Wymondham 20m and 10m

Who invented entering races online? All very convenient I'm sure, but also means that once the fee has been paid then you are forced to get up on a cold Sunday morning whether you want to or not unless you have money to burn! Picking up a couple of other mad runners along the way I proceeded to drive to Wymondham, heated seats turned up to full and John Cleese giving me directions on my Sat Nav!

After arrival, we proceeded to give the 20 milers our support as they started their race 15 mins ahead of us 10 milers. Then back to the hall for a warm up before our start. I had purchased a new fleece gillet for the occasion as I have been told I need to run with more clothes on, but decided to run in just my vest, as usual, well the sun was shining nicely.

Off we started, lovely day for a run, 1st mile down, too quick for my schedule, then turned the corner and BAM! where did that wind come from? As we all proceeded to run in slow motion for the next couple of miles it turned into not quite a lovely day for a run. I had decided to run with Les Basham to get a time I'd be happy with, not looking for a PB today, but as he decided to run backwards for a while I lost him and so carried on alone, trying to find the tallest runner who I could hide behind against the the wind! As I seemed to be the tallest runner (where's Richard and Miles when you need them) I just had to grit my teeth in some places and battle, and take advantage of the 2 places the wind dropped and the sun shone.

Coming up for 8 miles and a hill you wouldn't notice at 3, I suddenly realised I could get a PB if I could just speed up a bit, with that in my mind I pushed on, swearing that I had looked at my watch. To cut a long (or so it seemed, sorry 20 milers) race short the last mile was very painful, a lot of grunting going on, on my part, I proceeded to stagger over the post in a respectable 1hr 19mins, PB, yay, and was it worth it to knock those few seconds off from last year? OF COURSE IT WAS!

Lorraine

The Stowmarket Striders results are:-

20m Race Results

Pos	Name	Time
3	Richard Jordan	2:00:21
7	Nick Stephens	2:03:37
75	Ker Macrosson	2:38:25
114	Colin Thomas	2:48:04
129	Carole Prance	2:53:35
142	Penny Waggott	2:58:30
143	Rachel Toogood	2:58:30
148	Malcolm Hogarth	3:03:53
162	Rosemary Thurston	3:14:27
177	Ronel Van der Merwe	3:28:14

Click for the full race 20m results.

10m Race Results

Pos	Name	Time
33	Nick Hammond	1:09:34
71	Lorraine Mills [PB]	1:19:04
83	Les Basham	1:21:54
90	Simon Browne	1:24:07
118	Charmaine Geraghty	1:29:56
119	Joe Naughton	1:29:58
161	Shena Smith	1:53:17

Click for the full race 10m results.