Moontrekker: meet Harry Tabor, the Swire runner who ‘enjoys the pain’ and came third in his first trail race
- Harry Tabor has only ever run 40km once and that was during his first race
- With only a month of training, he hopes the podium is the first of many
Harry Tabor had never run 40-kilometres in his life before Friday’s Barclays Moontrekker, his first ever trail race. He has only ever done over 20km twice in his life, and they were hikes.
In fact, he had only run as far as 20km once in the last six months. And yet, he and his running partner finished third in the Moontrekker male pairs category last week. Their time would have seen Tabor finish 11th in the solo race.
“We didn’t have expectations other than Alfy [Weston, his partner] wanting to come under six hours,” he said. “But I had no point of reference, so was just aiming for completion.”
They finished in five hours, 39 minutes. The were rushing through check points in under a minute not just to save time but also because they were stiffening up when they stopped – a by-product of being unused to long distances.
“My longest training run was a 20km once,” said Tabor, who works in properties for Swire. “And to be honest, up to 20km we felt good. But it got harder after that, it started to go downhill, it got more painful.”