Race dates:

Saturday 24^th February 2018 (230 runners)  Sunday 25^th February 2018 (234 runners)

These two trail half marathons are quite new additions to the racing calendar and are organised by Nice Work.

I pottered along on Sunday to the thoroughly delightful Carsington water near Ashbourne in Derbyshire.  It’s a great place to experience the outdoors – stunning views, lots of graceful landscape, a huge number of birds, all topped off (well, not literally) by positively brilliant cream scones.

The weather decided to put on a bit of a show on Sunday and I suspect Saturday was similar…  It was: a bit chilly – the birds (and runners, come to that) were huddling together; breezy (that’s Yorkshire for the occasional howling gale); sunny (briefly but not enough to nudge the thermometer up); blue of sky; threatening (but never actually) snowing/sleeting/raining; icy (you had to look for it, carefully).

The runners were the usual joyful bunch until they actually got out of their transport; the joy then became a bit – you’ve guessed it – frozen in place.  Things looked up a lot when we got on the coaches to the start; took a slight dip on leaving them and finally, all was well when we got started.

The route is great; right round the massive lake once, then a kilometre or two back and forth to the finish at the visitor centre.  The going was good although to this slightly struggling runner the “undulations” became “hills” at an early stage.

I had a couple of unusual incidents – the first was a chap whose shorts were descending – I mentioned this – in the interests of avoiding unnecessary distress to squirrels, rabbits, birds and possibly young children – and he said he knew of the problem.  I overtook (it was a downhill bit) and hope that distress was avoided.

The second was the rather delightful opportunity of seeing the race leaders coming towards me at a rate of knots in the dying kilometres of the race, including a very determined Caroline (see the results below).  Amazing experience to see first hand how fast people can run – friendly exchanges were dopplered!

The run was well organised and fun.

Results:

Saturday 24^th February 2018:

First man home:  James Buis of Border Harriers in 01:18:02

First woman home:  Jenny Laing of South Derbyshire Road Runners in 01:30:35

The full results are here; the Strider results:

P	Name	Cat	Time
3	Daniel Cubitt	Senior Male	01:26:27
63	Clive Downing	Male Vet 55	01:48:03
85	Liam Russell	Senior Male	01:51:42
98	Daniel Newton	Senior Male	01:54:34

Sunday 25^th February 2018:

First man home:  Paul Childs Black Pear Joggers in 01:19:50

First woman home:  Caroline Brock Steel City Striders in 01:27:26 .  Not only did Caroline win the women’s race but she beat the course record by just under 8 minutes.

The full results are here; the Strider results:

P	Name	Cat	Time
10	Caroline Brock	Senior Female	01:27:26
150	David Bownes	Male Vet 60	02:05:04

3/4 Saturday’s Striders

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