Stoney Middleton

How this one got in the calendar is a mystery. The amount of tarmac would have been criminal in a 15 mile race let alone a 5 mile one. An internet search had provided little in the way of info about the race, in the listing it said

'New course for 2009, cutting out tarmac of High Street'

So with this you make the assumption that people have moaned about the road bit and they've improve the route by taking it off-road. Well technically it was 'off-road', it was on a tarmac path/track that ran along the road! Ok, so health & safety were probably ecstatic about limiting the potential damage to cars from running over a Fellrunner, but narrow bits caused at least three bottle-necks in the first 5 mins.

By the time I got to the 'off-road' bit, my feet were done-for by my new fell shoes. I'd been trying to break them in gentle by limiting the time worn to an hour at a time, so 5/6m races were the longest I've been tempted to do in them so far. Such a relieve to whip them off after only 55mins!

On the plus side I managed to maintain my position for the whole race, I didn't get rained on, I didn't fall over, I burned a few calories and I was back home by 10pm. I think I would only be really tempted to do this one again if it'd been dry for at least 2 weeks and I could therefore run it in road shoes.

TF