Folksworth 15

Today we run the 31st Folksworth 15 organised by Yaxley Runners with a field of 500 runners.

Note to self. If we do this race again arrive early, very early. I mean we aren't exactly late but everyone is far more clued up than us meaning all the nearby parking has already been taken by the time we arrive. We are directed out of the village, out to the 14 mile point and then down a country lane where we park on a grass bank. It would be a long walk back to Race HQ but the organisers have kindly laid on a car to get us there. Obviously we need to go ready to race, so we take a bag with us to drop in the baggage store.

Once at the Race HQ, which is the local school, we pick up our numbers and are then faced with a 15 minute walk\jog to the start, three quarters of a mile away. As it’s a two lap course it begs the question why not remove the walk to the start and call it 16 miles? I'm sure there's a reason...

It's a cold day and icy underfoot in places. I think many races would have been cancelled given the way we had to slither down some of the hills, so I'm thankfully that the organisers had the guts not to call this one off. We needed the run even if we do have to skate parts of it although apparently despite the conditions someone broke the course record.

The 15 miles, with its three challenging hills per lap, is a decent test of where my marathon training is at. If intend to run my marathon at 9:00 pace again, or hopefully better, then to not drop below 8:50 here and to average 8:15 is definitely promising as I finish, back at the school, in 2:03:45.

Afterwards I get a lift back to the car and release the dogs. Then the three of us clap everyone else, including L, through 14 miles just as they head up the final hill to the finish.

Sherwood Pines New Year 10k

On Sunday we head up to Sherwood Pines for their New Year 10k, which is organised by those nice people at Nice Work. It is a nice leg stretch on a route that contains a lot of the Sherwood Pines parkrun.

They mess up on the course though. It starts near the café and the opening straight leads you on to a circular course which you do once for the 5k or twice for the 10k before finishing with the same straight section to the finish.

Mathematicians among you will have immediately noticed that the total length of the 10k therefore cannot be twice the length of the 5k. It would require another out and back of the straight\finish section to be so, therefore one of the distances is going to be inaccurate. This clearly is the 10k which ends up being only 9.5k. Which makes my time of 47:22 look even worse.

As we’re both marathon training, we then grab the dogs and do another 5k-ish lap of the course, just for fun.