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Under the bridge
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one. I’ve been meaning to enter the event for a few years, but had always ended up with either a clash of dates or (as happened last year) the whole event being cancelled due to snow. This year I still had the deferred place from last year, and we decided to make a family day out of it. We drove down to the start in Telford Park, where my wife & kids dropped me off then drove the few miles down the hill to the museums, promising to give me a wave as I ran past Blists Hill.
The announcer summarised the race nicely before we started: “This is a very scenic and challenging course, mostly off-road. It’s a race of three halves, the first bit is downhill, the second bit is along the river and … just take it easy at the end!” The event is chip timed and everyone started off being funnelled over a narrow start line, so we were running right from the start without getting boxed in. The first few miles was almost all on a tarmac cycle path built on a disused railway, and yes it was noticeably downhill. Nice and easy running, I just tried not to think about the run back up. We passed the Blists Hill museum at about 3 miles, with a small crowd outside but nobody that I recognised. A mile or so later the route did get scenic as the path came out of to the side of the river and we crossed over the first bridge (not the famous one) to the far side of the river, then turned to head upstream along a muddy set of wide riverside paths. The next few miles was a mixture of muddy paths and narrow lanes through the pretty old villages beside the river. As we came up to the bridge, I knew that I’d already overdone it, so decided to go slow and start taking pictures for the race report. This held me up a lot longer than I expected. Firstly, one of the spectators offered to take an action shot as I ran under the bridge, then couldn’t work out how to take it while I jogged up and down the path. Then my phone wouldn’t go back into a wet arm wallet without a lot of fiddling. (Note to self – don’t do that again!)
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Approaching the
bridge for the first time
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If I’d looked at the map before the race, I’d have realised that ‘The Gorge’ isn’t the main valley on the river Severn, it’s on a side stream and we were about to run straight up the side of it! A very steep run up, then straight back down into the gorge so that we could go up the other side afterwards! At least the second hill wasn’t too steep, it was back on muddy footpaths and on to the long gradual climb back to Telford. At about 11 miles we were back onto the tarmac cycle path which we’d started on, and back to the park. Then past the 13 mile marker, which my Garmin said was at 12½ miles. Then past the 400m to go sign – that couldn’t be right, but it did agree with my Garmin. Then round a bend and onto a really vicious steep hill for the last 200 yards (which I didn’t know about as we hadn’t gone down it on the way out!) At least there was a good crowd all the way up to cheer us to the finish line. I’d finished in just under 1hr 44, way below PB level but the fastest I’d done since recovering from injury – despite the photostops!
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3½ miles in and this is the first road we ran on.
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All in all, it’s very ‘scenic and challenging’, not a PB course but a good race and a very good family day out. I’ve missed the last 5 years, but I’ll definitely try to go back next year.
For more information, visit the website.
Martin C.