St. Thomas 7

St. Thomas 7 mile road race, 21 September 2014.

Sunday started with a distinctly autumn feel, but quickly reverted into a nice summer day, for the 6th running of this little event.  No fun-run this, the field was high quality judged by the proportion of club vests in evidence, and was used as a counter in the North Staffordshire Road Runners Association league.

An inital concern was car parking – the organiser had thought about providing enough capacity, but his marshals tried to use every square foot, meaning that the first-comers were comprehensively blocked in before the race started.  However registration proceeded as normal, and the race got under way in good form.

The race started on a quiet lane, and the field started to spread out.  The first two miles were a steady up hill, nothing like Langley, but a definate climb.  As we reached the top of the slope the race route joined a more major road, and there was a certain amount of jostling with traffic as the pack moved across to the left of the road, and then later moved back again.  The route dropped down to 4 miles, and then resumed a steady, but gentle, climb.  At about 6 miles the route started to descend towards the finish.  Unfortunately, at this point, there was a tee-junction with no marshal, and about 20 runners from the leading 25 in the race went left instead of right, giving them an involuntary additional couple of miles.  The race times reflect this, with the fifth-placed runner recording 39:49, and the sixth 41:13 – the gap revealing the absence of a chunk of the leading field, including Di, Rob and Allan.  Quite a disaster for some of the NSSRA teams, and resulting in a humble apology on the event's web-site.

At the finish runners sat around in the sunshine, and reviewed the goody bag, which included a nice technical tee-shirt and a packet of oat-cakes.  A steady stream of unfortunates appeared to ask 'does anyone own vehicle …', as early leavers tried but failed to get out of the car parks.

Overall it could have been a real gem of an event, marred by some disappointing shortfalls in the organisation.  A pretty good Wilmslow showing, with 28 runners in total and, as far as I can tell from the results, first lady (sorry Di!) for Janine, who was also 1st F45, 1st F50 for Sally Gilliver, 1st F55 for Nicky and 1st M60 for me.  It remains to be seen how the points are sorted out!

Andy

229 finished.