Race Date: Sunday 4^th February 2018

Report by: Stuart Carrack

It’s deepest, darkest February and the winter training miles are done … so what better way to test out the new legs than to spend a Sunday getting up at 7am to be greeted by 0c on the car dashboard for a quick drive up the M1 to Dewsbury for their annual 10km race.

Over 50 Striders took part in this race last year due to it being part of the Road Race Champs. This year it was still a strong Strider field, with 19 of us taking to the road up to Batley and back. Having done this race for the previous 2 years it’s a must on my race calendar to mark any progress before the races start coming back in thick and fast. With excuses for not PB’ing getting more limited.

Here’s hoping the race was actually 10km this year and hoooooray, it was … thank God for that.

After putting ourselves through 10km of hell (Aldi, Lidl, Tesco and Batley Frontier aka JD Gym) in the aim of a new shiny PB to start the year, we were then presented with our new race T-shirts, and what a T-shirt it was. ‘WAIT … is that a … CLOCK?!’

Rumour has it that the Striders legend Martyn Goldsack ran. Although I think he ran it 6 times just to keep up his race mileage masculinity intact … Dewsbury Ultra! There’s another rumour that James Fulcher dnf’d when he saw the t-shirt although he still turned up at training the following Thursday wearing one.

The race was won by Mohammad Abu Rezeq (Altrincham Athletic Club) for the 3^rd year running in 29:42. The first female to finish was Charlene Thomas (Wakefield Harriers) in 34:50.