Dovedale Hill Climb 11.1km

It was the perfect day for this race. It was not like last year....where it was torrential rain. Instead, it was a frosty but nice sunny day.

I drove out to Wakefield, which is about a half hour drive and met up with everyone at the car park. I have not done this race before and I honestly thought it was an up and back race. I was curious when I saw groups of people disappearing in their cars but all returning in just one car. It was about now I was told that it was a one way race and that most were either running back or catching a lift. So I quickly found myself a seat in a van for the return journey. I was not sure if my calf would hold up and to be honest I had not even thought about the uphill part and how much that would put pressure on it.

The walkers headed over to the start line. Walkers always start 30mins a head of the runners. We started off at 2pm and I zipped away from the start line too quickly so after 500m I had to reign myself in and make sure I had some gas in the tank for the up hill grind. The course was well marked with Km markers and I was finding my GPS was beeping 20mt after the markers. (I have found out that the markers were perfect, so my km splits are out) I was pretty much sticking to 6min kms for the first 6km as this was fairly flat with a gentle roll over country roads. At about the 3km mark I noticed that Wendy didnt seem to be pulling away from me like the other weekend. I was sure she was just cruising too but I did start noting her time as she passed each km marker and I was only 1 min behind her. We stayed like this until the 9km marker.

As we went from tarmac to gravel it was at the base of the hill. The frost was heavy on the ground and the road frozen. My feet were skidding and slipping so badly that I had to walk in the deep gravel to get traction. My main problem was the camber of the road. As we were walking on the right hand side so we walked into the traffic the cambers on the dirt/gravel road falls sharply to the right....it is my right calf that is hurting. So as you can imagine by the time I made it to the 9km mark..my calf was burning. It was too steep to really racewalk so I was doing a mix of power walk and racewalk. From the 6 km mark we climbed from 150m to 340m .. it was pretty hard going and my lungs knew it.

I was very pleased to see all my km splits under 7km but I have learnt now to use the manual splits on these races and not trust the gps so much. The actual distance of this race was 11.1km not the 11.03 that my watch has said. But 71:21 is a fine time and I am very happy with it. Wendy pulled away after the 9km marker and bet me in a time of 69.36 (click the title to go to the Waimea Site for results)

So it was head for home and curl up with an ice bag for the night. Which did help but its time to get this looked at. So I am off to my coach's partner for her to work her magic on it. She does massage therapy etc...

BellGrove Hill 11 km by kyisis at Garmin Connect - Details

This is a photo I have found of the road leading up to the Dovedale Hill. It is really lovely country side. The road rolls along like this then dips down for the start of the hill.