Race date: 29 March

Race distance: 6 hours (for the Striders anyway)

Hell on the Humber (HOTH) Mad Hatter took place on Saturday 29 March. It’s an endurance race that offers a number of time options (6-, 12- or 24-hour run/walk/crawl), putting the Humber Bridge as the star of the show.

You run from race HQ to the other side of the bridge and back. Each lap is about 6-ish km and you have to complete a lap and check in for it to be counted.

I joined Matt Broadhead (who had completed a 24-hour version of HOTH the previous year) in the 6-hour race. We arrived for registration in the early evening and set up a couple of camp chairs and an enormous sack of snacks for grazing on in between laps. Other participants doing the longer time periods had set up tents for rest breaks. There were a couple of portaloos, which, for the most part, were thankfully relatively unscathed and usable.

The 6-hour group got together at about 17:45 for the race briefing. Then at 18:00 we were ready for the off! The weather was OK at the start for a late March evening – not too cold, with a light breeze. The views out from the bridge were pretty impressive, especially as the sun began to set.

Laps 1 and 2 passed by quickly. By the time I started lap 3, darkness had fallen, it had started to rain and the wind was picking up. After lap 3, I stopped for a bit and had some snacks, and actually realised that it had become a bit scary out on the bridge. Never one to give up, I gritted my teeth and made a start on lap 4 but ended up walking the outbound section as I was feeling a bit like I might get blown away at the tower bridge sections where the wind was whipping up into a vortex. The wind was behind me on the journey back so I picked up the pace, but ended up clinging to one of the tower bridges while I plucked up courage to carry on. At this point, a few other people had decided to take a rest at the HQ village so I stopped and refuelled (and relocated some of the stuff to the car, out of the damp). Lap 5 ended up being a walk on the outbound again as the wind had persisted, with a slow jog back. By that point, it was about 23:20 so there wouldn’t have been time to complete another lap before the midnight cut-off.

It was definitely a challenging race – mostly as a result of the exposed nature of a bridge. I feel like I might have had another lap in me if it hadn’t been so windy, but I was pleased to have managed 5.

Notable mentions go to the fabulous volunteers and race organiser; the other friendly and encouraging participants; the guy dressed up as the Mad Hatter in the 6-hour group; and the brightly dressed lady in the 24-hour group who was always smiling when you ran past her and apparently ended up running 100 miles!

Striders results (positions aren’t awarded)