[Photo above is Ash Winter, Martin O’Halloran, Diane Kitchen and Sally Armitage]
From Ash Winter…
A wet and wild day was promised at the 20th running of the Wetherby 10km, with the weather getting worse the longer you took, providing extra motivation for the 600 or so who took part to get on with it.
I had a new road trip buddy for this one, with Martin O’Halloran helping the journey to Wetherby Racecourse pass in a flash. We set off from Ilkley at 1200 for a 1300 arrival, giving us plenty of time for number collection, stretches and the now 3 km warm-up I appear to need for any sort of race pace.
The Wetherby course is a real mixed bag, mostly road, some trail, more mud than I’ve seen for months, plus a couple of short, sharp hills over the motorway to keep you honest. A headwind started up too, making the 7th km pain cave seem deeper and darker than usual. Also, always a personal favourite, an extremely short out-and-back in the 8th km with a turn I managed to negotiate with the grace of a badly stacked container ship fighting off an attempted boarding by modern-day pirates.
Despite all this complaining, I managed to shave a full minute off my last attempt at this race, bringing it home (without the need of a knee slide) in 41:50. Very pleased indeed.
I wasn’t the only Harrier involved though. Kudos to Martin for predicting a 57-minute effort and coming in 2 minutes under that. Notable performances from Diane Kitchen being 1st FV65 and Sally Armitage being 1st FV45 and 4th lady overall. Of course, Jack Cummings was on the podium, 2nd only to a huge course record by Ed Bovingdon of Leeds City AC.
Josie Slack, Karl Hutchinson and Chris Cunningham also completed excellent races, with every Harrier sub 1 hour. Allowing us to scuttle off home before the storm began in earnest.
From Sally Armitage…
My favourite race of the year! A mixed bag of terrain, rutted farm tracks around fields, bridges, gravel footpaths and roads. Sold as flat there are a couple of undulations, one being the seemingly never ending dead straight kilometre long footpath near the end, this stretch generally sorts out the finish order. Knowing the course well now, this was my 8th year of running it, I used this 9th kilometre to try and edge past the 3rd lady, but I failed and had to resign myself to 4th place.
Jack Cummings had his first run around Wetherby and had already accepted the win wasn’t his before the starting gun sounded, recognising an exceptionally fast Leeds City AC runner was also there. He was right but put in a strong performance for 2nd place. Diane Kitchen also had a stonking run to finish first in her age category. Ilkley had a good field of 8 representing the club, great to see so many out there fighting the good fight.
1st male Ed Bovingdon Leeds City AC 30:19
1st female Jemima Elgood Nidd Valley 35:02
2nd Jack Cumming 32:55
22nd Sally Armitage 39:08 (1st F45)
49th Ashley Winter 41:50
160th Josie Slack 49:00
196th Karl Hutchinson 50:04
275th Diane Kitchen 53:56 (1st F65)
305th Martin O’Halloran 55:05
377th Chris Cunningham 57:37
613 finished