Great South Run

This year we ‘illegally’ attach both our timing chips to my number and then I start the race on behalf of both of us. I run the first five miles before removing my number and handing it with the chips to L who has her own now ‘unchipped’ number on. In return she hands me The Lad, hereafter known as the Baton.

While my Strava only shows half of the Great South route with me disappearing into a puff of smoke at 5 miles their tracker does have me finishing the course this year, arm in arm with L as we cross the line together.

Brewers 10k

Today it’s our warm-up race for next weekend’s Great South Run. We run the Brewers 10K in Burton which is a new closed roads race starting and finishing at the Pirelli stadium, the home of Burton Albion Football Club. The route took us through Stretton and Rolleston before returning to the Pirelli Stadium.

I take it easy, because I don’t have any choice these days, and finish in 56 minutes. Then I head off to get the Lad out of the car so that we can cheer L in. Unfortunately the days of having a nice buffer of time between the two of us finishing are long gone and we have to yell our support from a distance across the car park as we can’t get back to the course in time.

We get a t-shirt and a medal that they described as being made of eco-friendly wood but surely it's a beer mat. It looks like a beer mat to me and that's surely what you should get from something called the Brewers 10k in what used to be the brewing capital of the UK e.g. before they closed nearly all the breweries and soon the National Brewery Centre as well.