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Writer's pictureJay Grady

Episode 15 - The Plague 100k RAT

Updated: Aug 20, 2021

For episode 15, as we were both competitors again we thought we'd do another race special. This time it was MudCrew's infamous Plague 100k down here in Cornwall!





This is a bit of a local ritual for the running community in Cornwall. Over 5 races, 1000+ competitors take part in the Roseland August Trail weekend event. Camping, partying (for some) and running for 48 hours on the beautiful but rugged Roseland Peninsula nr St Austell.


MudCrew (check out episode 2 for a potted history) famously 'don't do easy' and the Plague is an out and back from Porthpean all the way down to St Anthony's head nr Falmouth. 64 miles in old money and 12k ft of vert. Add to that a midnight start, adverse camber, narrow trail, technical descents, aggressive cutoff and a notorious start/finish section that has ENDLESS steps, and you start to get a feel why this is viewed as a 'right of passage' ultra among locals.


As with all Cornish races, it draws a lot of runners in from out of county and it's popularity ensures it's always full months before the day. As a gateway qualifier to the infamous Arc of Attrition it's also spawned a second more evil race, the BOYD - Bring Out Your Dead, but we won't talk about that here as we are both NEVER going to run that!!


So here's another special episode with the first half discussing how we had prepared and how we thought our race might go and the second half of the episode covering how it actually went. Would our race prep and strategies stand up under the pressure of a race ?


Steps, steps and steps, how bad can they really be!"

Race Day


A dry start at midnight, biblical rain after dawn and burning sun from 11am, this race had some interesting climate changes of it's own. How would the latter stages cope with 1000 pairs of trail shoes? A new finish to the course, did everyone listen to the race brief? Only time will tell




So how did it go?


Join us for episode 15 of Trail and Error to hear how we got on... one thing's for certain, once again, things didn't go entirely to plan! (Do they ever???)







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