Derby Ramathon

The weather conditions are much better for this year’s Derby Half Marathon but then last year’s had been put back to November where I nearly died of hypothermia waiting to get my bag back from the baggage tent. This year they have also restored the Ramathon name after needlessly removing it when they took over the running of the race in 2018. Unfortunately they've also added the name Derbion to the front of it, Derbion being this week's name for Derby's main shopping centre.

I am of course nowhere near fit enough for this race but I struggle on regardless. L is again doing the 5 miler and my Dad has come to support. We have dropped him off in the Market Place with a chair and instructions of where best to watch us both start and finish.

When I start he is in position but by the time L starts ten minutes later he’s gone AWOL. L retrieves him later from a café from where he’d headed to for a Full English. Which I’m sure was much enjoyable than watching us run.

The route is the same as usual. Out along the main roads to Elvaston, then through the Castle grounds before heading back along the river and through Pride Park.

I was relatively pleased with November’s run where I went from 8:30ish miles to 9:30ish miles and finished in 1:57. Here I start in the 9s and degrade into the 10s, struggling home in 2:04. Not the best.

Grimsthorpe Gallop

Time for a bit of Canicross. The Lad and I are running 10k at the Grimsthorpe Gallop. Whether this is good training or not for next week’s Ramathon I’m not sure but it seems to be the only training I'm doing.

It’s a chaotic start with an all dog field but this could have been much worse as there's only 20 of us. L gets to start later in the saner human field. The dogs are doing one of three distances. Four do 10 miles, nine do 5k and seven do 10k. 

The route is mostly off road with lots of grit paths which aren't really my forte. There's even a river crossing which we avoid and take the bridge but the photographer gets a really good photo of us that ends up on the results email. Pace wise the Lad keeps me at a 'reasonable' nine minute mile pace and stops me slacking.We finish 4^th in our category which obviously sounds good but is very mid table when there's only seven of you..