28 miles over a weekend – plus a few beers along the way

The physio and sub-three-hour marathoner and his partner Damaris have been welcoming people to their cosy bed and breakfast on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales since 2011 and providing them with a customised weekend of running.

My partner and I had been given a voucher for Dave’s ‘‘Jelley Legs’’ experience by a good friend, Louise, who died earlier this year. We were determined to put the vouchers to good use, partly in her memory and partly because we are training for the Yorkshire marathon on October 20.

With nine weeks to go until York, I am hardly marathon fit and I certainly can not remember when I last ran on three consecutive days.

As soon as we met, Dave put our minds at ease, asking us about distances we had run in the past six months, our running aims and any injuries.

I detailed my various aches and pains and a potted history of my recent training, before admitting I wanted to run this, my fourth marathon, in a personal best time.

Our base for the weekend was the postcard-perfect hamlet of Studley Roger, two miles from Ripon.

On the edge of the Way of the Roses cycle ride, it is ideally situated for cyclists as well and is just a stone’s throw from the route the Tour de France will take when it rides through Yorkshire next summer. Looking out at the rainbow assortment of lilies, roses and herbs and vegetables in the garden, to the corn dancing in the field behind the house, it felt as though we had walked into a Van Gogh painting.

Did I say walked?

We started conservatively, with an easy four-mile run through Studley Royal Park, which backs on to Fountains Abbey. Ambling past deer which eyed us uncertainly, we loped over ornamental bridges and past a lake, where Dave explained the Brownlee brothers were organising a triathlon.

Sadly, I was far from feeling like an Olympian. Two high-mileage weeks were taking their toll, my right hamstring was screaming at me and it was with wobbly lips rather than jelly legs that I finished that first run. But there’s something infectious about Dave Jelley's enthusiasm and zest for life.

“We go running to get away from the stresses and strains of life,” he told me, as we tucked into a vegetarian feast. It looked like a work of art and put paid to any cynicism I had about a lack of taste and variety in vegetarian meals.

The meals were just one of the non-running highlights of the weekend. We slept in the Garden Room, a cosy hideout with a collection of running tomes, comfy chairs and music and floor-to-ceiling glass doors overlooking the lawn.

The wet room next door to ours had the kind of shower you dream of after a hard run and if dinner was tasty, breakfast’s homemade bread and granola was the perfect fuel before the main event of the weekend – the big run.

I might have had a full tummy, but I was still worried. My hamstring wasn’t happy, but after a quick massage from Dave and advice to go at my own pace, we left for the village of Hebden, in Wharfedale, along with Martin, one of Dave’s ultra-running buddies and a friend of Louise.

The early miles saw us running uphill, across small streams, over stiles and past dozens of sheep. Dave and Martin, a gardener and keen ornithologist, pointed out the birds – oyster catchers, kestrels and grouse – as we climbed higher and higher into the Dales.

It was not the kind of pace I would have kept on the flat, but then it was not supposed to be. At the top of one of the more brutal slopes, a designated walking hill or DWH, as one of Dave’s previous clients had termed it, we rested, marvelling at the moorland and the skill of a group of mountain bikers, as we fortified ourselves with delicious crunchy chia energy bars by Yorkshire company Running Foods (runningfood.co.uk).

Alongside Grimwith reservoir, our feet grateful for a break from the hills, we pounded across the flat grass as the watersports enthusiasts swept past us. But by now, after more than two hours on our feet, my heels were burning, my body was tired and my mind was starting to feel as woolly as the sheep we had been passing all morning. Things got better as we took on more food and with less than an hour to go, we ran into the beautiful village of Burnsall, where I fought the urge to call time on the run and plump for a pint in one of the pubs hugging the river.

I'm glad I resisted because after one final hill, it was over. Back in Hebden, we tucked into tea and bacon butties at the village café, buoyed by a real sense of achievement after 17 miles and three hours of running, including an elevation gain of 435 metres. After an afternoon of resting, a walk into Ripon and a sampling of some local beers before dinner, I slept like a log, barely registering that there was still one more run to go.

Sunday dawned, grey and damp – the last of the three runs. Rolling myself out of bed, I considered the near impossible. If walking hurt as much as it did, what would running be like?

I was pleasantly surprised. An hour run through woodlands and by the river in Masham allowed us just enough time to sample the delights of the Black Sheep brewery, celebrating our achievements with a local beer and toasting our absent friend, Louise.

I’d run my marathon. In fact, I'd done 28 miles over the weekend. And, thanks to Dave, Martin and my partner, I was still smiling - even if, when I woke up the next day, I realised quite how apt the name Jelley Legs really was.

• Jelley Legs (jelleylegs.co.uk) provides a series of trail running weekends, starting from £189 per person, as well as accommodation on a bed and breakfast basis.

•Hannah Storm is a journalist and media safety expert who was brought up in Malton and went to school in York.

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