Punk Panther Takes the Hindmost
Report by Claire Baker
This was a new Punk Panther event, which took place on Friday 11th October. Each runner had to complete 4 laps of Swinsty and Fewston reservoirs (just over 6.5 miles each) by 3:30pm. At 3:30pm the elimination laps began – the last person to complete each lap being eliminated. No new elimination lap could start until the final eliminated runner was home. This was to continue until there were only 3 runners left at which point the remaining 3 runners could continue until there was only 1 runner left but there would be no elimination unless a lap took more than 2 hours.
25 runners started the race on a very wet morning. By the start of the elimination laps runners had already covered 26 miles and 16 runners continued. As beautiful as the reservoirs are this was more mentally challenging than physical as the repetition made the route quite dull. In addition runners could drop out at the half way point so if you couldn’t see a runner behind you after the half way point you never new whether you were last runner and about to be eliminated or not. To make planning between laps much more difficult once you completed a lap, if you weren’t eliminated, you had no idea how long you had before you needed to start the next lap. The only notification you had was a whistle being blown as the last runner was eliminated giving you 5 minutes to start again. So despite having a wait of 45 minutes between some laps you had to be ready to go again for the whole time.
I retired after lap 7 having covered 45 miles. For me I found keeping motivated and warm whilst waiting around in the dark for the next lap to commence hard work and in the end the pull to get in the car and drive 20 minutes home rather than stand about waiting won!
I wouldn’t do the event again because it doesn’t really suit me but I would recommend it for anyone wishing to increase their distance in a controlled environment.