1st July A moral victory at Winster

Enjoying an early view of the scenery

On Thursday night it was the Winster Hll race, as part of the week long Winster Wakes. Only a few mins drive from TOM's and at a reasonable 4 mile undulating route it seemed too good an opportunity to miss. Especially on a glorious summers evening.

So alongside 150 other seasoned and out of season runners I was off on the G of the BANG, on what we had been promised was a downhill opening mile on which we might be able to break our PB time. NB I didn't. What the pre race blurb didn't tell us was that at the end of the opening section there was a sharp steep hill which reduced everyone around me to a sudden slow crawl to the top. 

We then undulated across the open fields for a mile or so, a pleasant change from the hard farm tracks the rest of the route seemed to follow. A meandering descent downhill meant only one thing, yes thats right, what goes down has to go back up again., so it was back to a pedestrian plod.

I had hoped seeing as the race was local to Matlock that my new running nemesis. 'Les' would have been running and that I would be able to come close to his time of 42 mins from last year's event. Turns out I was reasonably close, being only three mins slower, but I did claim the moral victory as he was still injured after our Gridleford encounter and so didn't even make the start line here. 

A pleasant enough little jolly and hopefully by this time next year those hills will be a little bit flatter.


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