By James Watson
The organisers call this race a ‘multi-stage, trail running enduro’ which means runners run for a bit, then walk for a bit, during which time they are plied with jelly babies and bananas by cheery marshals. Timing is all sorted by dibbing at the start and finish of the timed sections. Each non-timed section has a maximum time for recovery / dawdling around eating bananas.
The course takes in the sights of Sheffield’s western city fringe, covering everything from running up muddy paths along deep ravines, through beech woods and down streets with parked cars and bemused on-lookers wondering what 2,000 mud-splattered runners were doing adorning their neighbourhoods on a cold, drab, post-Christmas Sunday morning. Hard to imagine a more varied course.
Nine Club Members started and finished the event.
Aimi recorded the shortest time for the 20km / 600m elevation course in 1:48.19 with Jake hot on her heels at 1:50.38. James and Kate Watson next at 1:53.54 followed by Kat in 1:55.06.
Malcolm ran it in 1:57.06 and managed to do so having spilt WRC blood on Yorkshire soil. (see below)
Then Janice in 2:00.20, Liz two minutes later and Clare at 2:14.39.
Many of us de-camped to a beer and pizza tent to chomp on post-race bananas and flapjack and agreed it was a fun format across an interesting course.
This was the Winter version of the event – there’s a Summer one (late June) too if you fancy trying it https://www.roundsheffieldrun.com/