16th October A morning off the treadmill


Off the treadmill of preaching every Sunday Morning and out into the hills. The rolling, undulating and beautiful hills around Alstonefield in Derbyshire to be precise, in the area of the Peak District known as the 'White Peaks'. 

I was here to run a race that had been postponed and moved on numerous occasions since 2020 due to the pandemic but which finally took place today on the most glorious October morning. 

Organised by Dark and White trail runners it was a just over 9 mile saunter through an area that I hadn't run in before and I have to admit that 2/3rds of it were probably the most picturesque I have done in a long time. 

The other thing I like about the Dark and White events is that they have rolling rather than mass starts with small groups of runners setting off at 10 min intervals. This meant that by picking one of the early slots, even at my pedestrian pace I would still have people to run with as the later (and faster) runners caught me up. Which they did.

As one migh expect in the Peak District, there was lots up ups, some rather slippery downs (I only fell once), some lovely contouring around the side of hills and even a plod along a disused railway line. And so what if some of the runners didn't appear to be carrying all the required kit as stated by the organisers, it probably just helps to explain why they ran faster than me.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

6th May Olbia

Image
  A chance to stretch our legs today with our first port of call; Olbia, Sardinia. And it was a quick stretch too due to it being only a five hour stay. Up bright and early, so early in fact that the hot food at the buffet wasn't even ready to be served. Still it gave us a chance to watch the ship glide into port past a host of oyster/mussel beds, before performing a 180 degree turn to reverse into it's berth. A couple of short bus rides later and we were in downtown Olbia. But there an hour or so before anything appeared to open, the disadvantage of being early birds and something we don't seem to learn! Not that Olbia had a great deal to see or maybe if we had done the slightest bit of planning beforehand there might have benn but we didn't. It was pleasant enough but that's about it. It was pleasant enough but nothing special, indeed we were back on the ship after just a couple of hours ashore and then managed to sleep away most of th...
Read more

7th May Naples

Image
 I'm sure I've heard the phrase 'see Naples and die' suggesting that it is perhaps not the nicest location in the Mediterranean but if it's good enough for Diego Maradona fir a few years then it's good enough for me for 10 hours. Although the millions of tax free pounds he was paid might have eased his stay. By the time we got up, washed, dressed and up to The Kitchens, the rest of the ship were already there. Compared to the Marie Celeste of yesterday it was absolutely packed, presumably with people having breakfast before heading out on 8am excursions, our excursion was simply going to be the city of Naples itself as possible trips to Vesuvius, Pompei or the Amalfi coast would have been too much / tired.  So on a day when the weather initially seemed uncertain, we jumped aboard route A for the Hop on Hop off bus and headed out into the mayhem that is the Napoli traffic where it was every van, car and scooter for the selves. I think it's bes...
Read more