Marathon Day 65, Thursday 19th May - Ripon

Awake at 5.15hrs to brilliant sunshine, although quite a cold, crisp morning.

As you might expect, as this monumental episode draws ever nearer to a conclusion, there is a natural tendency to reflect on the issues and experiences over the past 66 days. My preference is to save these for a final Post on the blog and focus instead on the thoughts of what tomorrow might bring.

Indications are that there will be a lot of press and TV interest tomorrow although we had great expectations today -  but nothing materialised! 

So, RV moved about 100m to the start / finish location outside the Sergeants Mess and pre race procedures commenced.

Race preparations start early!

We have a number of runners who plan to run the whole distance with Andy today (including Jim, our ABF main man) plus a considerable number who will be running 5k chunks.  The send off was very impressive with a welcome and address by the Lord Mayor who then started the race with a bang (a Starting Pistol!)  The first 100 metres of the route was lined both sides with soldiers from the Barracks, a very impressive start and rightly so too!

There's our Sophie doing her best to hide from the camera!!

Ready, Steady Go!!!

Flanked by soldiers - quite a salute!!

So we now regress into our "Marathon in progress" mode - for the last time before the final day - Can you believe it!!!

More runners arrive through the course of the morning  to join in for part of the run so Andy had plenty of company today.

Sophie and Jim completed their first Marathon today - well done guys, a real achievement!

Two kn*****ed but very happy Bunnies!!

Andy finished his run in 6hrs 31mins accompanied by amongst others, a very tired PTI from Claro barracks.

Quite a bunch of finishers!!

Before leaving for York, Barry & I decided to wash the vehicles using the washdown facilities on the base.  A recon in Barry's Octavia found us driving between the walls of a vehicle wash area when suddenly, high power water jets started automatically from both sides of the car as we obviously triggered a sensor.  Everything would have been fine had Barry not had his window open! Oh Lordy , what a sight - a dripping Barry!!! lol.

Having discovered how it worked, we re-entered the area, this time with the vehicle sealed and washed the worst of the dirt off.  A repeat visit in the Yeti was again reasonably successful but the RV was far too high for the jets to be effective.

The drive to Imphal Barracks in York was completed without incident and after securing the vehicle there, we did our usual pre race recce of the next day's venue. I then joined Ellie and Benji  in the Marriot Hotel adjacent to the racecourse leaving the rest of Team66 to spend the night in transit accommodation or in the RV. Ellie was staying overnight in order to be on hand to help out first thing in the morning.

We had a lovely evening, with Benji enjoying the novelty of sleeping in our room  in his own double bed.

A bedtime story for my little man!!!

. . . . . . . tomorrows the last day - Oh My!!!