Race Report

Christleton 5km, Cheshire - Friday 19th May 1995

One week after the club handicap another 5km race.

Morning all

Tony here in merrie englande where its sunny and windy.

Friday night I left work at about 6pm with Barry the non-dead kiwi and headed down the motorway to Chester for the Christleton 5km race. Christleton is a little village just outside Chester, the 5km is supposed to be a very fast course. After getting our numbers we met up with ex-daresbury DRUnK Mike Hoyland who had come to watch us run. He wasn't going to race, some excuse about a sore arm or something but he did run a lap of the course with us to warm up. I didn't feel very good warming up, I'd felt under the weather all week ever since my decision to become a student again.

The course was a mostly flat 1 2/3 laps on a circuit through the village and along country lanes. Weather was OK, cool sunny and windy. We jogged about 5 mins from the finish area to the start. After a fairly long wait the race suddenly started, barry zoomed off and was soon out of sight. I made my usual bad start to a race like this, for the first km I was weaving my way though the back of the pack runners. After about 1km (no distance markers :-() I managed to get a clear run and started to work my way through and speeded up. Got to the end of the 2/3 lap in about 7.40, waved to Mike and kept going, it felt good to be passing runners and I could hear runners behind trying to hang on for a few striders and then dropping back. After a lap (12 mins) one runner passed me but I was still passing lots of runners, by 4km it was getting a bit tough, the country lane back to the village seemed a lot longer on this lap than on the previous lap :-( Eventually back into the village and there was a runner ahead of me wearing a vest, t-shirt and tracksters, no way was a runner so badly overdressed going to beat me so I reeled him in and sort of sprinted away to the finish. 19.48, faster than last week but not fast enough as usual I went off far too slowly.

Oh well it wasn't too bad, after the race off to the pub with Mike and Barry for some food, I showed Mike some of my embarrasing Boston photos :-)

this message being sent at 10.05 BST on monday 22nd, wonder how long this will take to get through?

bye

tony bell A.M.T.Bell@dl.ac.uk crystallographer and marathon runner (but not necessarily in that order :-)) council for the central laboratory of the research councils daresbury laboratory, daresbury, warrington, cheshire, UK. WA4 4AD.

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