Race Date: Sunday 18th September 2022 (46.7 miles, 6427 feet)

5 hardy souls met race director, Andy Green, at 6.30am outside the Rag and Bone on Weedon Street for the alternative start to the 10th edition of the Sheffield Way. This was to be my 7th successive running of the route and add in a walk a couple of years ago and a clockwise route in April, it would be my ninth circumnavigation of Sheffield.

The first question of the morning was as we were doing the Ultra, did we need to do the first loop? Of course was the response. So off we went saying farewell to Mr Green for all for 2 minutes or so before we passed him again.

The 5 starters soon became a group of four as Tom Beaumont of Totley AC sped off on his own to record a record breaking time of 7.42.37 and become the fastest runner to complete the course. Awesome achievement. Well done Tom

The other 4 of us plodded round the course in gentle style. Luke and Warren for the first time and Matt for the second time. We started brightly and chatted our way through legs 1 and 2. Leg 3 was still ok but it started getting harder during leg 4. Fortunately Steve Haake joined us for legs 4 and 5 and his enthusiasm lifted everyone’s spirits.

With Steve being an old hand at the course, Luke and I decided to stretch our legs a bit on leg 5 and put a bit of speed on. We managed to pass 5 teams from the mass start from Ford at 2pm which we were happy about.

We soon arrived at the best red post box in the city as it signifies less than a km to go. When we arrived at the canal basin, Tom was nowhere to be seen. He’d been and gone. Warren, Matt and Steve arrived about 20 minutes after us.

It was an excellent performance from Warren who had to dig very deep to complete his first ever Ultra. Great performances from all 5 of us today and hopefully we can encourage more people to complete the ultra next year.

Striders results: