From Hilda Coulsey…
Jane and I travelled to Redcar looking forward to some sunshine after the torrential rain in the previous few days. As expected, I suppose being on the coast, the wind was quite strong. It was chilly and I haven’t yet acclimatised to autumn taking only shorts and my Ilkley vest to run in. I was glad therefore of the tee-shirt I was wearing to travel in that I could wear under my vest as whilst we had sun it was quite weak.
The route is two and bit laps of the road along the seashore, hence fairly flat. Our issue was that whilst there were toilets there was nowhere to shelter, keep warm and out of the rain (which we were so glad stopped overnight) and changing was in the toilets. Nevertheless the race had a local feel, preceded by a kids 3k and a 10k, with lots of local running clubs and unattached.
As expected, the wind was fairly strong and its not very noticeable when its behind you but heading into it tucking in behind some taller runners is usually helpful. I didn’t have that opportunity at all in the last couple of miles heading directly into it – I struggled and hopes of sneaking in under 2 hours were dashed but it didn’t matter. We were there aiming to qualify for England masters vests to run in a home international next year in Swansea. We succeeded.
Prize allocation was novel. Rather than the usual, firsts or more in each M and F age categories, they calculated age grade %ages for us all and awarded prizes to the top 30. Jane easily met this criteria with 86.93%, 8th in the table, whilst I scraped in at 27th with 82.91%.
1. 1:08:45 Rob Scott, Richmond and Zetland
38. 1:21:31 Jennifer Berry, Wallsend Harriers
78. 1:27:23 Jane McCarthy 5th Lady and 1st F50
338. 2:01:18 Hilda Coulsey 1st F70
567 ran