2017 RR10 season

Race 1 - Royal Victoria Country Park
A good blast around the course to start the season, with an exciting finish at the end.  24th position, finished in 27:56.

Race 2 - Stoney Cross
No run - RRR get to sit this one out.

Race 3 - Wilverley
No run.  This is one of my favourites, but a work do got in the way.  Grr.

Race 4 - Blackfield
A frantic tear around in blinding low sunshine.  I set off a bit fast and was clinging on for dear life by the end.  26th place in 29:42.

 

Race 5 - Fleming Park 

The familiar parkrun route with some added bells and whistles.  A great chase at the end.  23rd place.

Race 6 - Manor Farm

Everyone boiled on the longest and hottest day of the year.  I almost beat Matt Brown!  25th place, 32:45.

Race 7 - Whiteley

A mad scramble through weaving forest tracks and a pelting final km downhill.  21st place, the best yet. 28:57.

Race 8 - Janesmoor Pond

No race - this is RRR's turn to host.

Race 9 - Itchen Valley

Sodden ground made this a terrific technical race.  Great fun, and a strong finish.  22nd place, 27:51.

Race 10 - Hursley

The last run of my 40s!  Managed to knock out another 21st place in 26:35.

Race 11 - Wide Lane

A brand new course for RR10, but this is beefed-up version of the old Eastleigh parkrun route.  Flat and fast; finished the season in 25th place with a time of 30:15.

Results
Here are the overall season's results. 24th overall and 8th M40. 

My M40 results have been slipping (3rd in 2015, 5th in 2016) but that's not so surprising with (a) my advancing years and (b) all the new 40 year olds arriving on the scene each year.  Next year I'm chasing a top 3 M50 overall result.

Thank you, all you RR10 organisers - this is a super, friendly, tough race league.

Bridport Jurassic Coast 2017

The Lovely Mrs S, Brenda and I made up an RRR trio, leaving home at a brisk hour to get to West Bay soon after 9.  The place was rapidly filling up with people for a big carnival day.  We soon realised that the race was a minor detail in the day, and we had to work quite hard to find the registration desk and decipher the route.  At the briefing we were assured that the course was jam-packed with marshalls and signs. Or were they?

Off we went, a mix of 10k and half marathon runners, first a dog leg on the promenade and then up the first hill.

This was full-on Dorset landscape.  Lots of climbing, a few narrow lanes with nettles and brambles and plenty of stiles and kissing gates. After a few minutes two guys edged ahead of me, one broadcasting awful music from a phone on his arm.  We stayed together for the whole of the first lap. As we approached Seatown, at the far end of the first lap, we were utterly confused about where to go, with marshals waving rather uncertainly in a general direction as we tried on angle and then another.  Capital FM Man charged up the monster hill to Thorncombe Beacon, and I was doubtful that he was pacing it right.  Sure enough, he dropped away after the first lap.

The hill to Thorncombe Beacon

Into the second lap, and I was feeling OK, but the hills were starting to make themselves known to my legs and was going uphill with a little less gusto. The third runner (Chris Miller, as I later learned) got ahead of me but I held on to him.  We saw other runners around us but I couldn't tell how many were ahead.

Into the final few km, and I tried to capitalise on the gentle downhill sections.  I'm not normally a fan of laps, but having a clear sense of the course to the finish was really helpful.  There was one last big hill to go... on the first lap I had managed to run up it, and I was hopeful of keeping a decent pace for the final furlong.

Chris was walking it!  I got in line behind him for a minute or so and then managed to heave into a run, everything hurting horribly.  Up to the crest of the hill and then a charge down the gravel track to West Bay, bellowing warnings to the poor walkers who were quite unaware.

And then on to another dogleg section on the promenade.  I was terrified of Chris overtaking me and heaved myself onwards.  This was wonderful, full-throttle racing.  I had several near-misses with pedestrians wandering around with icecreams and admiring the classic car show, my hoarse yelling adding to the exhilaration I was feeling.  Then around a final bend and over the line I flaked out on a pavement.

Someone approached me and told me I had been beaten by a lady.  I sort-of knew that, as I'd see a lady right at the front of the pack, but didn't really understand why she was telling me.  Slowly I became aware that I was first male, second place.  What a result, and huge kudos to Ruth Barnes for an astonishing run.

Here are the results and here are my own stats.  Sue, Brenda and I had all enjoyed a fabulous race, and we'll be back again for sure.

Twist 10k

A funny old event, this.  A super multi-terrain race in the chalk hills of Oxfordshire; a lovely course, well marshalled, friendly... but it was all a bit quirky, the pre-race info was all over the place and it was a bit unclear who was organising it.

Poor Mrs S was suffering from a bad knee so she came along as support crew.  I was feeling less than energetic before the start and my warm up was a rather desultory trundle about Kingsclere playing fields. The race numbers were in multiple colours but this signified nothing more than what digit the number began with.

The course was actually very simple: head south, climb up an almighty chalk escarpment (the same hill, but in a difference place, that I'd run at the Hoppitt last month), buzz around on the nights for a while, then zoom downhill and then charge about a bit to the finish.

The hill was great fun, and contrary to my expectations, I managed to keep running all the way.  It was the final slightly-uphill ridge run that I found most debilitating. After a few tussles around half way round I was on my own.  In the second half we overlapped with the Hoppitt course, including the finish where I had been as broken as I can remember after a race; this time I was feeling good.

Synchronised arms, about 1km in

Time for a bit of mime on the way down the big hill.

Close to the finish we passed a beautiful old mill, which was in familiar territory as we had parked close by.  We had the option of going through the millstream or on a boardwalk around it; walking to the start, the boardwalk looked fine, but in the dying stages of a race there was no question of doing anything but charging through the water and avoiding the narrow, wet planks.

Emerging from the mill stream

And then back to the finish line, dodging the 5k runners.  I finished in 41:00, but somehow managed to miss getting on to the results, which are themselves a triumph of idiosyncrasy.  I think I was 13th. A charming, off-beat and slightly bonkers event - great fun!