At Loggerheads

Catch me if you can!

This me being chased by Dan and Paul at Joe Cooper's Loggerheads Trail 5K race. They tried hard but couldn't catch me, I finished in 5th place on a fine morning through the woods. On finishing my race (one lap) I ended up doing an extra lap as Joe asked me to go around again, catch up the last 10K runner (2 laps) and tell the marshals they could go home. Vicky was up for the two lapper and was well clear of the tail runner, her technique of going straight through puddles worked very well.

It's quicker down the middle.

 I did manage to get in a Parkrun the following weekend in Nottingham. Took this one steady - there was an absolute gale wafting down the long straight at the Forest Recreation Ground in Nottingham and I was hoping for a good time in the Vale of Clwyd 5K in the morning. I was wearing tracksters, a long sleeve vest, a short sleeve vest and two windproof tops and still wasn’t overheating (that’s me in green towards the left of the photo). But blow me down a snowstorm meant that the following day’s race was cancelled and I could have had a blast here! This was a friendly run in not the most salubrious part of Nottingham and I was particularly impressed at the vast number of Notts Women Runners in their purple tops - all with big smiles on their faces. I only found out after the event that this park has for many years hosted the Nottingham Goose Fair, one of the best known travelling funfairs in Europe. 

Brrrr!

The XC Season is Over - Hooray!

Underground Parkrun perhaps?

This is the second Parkrun run we've done at a venue that used to be a colliery, in this case it was the Rising Sun Colliery at Wallsend, near Newcastle on Tyne. One of the world's largest deep coalmines, it contained over 60 miles of tunnels and coal was hauled to the surface by pit ponies. Now it's a wildlife park home to various species of plant and birdlife, oh and a very popular Parkrun. Not much sun rising on this dark wet February morning though but we did scoot round quite rapidly to the finish to get out of the wind. I topped the age graders with 80.23% and a time of 21:05 - I thought I'd gone very well and the organiser told me that the course was actually "a wee bit over distance". Vicky  rushed round in 36:21 and promptly got changed into her work gear for a 10 am start at the office!

Certainly the muddiest cross country season I've ever encountered and we both completed all five fixtures earning first male V65 first and third lady V60 awards. I was also surprised to get a medal for our club being second team in the men's 2nd division hence gaining promotion - we turned out in force in the final fixture at Oswestry to pip Wrexham to the post.