John 'Tommo' Thompson Memorial Ride

The conditions were a touch Autumnal for the John 'Tommo' Thompson Memorial Ride today. e.g. it was well chilly and it looked like it was going to bucket it down any moment. I think the aim by most people, us included, was to get up to the start at Carsington Water and get on with asap before the heavens opened.

As it happened they opened almost immediately after we had started but thankfully only lightly. It then fined up and stayed dry until we were safely in the car heading home afterwards. I hear some of the folk on the longest route weren't so lucky.

The route, around the Peak District and the Staffordshire Moorlands, consisted of hills, hills and more hills. Bloody hard it was. I got the distinct impression that the organisers did not attempt to avoid any climbs whatsoever and even went out of their way to find the most fearsome ones.

The route took us over part of the Ashbourne Half Marathon course that I did last year. I couldn't believe I managed to run up those hills.

I attempted the 76k route, L did the 45k. Both had a feed station at Thorpe but by differing routes. I beat L there by ten minutes over a slightly longer route but then her shorter route home beat me back to the finish.

In between I had an altercation with a wasp, that kindly embedded itself in my face by it's sting as I bombed downhill at something approaching 40mph. There it hung there laughing as I attempted to either shake it off or to slow down and stop. Eventually I managed the later putting my leg down on a verge resplendent in deep nettles in the process. Double ouch. I nearly hit the tarmac but managed to stay upright, just or else that would have been a triple ouch.

The sting wasn’t pleasant and started to swell up pretty quickly, I always get a reaction to stings but it didn’t get really bad until much later. After I had valiantly completed the course and got back to Carsington where there was plenty of very welcome tea and cake.

Ashbourne Half Marathon

I missed the deadline for advance entries for the Ashbourne Half Marathon, so we turn up nice and early to enter on the day. Which was a good thing really, as it seems they will reach the 300 race limit. L isn’t running the half but is instead meeting up with a friend who’s local to Ashbourne to do her daily 5k. Did I mention that her latest ‘challenge’ is 5k a day?

Meanwhile my latest challenge is upon me and starts with a one mile hill climb. This isn’t as bad as it sounds as at least we're all nice and fresh for this first test of the day. Then there’s a long downhill followed by a similar climb at around three miles as we go out to Thorpe village and past Thorpe Cloud before a descent to Ilam village.

The real test comes at about six and a half miles which involves a steep half mile climb up to Blore. Then after that, Wa-hey, it’s pretty much flat and downhill to the finish, with just the one minor uphill blemish on the landscape.

In fact, OMG, these last five or so miles are well fast. At least the group of seven I’m in are. A group I stay with until the last mile when the elastic keeping me with them snaps spectacularly.

In this group was a young lady with unfeasibly tight shorts who chats to everybody, tells them how hard it is and then drops them. She does this to me as well. Don’t you just hate people like that.

Perhaps she read my blog from the other day, which L said was rather sexist because I referred to the runner I met on the street as ‘only’ a girl. Well I’m sure this one thought ‘only a man, and an old one at that’ as she whizzed past us all. What goes around comes around.

My club shirt gets some comments, so much so that I may not wear it again. Not that is gets out much anyway, this is only its second outing ever and the other one was on the Hebrides. I’m only wearing it today because the club I’m in (and I use the phrase loosely) has this race as part of its club championship. People in similar vests keep welcoming me to the club because they haven’t seen me before. I feel like the new boy and I think I’d like to go back to being anonymous.

It’s all very well marshalled and there are plenty of drink stations, although the water is in cups, which probably costs me a minute overall, as I stop five times for a drink. I simply cannot drink from cups on the move. They also have sponges and I love a good sponge, I take three. Not at the same time though.

There were a lot of spectators, although the majority of these were tourists, who were more bemused rather than supportive. My time 1:41:20 is twenty seconds quicker than Wolverhampton the other week, so I must be doing something right.