Race Date: Saturday 18^th March 2023

Race report by Dave Beech

This event, organised by the It’s Grim up North team, is in fact a series of races all starting and finishing at Kirkstall on the Leeds-Liverpool canal. Each of the races – ultra, marathon, 20 miler, half marathon, 10 miler, 10km and 5km – is an out and back route along the canal towpath through some beautiful West Yorkshire countryside towards Saltaire.

Lisi and Dave – enjoying the canal canter!

Lisi Briggs and I ran in the 20 mile race and the club was also represented in the marathon by John Eggington and Hannah Murton, half marathon by David Hewitt and 10k by Hannah Wright. For Lisi this was her longest ever race and despite slowing down in the second half of the race she finished a creditable 12^th female. I finished 4^th male, John finished 10th male, Hannah Murton 5th female, David 28^th male and Hannah Wright was 21^st female in our respective races.

Anyone who has entered a Grim up North event will be familiar with the quirkiness of their races which gives them their charm and appeal. The organisation isn’t as slick as that of one of the large city centre races rather they are low key, friendly events. The distances aren’t particularly accurate – in my race we got to run a bonus 0.3 miles on top of the 20 miles! For this event each finisher received a large blingey medal and there were plentiful supplies of hotdogs, chocolates, a drink and cakes too.

For the marathon:
Andrew Powers (unattached) won the race in 2:56:44 and Louise Murray (unattached) was first female in 3:35:02.  Striders results were as follows: