Race Date: Sunday 23rd March 2025

Popular over the years with those targeting a spring marathon, ten Steel City made the fifty mile trip down the M1/A42 to the pleasant market town of Ashby de la Zouch. The organising club, Ivanhoe, really do pull out the stops to get this race going with support from other local clubs and organisations. Very well organised with an army of marshals the only real  downside is the total climb of nearly 1000ft on the undulating, two lap course. A nice touch were the t-shirts and tops, collected up after being dumped at the start, strung out on a washing line near the finish to enable their easy retrieval. Getting into the nitty gritty, the portable male urinals deter that species from disappearing into the bushes whilst also shortening the queue at the other facilities; why doesn’t the Percy Pud have these?

First of all, it’s important to salute club records set by Kate Waddicor (F70) and John Nicholson (M70) at a distance beyond the comprehension of many. Fine achievements whilst Kate was first F70 into the bargain. There were other positive experiences coming out of the race for some of the marathon hopefuls with first Steel City woman Kathryn Liddiard, despite being on the wrong end of some bird poo, finding “A bit  more confidence pace-wise for Boston (Mass) next month!” Laura Mella avoided the avian deterrents to remark “Really pleased with that! Haven’t run that far since October, so really chuffed to have got round in a quicker average pace than my marathon. Legs might not forgive me for a while though!” On an undulating course with nearly 1000ft of climb, similar to Stamford 30k, it’s difficult to judge where this performance sits in the overall scheme of things. However, first Steel City man, Phil Gregory did his Hamburg Marathon plans no harm with a pb of over thirty minutes for twenty miles.

There is also this cautionary tale regarding the use of the Garmin. “The plan was to run two minutes faster than last year, using the Average Pace on the Garmin in order to deal with the undulating course. With the narrow start a little way from the mustering area it’s important to get there early but this was the first failure as, getting stuck in the throng, it took well over a minute to cross the start line followed by a virtual fartlek over the first mile to get up to pace. This included negotiating some individuals from the same club running four abreast; akin to trying to get past the pacers at the Sheffield Half. Already forty seconds down by the first mile there’s no need to panic with another nineteen available to sort it out. Soon back on target pace all seemed well until ten miles when a little bit of easy maths seemed to suggest that the target would be missed by about a minute. It wasn’t until fifteen miles that the penny dropped for, with the earlier ducking and diving and usual GPS error, the watch was about 300m over distance giving a false impression of actual pace. Panic as am actually over a minute behind. Double panic, the last mile is uphill. Befuddled by mental arithmetic this was the last chance saloon but an unwanted push up that hill followed by a 1:47 final 400m, ironically calculated later from Strava, meant that the target was hit. Incidentally, this is eighteen seconds quicker than Dave Beech’s existing age group club record for twenty miles. This was indeed the last chance saloon as with Chris Ireland soon to move up an age group there will be no chance to get on the honours list, ephemeral as records are.”