Report by: Cara Hanson

Race Date: Sat 5th Oct 2024

The RRR is an international trail event and this was the 41^st year of it being run.

It’s an undulating route with, about  800 m of climbing over 81km (50miles) through the South Yorkshire Forest (The area designated as The South Yorkshire Forest is mainly rural land rather than a vast area of woodland).  It’s a circular route going around the Rotherham borough and luckily no where near the town centre and is run on a mixture of terrain. The RRR is a qualifying event for next year’s LDWA 100-mile event. An optional 4 am start  provided a 20 hour time limit as required for 50 mile LDWA events. It is organised by the Rotherham harriers and the route was devised by their then club secretary Ralph Rowbotham, the race  is now in the hands of his son Stephen and wife Mary. It starts and finishes at Manvers Boat House and can be run as a relay or as a solo event. The solo event has a staggered start and you get to pick which time suits you best.

I entered the solo event along with my good friend Jemma and we were going to run together, as we’re really similar paces and obviously it would be more fun.  We opted for a 6:45am start,  we didn’t have a particular time goal but thought it would be nice to finish before it got dark, so that gave us about 12 hours.

I had my usual breakfast of poached eggs on toast with marmite and coffee. After ensuring I’d done the 2 x 2 rule (2 number 2’s) it was time to set off, I was getting a lift with Jemma and her Mum Sue who was supporting us by meeting us at all 7 aid stations,  an impressive challenge for her as well.  We had a quick wee and went to registration where we handed in a drop bag which would be taken to the half way point, in my bag I had a second pair of trainers and compression socks . We were given a t-shirt,  buff and a box of gels here too which we left with Sue, we also gave Sue a bag which she would take to the aid stations with spare food Lucozade, coke , t-shirts, vests and a battery pack in.  I was also carrying food and 2 litres of fluid, a mix of electrolytes, carbs and protein .

We were given a wrist band so we could check into all the aid stations,  this would give supporters a way to track us by seeing when we got to each aid station.  Then we were off, I won’t bore you with a blow-by-blow account of the route as that would take too long but we had a nice mix of terrain,  woodland trails, hard packed trails, tarmac, grass and fields some of which were freshly ploughed, the potato fields which were lined with ridges making it hard to run on for people with short legs like Jemma.  Our race strategy was spontaneous Jeffing,  meaning we’d walk the bits we saw fit to, such as the hills, ploughed fields and potato fields,  where there were no such things we decided where we were going to walk to but the main aim was to walk often to keep the heart rate down. This helped keep our energy levels high and our running was at a decent pace.

The route wasn’t marked but it was waymarked with signposts, see picture.  These were quite easy to miss but Jemma was in charge of spotting them and she did a great job. We had recced all the route in stages apart from the last 5k but I still had to follow the route on strava at points as it’s hard to memorise it all and I don’t have a fancy watch.

Throughout out the whole race Jemma and I seemed to be in sync with how we were feeling which most of the time we felt hyper, we were singing, making up random historical stories about the villages we passed through or maybe we were delirious. Other times we ran in a comfortable silence.

The aid stations were run by amazing volunteers with a good selection of food, especially the last aid station which seemed more like we had arrived at someone’s garden party, with the smell of a bbq a huge selection of food including Olive focaccia .  The only thing that would have made them better is if they’d have had coke at them all, luckily we had Sue on hand with the coke. I can’t thank Sue enough for her support.  I do think that eating food little and often and taking on fluids helped us stay strong throughout. As it was unseasonably hot, I also took on salt tablets which were a god send and even helped with my asthma by preventing dehydration.

I’m not going to lie the last 10 miles or so were pretty painful, a tight TFL muscle and glute resulting in IT band pain but I said to myself running for this long is going to be painful so just get on with it. Under normal circumstances the last couple of miles would have been soul destroying being on the ring road back to Manvers, with God knows how many roundabouts but we were so excited and couldn’t believe that we were going to be finished before 5.30pm. After a classic slow motion sprint finish we were done (see finish photo).

I can’t recommend this race enough, with the brilliant organisation and atmosphere and it would be great to get a striders team doing the relay next year.

Lastly I just want to say how proud I am of Jemma for totally smashing her first 50 miler , there’s no one I’d have rather have done this with .

Results
Solo
First man  Kevin Hoult (Calder Valley Fell Runners) – 7:10:00
First lady Susan Keens (Maltby RC) – 8:21:46

Team
First Male Team – WH Green Gods (Worksop Harriers) – 5:51:52
First Female Team – WH Green Goddeses (Worksop Harriers) – 7:20:37

Link to full results here.

Striders results: