Caroline Davis of Grantham Running Club completes a 100-mile race at Robin Hood event
Grantham Running Club's Caroline Davis has finally conquered a 100-mile race after completing the Robin Hood event.
Caroline had taken on the Dukeries 40 two years ago where she had seen athletes competing in the Hobo Pace 100 mile race.
Thinking there was no way she could complete a 100 mile run, Caroline realised a year ago that she needed a bit more time after completing 15 laps at Equinox.
She then took on the Robin Hood challenge where the course started at South Wheatley village hall, which is the beginning of the Waterways 30.
It then traversed fields and tracks to get to the Chesterfield Canal. The route then took runners onto the canal that went through Retford before heading off towards Manton Pit Wood.
There was then the 30 mile loop through Clumber Park including a couple of sections of the Worksop half, Sherwood Forest including the Major Oak, which runners do twice before heading back to Manton Pit Wood and the canal to the finish line.
The canal section did remind Caroline of running down Grantham canal – the bridges are just the same - and competitors had 30 hours to complete the course.
All the aid stations had fantastic volunteers and the finish was amazing as fellow crews were cheering everyone on and Caroline commented that she had never had that response to finishing a race.
A big thank you goes to fellow club members Ros Sadler and Julie Gilbert who took time out of their Saturday evening to give Caroline a big boost on the 10-mile loop through Sherwood Forest.
They gave Caroline the energy she needed to get to the car for a short rest and then she was able to move much better again.
Caroline also needs to give a massive thank you to her husband Paul (and the dogs) who had an awfully long wait for her to arrive at various points around the course for a very short period of time, especially as each mile got longer and longer.
Caroline recorded a time of 27:37:30 which gave her 49th place out of 83 finishers and 14th female home.
Amusingly, the results give the year of birth, so she was the oldest female finisher by about nine years.
Fifty-three starters did not finish, so there is a high attrition rate with Caroline now happy to retire from such long distances.
