I haven’t done this race since 2011 so I thought that it was about time that I revisited it & get a Xmas pudding for Xmas day. The only problem was that I was still having back issues following my crash at the MTB race the previous month so I hadn’t done much running since then.
The day was absolutely awful.
It was blowing an absolute gale & chucking it down with rain. Where the course is based around the country lanes near Christchurch, we did a reccie of the course in the car before the event because they had changed the start & finish area since I’d last done it. We found that the course was proper flooded in about three places. We found a spot not too far from the start area for Nikki to park the car. Within the first 600mtrs of the start we were ankle deep in water. This was looking to be more like a cross country event rather than a road race. The next event of the race was as we were going along a very narrow & muddy only to hear an ambulance with his blues & twos on behind us so we had to clamber up a bank because the lane wasn’t wide enough for runners & the ambulance. I then had more floods to get through, one being shin deep through a ford & a real strong headwind heading towards the finish. All this event for a poxy Xmas pudding!!! It was all good fun though as well as character building. #verycold&wet
My time was 46:14 & 94th overall
We are now into the New Year – 2018 here I come.