of the day they stayed about an hour ahead of the cloud. I think the low point for all of them was around the 40/50k mark. Once passed that I think they then all thought it would be possible. The canal did slow them down and the cloud was within about 40 mins and catching them up, however the last 6k was all on road. Dave at this point was just doing a fast march and Jan and Dawn caught them up with about 3k to go. The finish was on a lane just outside of Fenny Compton. It was a little strange looking into the pitch black and then suddenly seeing a pair of headtorches appearing out of the gloom.
So Jan and Dawn finished in 11:30 (30 mins ahead of the cloud) with Dave just a couple of mins behind. Everyone I think was happy. Muddy, wet, cold, tired but happy. Probably not a race for me but if this is your thing then I couldnât recommend it highly enough.
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That sounds like a proper adventure mate, well done to Jan and co. Employee of the month by virtue of not being dead, brilliant. 
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I like to think that Dawn slapped Daveâs arse as she passed him .
Not much rest for yourself if you had to zip around to 7 pit stops.
Cheers for the write up.
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Chernobyl ultra next 
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I had to laugh at that. They caught him and then wouldnât wait even though they had almost finished!! Jan said that she was cold and had to keep on running, yeah right 
It was a long day, not the first time I have done this and I am always surprised by how the time passes. I did have two stops though that were quite close to pubs 
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They actually start the race by lighting something that spews out green noxious gas from a radiation bin (perhaps taking inspiration from Laz and his cigarette)
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Brilliant - sounds like good fun
Well done team Sparky
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Well done to all of you. Sounds like a tough but fun adventure 
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Love this - well done all
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