As I was visiting Lincolnshire for the week, a return to the county that I grew up in - and having had my eye on this route for a couple of years; I thought that this was now the time to give the FKT a bash. The weather was pretty good for the summer, and by getting out in the morning I thought I could avoid a bit of this summers heatwave.
Following the lead of the existing FKT holder i decided to go to Bradley Woods to begin the loop. This location provided ample parking and no concerns about leaving the car for a few hours. It also has a wonderful 'green gate' that could serve as a marker for the beginning and end of my route - in homage to the famous yellow version in Tennessee. Starting at approximately 8 o'clock, i set off in an anti-clockwise direction. Not a conscious decision to choose that direction, just what felt naturally right for some reason. As this route is not particularly long, i set off with sufficient gel based nutrition for 3 hours, and one litre of water with precision hydration tabs added - therefore able to complete this without needing assistance of any sort.
I hadn't done any physical recce-ing of the route in advance beyond trying to look at bits on satellite imagery, and where I had previously run bits of the route during previous year's training runs or in Yellow Belly Ultras 50 mile race which operates nearby (which is lovely, do check it out). So I had assumed most of the trails would be hard, farm tracks, and good going. Turned out this was correct - and thanks to the Wanderlust Way specific signs, this is relatively easily navigated.
Leaving Bradley Wood, i tried to find a natural rhythm, somewhere in the ballpark of 5 minute kilometers. This was all going well until my watch tried to direct me through a very thick hedge of brambles which were in full thorny force. I realised this couldn't be right, and pulled out OS Maps to discover that I had drawn the route wrong in the gpx for my watch, and I had to back track about 400m or so to take the correct turning into a different field (You can see this just south of Irby upon Humber on my track). This error cost me about 6 minutes according to my strava activity, and also made me think I might have blown the ability to beat James Mcnamee's time. However, I ploughed on, thinking I could possibly make it up in the remaining 25km.
The rest of the route was sunshine filled - but with a stiff Westerly wind that caused a bit of an annoying headwind at points; a mix of roads and tracks, with very little to remark on. There are no substantive hills, and it is all extremely runnable. The only thing that runners should watch out for are; a ~150m stretch of very busy road without a verge that you need to run along to access the onward path (A18 just south of Ashby cum Fenby) and also a field of quite curious cows in Ashby itself!
Once I'd got through the last village on my route of Barnoldby le Beck, I knew I just had to stay on 5 mins/km pace and I'd have just shaved under the previous FKT - which I managed to as the route was flat and on good solid farm track. I got into the Bradley Wood car park, touched the green gate and saw that I was about 3 minutes under the previous time.