Sunday March 2nd.
Two years ago we had snow but this winter continued unseasonably mild and for the second week running the rain held-off until after the finish. I was sad to miss the post-match food which looked excellent, if not entirely healthy, and with it the post-race feed-back (my brother was over for my mother's 93rd.) so I'm afraid my report, whilst it ought to be largely factually correct, lacks flavour.
Great team performance with both the Men's (Damian, Allan, Jim) and Ladies' (Diane, Janine, Sally) prizes.
Damian was race winner, Di second lady.
Allan was 7th., Jim 12th., Mike 32nd. and 1st.M45, Graham 40th. and 2nd. M50.
Janine was our second lady, then Sally, Louisa, Diane, Nicky, Huma and Amanda.
Adam was League 2 winner followed by Jon, who was 3rd.M50, Matt, Jarrod and Richards Lawson and Hirons. Next was Ian followed by Andy, 1st.M60, Janine,1st. L45,and Louisa,2nd. L40.
Phil was League 3 winner, ahead of Sally, 1st.L50, Pete, 1st.M55, Geoff, Diane, Tony and Steve. Andrew was followed by Chris and Nicky who took 1st. L55.
In League 4 Huma, who'd delayed a holiday in Cape Town to run, is showing the ability we had seen glimpses of, but has, in the past, been undone by injuries, and yet Amanda pushed her very close. Jon is working his way back after his horrendous break at Goyt Valley 2012, he was followed by John.
My area of the race is competitive, there are half-a-dozen of us who will interchange finishing positions as the season progresses. I started with Simon, whose two-year purple patch peaked at Pie & Peas. For Clare, like Simon, this is not really her territory. Carolyn generally runs the first half of the race faster than the second and is stronger up hill than down, so us coming together by the peak of the second climb was good news. Gail was only just ahead. She'd told me she was going to run 20 miles on Thursday. Easy meat, I thought, she'll fade, I saw her glance back, she knew I was there, for four miles I pushed and pushed but she's tough and ended-up pulling away.
Soraya took League 5 from Julie, Bernard, Jan, Trevor, Belinda and Leanne.
Ian