The Pony Express 2011 Multistage Ultra
30th April/1st May 2011

Event Report by ExtremeEnergy

The Extreme Energy team want to congratulate everyone who took part in this weekends Pony Express 2 day Ultra in the New Forest.

As usual we were so inspired to see such outstanding performances with such a great spirit in a wonderful setting. There were some incredibly fast performances at the front of the field over the 2 days. Huw Lobb's day 1 run of 3:42 for the 30 miles was exceptional.

Over the 2 days the performance of the front 3 men and woman was extremely consistent. The overall male winner was Steve Paterson who ran 4:03 both days (how's that for consistency!!) for an overall time of 08:06, with the great support of his father throughout which was great to see. 2nd and 3rd in the mens category were Mark Ford 08:09 and Darryl Watson 08:10 (who also won the over 40 mens). Both Mark and Darryl ran day 2 about 6 mins faster than day 1 - who says multi-days are hard !!.

For the ladies Beth Street gave an outstanding performance over the 2 days and finished in 09:42 for the 60 miles. She was closely chased by a frustrated Jennifer Bradley who had a total time overall of 10:15, with a day 2 time of just under 5 hours, and 5:15 on day 1 with an annoying couple of detours. Outstanding.

The 3rd placed lady was probably the most surprised of all, although no reason to be. A great performance from Ellen Cottam in an overall time of 11:14, very closely followed by Julie Catkins in 11:16.

Those were the winners overall, but to be honest in our opinion everyone of the 66 people who finished were all winners from the front of the field to Steve Allen and his nephew who finished the overall challenge in 19:10 with huge smiles on their faces.

There were so many smiles and fun had over the weekend. From the ladies in pink brightening up the forest, to the competitor (who we shall not name) who jumped into the Avon and swam across when he realised he was on the wrong side!! As usual it is you the competitors with your great spirit, attitude and positive approach that makes these ultra weekends such fun for all the people who take part and for us organising them.

The feedback we got from everyone was that the location was excellent, the start / finish and overnight location were perfect, the food at Moyles Court was unbelievable, the CP food etc worked well and the route stunning. Thank you to everyone for all your kind feedback and emails.

Clearly the major challenge we had over the weekend was the route marking. This was a big disappointing for us given that we had spent days marking the route and then checking it. It is one of the worst things for any race organiser when a competitor goes the wrong way and adds on mileage. There were a large portion of the field that found their way round the route without problem using the map and the route card, but at some point I think everyone had a navigational challenge of some kind. Whilst this is the nature of ultra trail races, we want to do all we can to make sure that our competitors don't have to do the extra mileage. We have some thoughts for 2012 on how we can tackle the "local mafia", so we will learn from this year and make it better next.

As I mentioned over the weekend we are always looking for feedback on what worked, what didn't work and what you would like us to do differently to make it even better next time. We appreciate all the feedback over the weekend, because if we don't know we can't do more of what works and less of what doesn't. So thank you.

One thing I would also like to get your input on is "Sports Hall Etiquette". Many of you have done our events before so experienced different sports halls. What would be the do's and don'ts that you would like us to publish to competitors on Sports Hall Etiquette to make it better for all.

Our next multi-day Ultra is the Round The Island Challenge on the 25th / 26th June round the Isle of Wight. We hope to see some of you there, but for now, we hope you have a restful week...

The results below will be published on the web in the next 24 hours.

 

Congratulations and thank you...................... from all at Extreme Energy.............................