Report by Stuart Jones

Race Date: Sunday 6^th August

A top-class field of runners saw two Steel City Striders face off against one former Percy Pud winner, one former UK Cross Country champion, one Kenyan athlete fresh from high latitude training, the fourth ranked UK female at 10k, and a crocodile and a giraffe amongst 1,600 others.

A fairly straight-forward two-lapper round the west side of the birthplace of the railways, with no outstanding features. It is close to my new home in the north east, and it runs past my sister’s front door, so I had to do it at some point. It does have PB potential and there is little elevation gain and the roads are fairly wide. It does also have some small drawbacks;

Water was provided via ‘ooho’, a seaweed-derived pod that is entirely edible. Despite decent pre-race publicity, they were clearly a surprise to many. (That’s actually where the name ‘ooho’ comes from – the surprise as a pod is popped in the mouth.) I remember Everything’s Going Green once describing how hard it was to clean up discarded energy gels from the route of the Sheffield Half, but this must have been worse. Many people took one, and, instead of swallowing, spat out the silky outer skin. Perhaps they were left to biodegrade, but cleaning up would be ghastly.

Bag drop was seriously slow, and inconveniently indoors, and upstairs. Staffed by only one person, and organised with a duplicate system of wristbands and tags and having to write your phone number on, it was not ideal.

Character costumes. While we both managed to beat the foam giraffe, both Ollie and I were beaten by a runner dressed as a crocodile. He (the man in a velour dressing-up outfit) even entered as a member of the running club, ‘Crocodile R Us’. The indignity of it.

First male: Martin Mumu Musayoka (Run Nation / Kenya) in 28:45
Second: Omar Ahmed (Birchfield / Ethiopia) in 28:46
Third: Calum Johnson (Gateshead Harriers) in 29:25
First female: Jasmine Wood (Durham City Harriers) in 34:58

Striders