25th March Young chicken, old cock or just oven ready?


Today I have just come back from completing the Chicken Run over in Hayfield, near Glossop. It is an event that is organised to raise finds for the delightful primary schook that is in the village. So my pain is their gain I guess. 

It's a race I did last year and I think at the time I vowed never to do it again. But either time is a healer or I my memory is shot and I forgot how hard it was when I entered it again. And I was in great form for the first 100 meters or so until the first short, sharp, steep and savage climb brought all my nightmares flooding back.

At just over 8 miles, the distance itself isnt too bad, but the majority of it is either up hills I would never be able to run up or down slippery rock or root strewn trails where my only thought was 'now don't go and do anything that means the Mountain Rescue have to be called out John!!' Thankfully I didnt.

Running on a morning where we literally had all four seasons in the space of a couple of hours, the Chicken Run is in a sense two races within one with a 10km or 13km option, called unsurprisingly 'fowl' and 'fowler' (nor named after Robbie I don't think). And oh it was so tempting to cutail my 13km route in favour of the shorter option when we came to the split point, but foolishness over rode common sense and so I plodded gainfully (and very slowly) up the second awful hill that greeted the second hald of the race.

Thankfully what goes up has to come down although never for as long as the uphill sections appear to last. It was good to see (and run alongside for a while) some familiar faces from the Hucknall and Youlgrave running clubs. And I even managed to finish ahead of one familar face from the Matlock Running club!!.

All in all I managed to 'almost' equal the snail like tme I took to complete the run last year so I'll take that as an almost win being a year old and definitely not a year wiser.

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