Race 7 - Hamsterley Forest 10K –
Sun 6th July 2014
A week after the Hadrian’s Wall Half Marathon, 6 Grand
Prix competitors showed the well established Blyth characteristic of failing to
learn and showed up for the Hamsterley Forest 10K in
deepest County Durham. They were joined by one of the survivors of the
previous week’s St Cuthbert’s Way Ultra (huge respect to Graeme for this), two
other Grand Prix competitors and two other members who had obviously decided
that this would be a fun way to spend a Sunday morning.
‘Fun’
was not the first word that sprang to mind when, shortly after the start, we
turned right and were faced with several hundred yards of serious uphill
running. After completing a swift downhill and a couple of kilometres of
almost flat (by comparison) stuff, it was downhill and through an ankle-deep
and three- or four-pace wide stream and then up the second big hill. Not
quite as steep as the first one, but it made up for it with extra distance.
Another serious leg-muscle burner.
Those
who made it to the top of the second hill without having half killed themselves
actually had a very pleasant last four kilometres to run, with plenty of scope
to make up for some of the time lost. After not far short of 500 feet of
climbing, there had been lots of that.
This
race was actually pretty well organised (despite the delayed start) and very
well and enthusiastically marshalled. As with all trail races, there were
places where you just had to run at the pace of the person ahead of you, but to
be honest there weren’t many of these and I, for one, was very happy not to
have to try to run any faster than that at times. The only obvious
downside was that the insects were seriously gorging themselves on all of the
unprotected flesh, but I suppose that we should have expected that in a forest
in the middle of summer.
The
full results can be found on the Event
Website.
|
Pos. |
Race Pos. |
Name |
Cat |
Time |
Div. |
Pts. |
|
Pos. |
Race Pos. |
Name |
Cat |
Time |
Div. |
Pts. |
|
1 |
16 |
Robbie Barkley |
M40 |
40:02 |
1 |
7 |
7 |
62 |
Heather Christopher |
F40 |
46:55 |
3 |
6 |
|
|
2 |
22 |
Graeme Stewart |
M |
41:47 |
2 |
7 |
8 |
78 |
David Roberts |
M50 |
47:38 |
4 |
8 |
|
|
3 |
26 |
Calum Storey |
M |
42:36 |
2 |
6 |
9 |
99 |
Terry McCabe |
M50 |
49:11 |
- |
- |
|
|
4 |
32 |
Ian Baxter |
M40 |
43:28 |
2 |
5 |
10 |
117 |
Claire Calverley |
F |
50:52 |
4 |
7 |
|
|
5 |
42 |
Shaun Dodd |
M40 |
45:01 |
2 |
4 |
11 |
147 |
Ralph Dickinson |
M50 |
54:10 |
4 |
6 |
|
|
6 |
45 |
Martin Gaughan |
M50 |
45:23 |
- |
- |
12 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Total
No. of finishers :- 265 |
||||||||||||||
Mistakes/corrections etc.,
please contact Steve Walker by clicking on the link.