Ellesmere or Ellesmere Port?

Smiling but it's only 800 metres into the race!

Here's a cheerful photo from Sunday's Ellesmere 10K. We did this race 16 years ago (on a slightly tougher course!) I still have my result from all those years ago - I was 91st out of 243 in 42.18, this year I was 56th out of 711 in a time of 42.19! So having all this data to hand I decided (as is my wont)) to have a closer look at the statistics - this year 5% of the field finished the race in less than 40 minutes whereas in 2001 20% of runners were under 40 minutes. What does this all mean? Yes I was 1 second slower so I'm reasonably happy with my run but does the sub 40 data show that standards are declining? Or is it just that there are more runners and races nowadays? I looked some time ago at results for a long standing 10K at Rochdale - in 1990 over half the field finished in under 40 minutes (110 from 183 finishers) - in contrast this year on the same course, only 34 of 280 finishers were below 40 minutes. Well you'll just have to draw your own conclusions!

Thomas Telford lived in Ellesmere for a while. He was responsible for building the Ellesmere canal which was intended to link Ellesmere with the Rivers Severn and Mersey. At the Mersey junction there was a town that went by the name of Netherpool which was going to be the port that was planned to handle the increased traffic coming up the canal. So, in the spirit of things the town was renamed Ellesmere Port! Unfortunately the canal was never fully completed. Not one of Telford's greater achievements!