Worksop Half Marathon

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It is somewhere near the top of L’s bucket list to go to Greenland, so we could have been at the Polar Circle Half Marathon in Nuuk today. Although that does look a bit of a serious undertaking weather wise. There’s a more terra firma based one in August that might be more appropriate for us. So no Nuuk this year, so we’re at Worksop instead which isn’t quite so exotic but almost as challenging weather wise. They warn us of puddles on the course which was a massive understatement. I have to alternate between breaststroke and front crawl as we pass through one of them.

Worksop is a very popular race despite the horrifically spooky t-shirt and it’s packed at registration. Parking was also a little fraught in the centre of Worksop even though it was a Sunday morning. I thought I’d done this before but it turns out I hadn’t. L certainly has.

It’s all on closed roads and takes in a large chunk of Clumber Park where I find myself reprising sections of the Clumber Duathlon run course. Whereas it’s quite a twisty route inside the park there are quite a lot of long straight section outside of it.

Apart from that, the overriding impression is that the whole thing seems to be slightly uphill from the start right through to mile 12. At which point the course does most definitely descend to the finish. Any other downhill sections mid-course we’re clearly very subtly indeed.

To take your mind off all this they have a quarter mile section just after mile eight which is littered with numerous humorous signs. After which you lose your humour completely as it goes uphill again at mile ten.

After a good start and sub 8:00 miles, the terrain wears me down and I’m hitting close to 9:00 by the time I finish in a time of just over 1:50.