The slightly crazy guide to getting back into running….
Don’t run more than once a week for a couple of months, and only do about 20minutes round a field because it hurts. Get a bit fed up, so enter a 10km off road race. All very sensible so far.
Turn up on a lovely Saturday evening, do very little in the way of warm ups, then go for a nice gentle trot around the field with your fellow runners. Then try and stay with Terry, then, well, it all goes a bit pear shaped.
Paths, road, hills, mud, grass and every other surface and incline you could think of later, and we hit a large hill (it may not have been so very large had I not been struggling, if it weren’t near the end and had Scott not gone bounding past me with enough breath left to ask how my 4pm lunch was doing – not very well!). This gave way to a gentler incline, jolly good, on sand….. anyone who has tried to run on dry sand will know how difficult it is, especially when Terry streaks past to join Scott as they move, seemingly unaffected by the under foot conditions, further ahead of me.
Happily, I knew where we were, and I also knew that this was the last incline, flat and down was all I had to cope with, and a water station would soon be peeping into view. I kept going, out onto the road, through the golf course, round the cricket pitch, then heard Sue and Rachel Ward shouting me on, and I had to dig deep to keep running at anything like a decent pace… The road section which followed was shorter than I’d remembered and I was soon into the final field with Kelly, Rachel P., Oscar and Jasper shouting and barking all the runners home.
A fairly respectable 46:36 by my watch, I was shattered, hot and a touch dehydrated, but most importantly all limbs and muscles had held out for the duration – hurrah!
The details of the course have blurred a bit, but I enjoyed the vast majority of it, and thankfully didn’t have to negotiate any stiles. The support was great and marshalls fantastic, definitely one for next year.
Linda
Photos here. Results here.
| Place |
Time |
Name |
Cat |
Ent No |
Posn |
| 44 |
0:44:47 |
PARTRIDGE, Scott |
Male Vet 40 |
300 |
44 |
| 50 |
0:45:23 |
DOHERTY, Terry |
Male Vet 50 |
40 |
50 |
| 59 |
0:46:36 |
HOWELL, Linda |
Senior Ladies |
182 |
59 |
| 66 |
0:46:48 |
HOPKINS, Stephen |
Male Vet 45 |
281 |
66 |
| 95 |
0:49:56 |
SPRAWSON, Mark |
Senior Men |
299 |
95 |
| 106 |
0:50:34 |
BEAVERS, Graeme |
Male Vet 45 |
190 |
106 |
