By: Darren Woolley

Race Date: 28^th April, 2024

Venue: Boston, Lincolnshire

So after recently joining the Steel City Striders I decided to venture on my first 10k, in Boston (Lincs).

After getting up in the middle of the night (as there was very little accommodation nearby) we decided to drive over early doors.
When I left the house and the weather was torrential. I thought, what have is signed up to here?!
We arrived with about 20 minutes to spare. Rosie was to be running the half marathon today, which I am nowhere near ready for, so opted for the 10k as my first.

So we were ready at the 8.15 am start time in Central Park and feeling quite nervous, but I was OK when I bumped into Colleen (another strider I had ran with before on the Wednesday night at the Hillsborough sessions).

The mayor blasted the starting horn, and away we went. Not realising my pace was a little too quick (not listening to Rosie’s advice previously) I had a glance at my watch, and decided to slow down a little. My pace was a little up and down until I started running with a nice chap called Nick, we were both moaning about the horrid weather and the musty cabbage smell coming from the farmers’ fields. (God I wish it had been sunny).

After traversing some huge puddles and encouraging some other runners to keep going, we had gotten to the 7k mark and hadn’t even realised. The scenery, although flat was quite nice when we got out into the countryside.

I was aiming to do my first 10k in about 1hr 15, maybe 1hr 20, and as we got to the 9k point I glanced at my watch, and I was looking to better this by quite some way, and much to my surprise I managed to do it in just over 1hr 2.

I think the only downsides to this today were the weather, and the bagging area not being covered, so all of our gear got drenched.

I was very happy with this time as a noob, and owe lots of thanks to the people who I have been running with over the past few months: Nicole Nield, Peter and Caroline Brash, but thank you but most of all Rosie Smith for getting me into running, and off my backside.

Huge congratulations to all of the fellow striders who were there today….

The Marathon was won by Jamie Hall (Hallamshire Harriers Sheffield) in 02:25:20 and Amy Southam (Ryston Runners) in 03:05:18 .

The Half Marathon was won by Ugur Altan (Belgrave Harriers) in 01:11:57 and Emma Brookshaw (York Knavesmire Harriers) in 01:34:03 .

The 10k was won by George Wilson (of no recorded club) in 00:31:45 and Georgina Weston (Charnwood) 00:38:16 .

Striders’ Results:

Marathon: