On a trip to a family lunch in Hinkley, Sue and I stopped off on Saturday morning at Rosliston to take part in their 331st parkrun. The rain that had accompanied us all morning persisted as we jogged around the course. There were some deep puddles.
I was 88th out of 105 finishers. The marshals at the finish had a long wait for some of those finishing after me...
Full results are
here. We were slow, but despite that I came first in my age category, and Sue was second female (out of 35).
Mick and Gayle, TGO Challenge stalwarts who live nearby, were at the finish to greet us, and spend a quality hour of catching up in the adjoining cafe. Great coffee and cake - thank you Mick.
As you can see, it was a day of full waterproofs - not the most appropriate clothing for a fast run!
The 5km route is somewhat convoluted. We kept coming across familiar looking marshals from different directions. Not to mention the familiar water features.
Sunday morning: drive through heavy rain to Knutsford for the Tatton Yule Yomp that was cancelled last year due to icy conditions. It was raining, mostly lightly, for this 10km cross country yomp.
Jan joined us at the start, and I won a dog in a raffle.
Fancy dress was the order of the day.
I left my fancy dress at home as it gets very heavy in rain and I find 10km quite hard anyway these days. There were over 1800 entries, of whom 1141 turned up and finished. Here we are at the start.
I started at the back and took it easy as we jogged along in slippery grass and mud beside the lake.
I while later, the runners got very spread out. I chatted with Ian Blakebrough for a while. He's a Hash House Harrier so I thought he might know our friend JJ. But he didn't. We passed a very jolly marshal, resting happily on her prosthetic legs.
A rather cumbersome Christmas cracker was outpacing me at this point, but I'm told by Louise (Practice Manager at my dentists) that they had the misfortune of falling over in a swamp a bit further on. All, including Louise, were apparently traumatised by the whole experience and will stick to road events in the future!
Just 2km to the finish, and my quickest kilometre of the event.
Sue was nearly half an hour ahead of me.
We were joined by Alister Pooler in the cafe, as well as Jan and his friends who kindly adopted my newly acquired dog.
Jan had been rather careless on the way around. His knee was dripping, but at least he didn't damage any trousers.
The following screen dumps show our results, which are also
here, and the route. Note that the figure of 1832 participants is misleading, as only 1141 of them actually took part and finished.
Great fun! (But not for Louise!)
Nice medal...