Fly out to Llandudno, Wales on Sunday morning, start running at 11pm Friday night New Zealand time, stop 24 hours later.

http://www.cmudc2011.org

http://www.iau-ultramarathon.org/

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Commonwealth-Mountain-and-Ultra-Distance-Championships/151614461576283

They may have updates, but here and facebook are likely to be better options especially if you want to make comments. Please make comments, it helps, it really does.

Details

A while ago I scored some very cheap flights to Europe with Air Malaysia. $1564 return, nice. So an early start in Sunday morning will see me on my way to Paris for a couple of days, followed by TGV to London and then on to Llandudno, Wales for dinner on Wednesday evening. Thursday to panic and prepare then Friday morning to get agitated about the Midday start to the race.

‘Race’ isn’t really how I think of a 24 hour. There’s no way to actually race other people in the normal sense, so knowing who is in  the event isn’t really of much use. However that hasn’t stopped me from trawling the interwebs attempting to find out who I’ll be up against. The Australian, Welsh and NZ teams have been published and I’ve more or less worked out from various bits of information who the English, Irish and maybe Scots will have running. Canadians were a bit of a guess and beyond that I have no idea at all. For the women it was even more of a lottery.

So this is what I’ve got, sorry about the formatting, have buggered around with for 1/2 an hours instead of packing already.

		Country	Dist	Year
Blake	JonathanAUS	249.106	2009
Pearson	John	AUS	224.785	2009
Kennedy	David	AUS	223.636	2010
CourtneyAnth	AUS	219.410	2010
Cooke	Rick	AUS	216.428	2011
Gilbert	Guy	CAN	217.783	2009
Chenery	Paul	CAN	214.411	2010
BarteauxBruce	CAN	207.230	2010
McLean	Andrew	CAN	202.943	2009
QuennellRichard	ENG	246.121	2010
Rogers	Jim	ENG	244.108	2010
Carver	Chris   ENG	238.286	2010
Robbins	Pat	ENG	231.086	2010
Fancett	Kenneth	ENG	219.577	2008
Scott	Ben	IOM	216.329	2009
Maguire	Thomas	IRL	248.392	2009
Keith	Eoin	IRL	237.206	2009
Gallen	Edward	IRL	223.898	2010
O'Regan	John	IRL	220.021	2009
Bixley	Matt	NZL	221.365	2010
McKenzieAlex	NZL	206.530	2010
Botha	Wayne	NZL	204.698	2010
Mason	Stephen	SCO	239.396	2008
Hart	Paul	SCO	228.372	2010
Sichel	William	SCO	214.006	2009
CunninghamRichardSCO	205.410	2008
Pares	John	WAL	252.548	2010
McCormackSean	WAL	7:57	100k
RidgewayIain	WAL	7:40	100k
Mower	Jeremy	WAL	8:18	100k

5 guys over 240. John Pares, Jo Blake, Thomas Macguire and Richard Quennell are all within 6km of each other based on results since 2008. They represent 4 different countries, so there will be a lot of pride on the line. Given that I’d also like to clock up 240 and there’s another two knocking on the door it would surprise me to see 7-8 guys within spitting distance of each other when the sun comes up on Saturday morning at that point it’ll come to who’s got the biggest ticker.

If I had to make a pick, I’d go for John Pares running at home. He looked great all day in Brive last year and maybe a touch fresher than Jo Blake who ran Badwater in July. 245+ to get a medal Who knows, the interwebs doesn’t cough up that much information.

That’ll do for now other than a huge thanks for all the support I’ve had. On Saturday morning I’ll be calling on it a lot.

Our next lock, waiting for us in the dawn mist

And so we face the final curtain. The grown-ups (project director Ros Stoddart, and project manager Ros Patching) have left, and our assorted creative hangers-on (storyteller Adrian Johnson, poet Matt Merritt) have gone back to the shore. Our visual artist Jo Dacombe is slaving over a hot drawing board… so today, it is just Jo Bell and Jo Blake on board for the final stretch of our narrowboat trip. We woke up in the dawn mist at Denford, near Thrapston – and indeed, we walked to Thrapston last night having found that the only pub here doesn’t serve food on Thursdays. Today, we are heading downstream towards Oundle, with only two of us to work the heavy locks and perform the boat-related tasks that have become so familiar. Tomorrow, we return the boat to its hire place.

Jo Blake at the helm

Birdwatching at 5.30am

We cannot tell a lie – this has been a fantastic week, full of sunshine and good company as the artists get to know each other. We’ve been on a dawn chorus walk with Matt Merritt and heard Ros Patching enthuse about the nature reserve where she volunteers. We have been reading the work of BB, whose writings are the original spark behind this project, and sharing some of our own stories about the Nene, boats and other rivers. We’ve been learning about boat-handling skills and about one another’s work.

But it’s not just a jolly enterprise: this is only the first part of the project. We are building up material and ideas for a weekend of performance in late October, at venues near the Nene. Before that we have further fieldwork. In May, we return to the Nene in a canoe, to see how the river looks from a simpler vessel. In June, we will be walking stretches of the riverbank. The two remaining Jos have started to frame ideas for how the October performance might look, and for a fully-developed performance piece to be shown in summer 2012. Watch this space for further information and snippets of work in the next few weeks.

Moored at Denford

One of BB's titles

In summer 1966 the writer ‘BB‘  (Denys Watkins-Pitchford) set out from Oundle marina in Northamptonshire, in a little boat called the Jolly Enterprise. The resulting trip with his wife and daughter was written up as A Summer on the Nene. It became part of the BB canon along with classic children’s books like The Little Grey Men and Wild Lone, and many titles which reflected his interests as a countryman. All his writings and illustrations embody a keen interest in nature, wildlife and the countryside of his native county.

Oundle Mill - a landmark on the Nene

In 2011, three artists will retrace BB’s route along the river Nene. Poet Jo Bell, storyteller Jo Blake and visual artist Jo Dacombe will journey by narrowboat, canoe and on foot during spring and summer. But  it won’t be just the three Jos – the crew will change from day to day. By the end of our journey we will have hosted three Jos, two Roses and a host of experts on local wildlife, history and legend. Ros Stoddart, also a visual artist, is our resident BB expert – and incidentally, the inventor of this lovely project. Ros Patching and Matt Merritt will hitch a ride to talk about wildlife and conservation on the Nene, and to lead us in a dawn chorus walk along the riverbank. Kate Dyer documents the project and works with Jo Dacombe to create a beautiful river map, incorporating words and images. From this fieldwork we will generate a live spoken word show which you can see at Nene-side locations later in 2011, and in summer 2012.

Jo Dacombe - artist and map maker

No doubt there will be time to sample some of the riverside pubs, and get into the little scrapes that come with any boating adventure. It will be our own jolly enterprise. We hope to produce a properly collaborative work which is more than the sum of its parts – doing justice to BB’s own subject matter, but with a contemporary flavour.

We start with a week-long narrowboat trip, leaving a spot not far from Oundle on Saturday 16th April. Look out for us: we’ll post details of our route and the name of our boat closer to the time. Keep track of us here. If you have local knowledge of the wildlife, of local myths or of lively characters we should talk to then please get in touch by leaving a comment below. Or just share your own memories of BB – and get ready to hear our twenty-first century version of his journey.

PS If you haven’t had enough of BB – the inventor of this project, Ros Stoddart is also involved in making a short BB-themed film…