Race Date: Sunday 28th May 2023
Raby Races is a multi-distance race event that consists of a 2.4k kids race, a 5k race and a 10k race where runners must do the 5k route twice. The race is put on by Teesdale Athletic Club (TAC) and is the second claim club of the one and only Stuart Jones, who is incidentally taking over a Race Director of the event next year.
Raby Castle is situated in County Durham, halfway between my in laws in Newton Aycliffe and Stuart’s new gaffe in Middleton-in Teesdale which represented the perfect opportunity for me to have a catch up with Stuart and escape my in laws for a night. The castle itself is the home of Lord and Lady Barnard who Barnard Castle is named after. The event was restarted post covid on their request and they let TAC have the grounds for free as a way of giving back to the local community etc.
As Stuart is taking over, he helped set up the event on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning and I helped as a way of paying for my bed and board. The step up involved us being driven around the route and hammering in signs for marshalling points 4 to 14 in grass verges etc on the Saturday, signs for points 1 to 3 and 15 could not be put in till the morning due to them being on deer grazing ground. We then returned at 7:30am on Sunday to hammer in the others and set up various things such as the start/finish funnel and Stuart had to remove deer poo using dog poo bags.
The timing of the 10k race was an unusual one, starting at 11am. The route can best be described as rural and stunning, being in the middle of rural County Durham and entirely within the castle grounds. Other race marshals who I met before had described the route as ‘hilly’ having a ‘mound of opportunity’ that was a kilometre in length and described as steep. By local standards it was a hill but by Sheffield standards it was a gentle incline, but it had a bit of a sting in the legs after doing it the second time round.
I took the race steady after deciding to ‘Give it the beans’ as my good friend Brian Jenkins says doing Albert Parkrun in Middlesbrough the day before, which I did in 23:39 (a post covid PB and fastest since last March (pre covid). I obviously got pulled into a few battles, one against a bloke who was running with a handheld Go Pro and chatting to it (I beat him) and another bloke from Darlington Quakers running club who I got chatting to on the way around. He just pipped me on the finish line, but I am really pleased he did, he only took up running at the age of 60, was a heavy drinker and smoker and at the age of 65 said that running had helped him give both up and become a lot more fit and healthy.
I wasn’t running incognito in the race BTW, I was running in our unofficial away kit and a member of Team Zebra, which is me and Stuart! It’s a long story and we had the vests done for the former Round Doncaster Run back in 2019.
There were 227 runners and the male race was won by Steve Rankin of Sunderland Harriers AC in 35.07. The female race was won by Charlotte Dillon of Houghton Harriers AC in 36.47.
Striders Results:
