Tadley 5

This was the first official, paid-up race that The Lovely Mrs S had ever done, and a brand new venue for me, so it was with some anticipation that we left home on a foggy morning and headed for Tadley, a village in north Hampshire.

I hadn't properly checked out the venue on the map, and the fog was properly dense in places.  The result was that we were short on time and had a rather fraught moment stuck in circles on the awful ring road system of Basingstoke.  That done, we arrived at race HQ, pinned on our numbers and jogged the mile or so to the start.  The sun was just breaking through and a sparkling winter day was emerging.

The race director gave a rather sarcastic and grumpy welcome by bemoaning the fact that the race could no longer go through the water meadow 'because of some weird moth', and was altogether seemed a bit of a prat.  But the race was excellent. A proper gallop through fabulous countryside, with lots of technical stuff; muddy tracks, overhanging branches, tight turns and exciting gullies.  A bunch of people raced off at the start and I had fun picking several of them as the race progressed.

In the final minutes there were three of us together; me, another bloke in his 40s and a very young girl. I was just behind them for a while, then overtook the bloke and waited for my opportunity to get ahead... but both of them shot ahead of me in the final km and I fruitlessly chased them to the finish line. I was in 5th place, which I was pleased about after a suffering a lousy virus and lungfuls of glue in November, but huge plaudits to Izzy Fry, aged 16, who was second.  Here are the results and the Garmin stats.

Mrs S came home a few minutes later after a terrific first-ever race.  A super event and a lovely morning of fresh air and muddy legs.