What a week to try to get back into this!
The latest round in the RRC Club Championships was the late replacement for the delayed Darwen Half Marathon around the closed rural roads of Wilmslow.
On a near perfect running morning with only the slightest breeze 14 women and 15 men made the most of the conditions on a lovely, closed road route with barely anything that a Ramsbottom local would recognise as a hill.
The start is oddly suburban and residential and there was an amount of sympathy for the locals being woken up on Sunday morning by the megaphone wielding race announcer - if you know you know! This quickly leads to pleasant B roads and the slower pace of a longer race allows runners to enjoy the surrounding countryside as it "flies by."
The locals weren’t exactly lining the streets but there was a healthy amount of support popping up along the course with marshals and drink stations being supported by local scout groups. For a race of this size the only disappointments to me were the anxiety inducing queue for registration, which led to a 10 minute delay and the awkward finish line area that really didn’t make hanging around to offer support very easy to do.
Performance wise it was an incredible day of personal success for far too many to keep up with, but a quick glance at clubmates Strava revealed a flock of PB’s including Neil Rothwell, Neil McRobert, Alice Bernstein, Sarah Sutcliffe, Eve Hart, Katy Whitwell, Tom White, Nigel Hartley, Fiona Chick and Matt Hardy.
Special mentions also go to Vanessa Lobb and Chris Swainson who abandoned personal ambitions to guide and pace and to Andrea Sidebottom who smiled and selfied her way around her first ever half marathon.
Elsewhere Caroline Stackhouse-Evans also did a grand job of completing her first half marathon in Stafford.
Saturday’s parkrunners popped up in all the usual places along with ultra-tourist Paula Jones visiting Trentham Gardens, Richard Thatcher and Sarah Clarke heading for Tyne Green and Adrian Booth checking out Chadderton Hall.
The full list of RRC parkrunners can be found here.
There will be glaring omissions here so please share any of the previous week’s achievements in the comments.
Last but not least, belated congratulations to Run Leader Dean Corrie for a Chester Ultra PB in preparation for his epic Summer Spine Race challenge later in the year.
