Northumberland Big 10

Ponteland, Sunday, November 24, 2013

Kerry Lister

After missing the Brampton to Carlisle last weekend and feeling the urge to do a longer race than 10k I signed myself and hubby, Rob, up for the Northumberland Big 10. Rob had never run that far before and my long run history was the GNR last year and a couple of Broom Park Sunday morning sessions. So it was an adventure to say the least.

Packing our bags with the ritualistic before, during and after drinks and some warm clothes in case we got wet we set off for Ponteland. Arriving nice and early at Kirkley Hall organisation seemed reasonable, plenty of signage to the number pick up point and plenty of loos (even for the girls). We picked up our numbers, these were ordered by last name initial, there was no signage to indicate which was where but as there wasn’t a huge amount of runners there was no great problem, got the obligatory pre-race photo taken by a kindly passer-by, met up with Bill Ford, Richard Hall, Rebecca Fisher and Robert Clark and headed to the start line.

All set in Ponteland.

Promptly at 945am, after a safety chat, set the Garmin and we were off. I quickly lost sight of Rob, Bill and everyone else as they sped off. I stuck to my race plan of staying around the 10 min mile mark, running the sums through my mind of how long it should take me to complete the 10 miles. ‘I’ll be happy with less than 2 hours’, which slowly became ‘hmmm I might manage 1:50’ and as I clocked the miles up thoughts of 1:45 were coming up.

The course description was ‘undulating’ and undulating it most certainly was. However what goes up must come down and there were some nice down hills to match the slow inclines (which I am not embarrassed to say I walked most of – also in my race plan).

Settling into my stride around mile 4, I plodded on, took a selfie at mile 7, and kept going, managing to keep to my 10 minute mile pace or thereabouts. I soon found myself catching up to a clutch of ladies around the same age as me, which has become a regular feature of my races and then slowly overtook them.

There were water stations every 3 miles, semi manned – whatever than means! Marshals were present at most crucial points. Until, as I plodded on all alone, there was a fork in the road, no marshal, no signs and me with a very poor sense of direction. There I was standing at the fork, cursing and thinking ‘which way! which way!’ I asked a passing motorist if she’d seen any runners on the road she’d come down, she answered in the negative so I followed the other option and was quickly reassured by a passing cyclist that there were other number bearing runners in front of me.

I reached the 8 mile marker feeling surprisingly positive as it had been a while since I had run that far. Now the 1:45 was firmly in my sight, determined to keep a little bit of leg for that final ‘sprint’ finish I plodded on and on.

As I round the corner to see the Kirkley Hall main gate, Rob was standing waiting for me, he’d finished at 1: 28: 49, he ran the final 200 metres up to the finish line with me with a freezing cold wind directly in my face as I crossed the line at 1: 45: 22 seconds.

We made our way back into the hall to collect our t-shirts, started the Christmas shopping (there were some goodies on sale) and then made our way for a well-deserved tuna and cheese panini and a cup of tea in the Orangery Café before heading off home.

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