Having relocated our accomodation base to Saunton in North Devon it was then a long trek back down south to the first day of the JK individuals at Cookworthy Forest. A journey that we questioned whether it was worth it. One small mercy was that we were in the parking for those with under 6s close to the assembly field which meant we didn’t have the long bus journey (or wait for the bus) that others suffered from. It did, however, mean that we planned to just run straight to the start from the car. Half way there, there was a sign saying ‘No whistle, no go’ so I ran back to the car for a whistle and also picked up pins for a race number. When I got back to the race numbers there was no start list to tell you which number to take and I wasn’t going to run half way across the assembly field to find what my number was.
I arrived at the start two minutes late for my call-up but with two minutes to spare before my start time. Typically, nobody asked to see a whistle or why I didn’t have a number. Having picked up the map though I had to run back two boxes to check the board I’d run past earlier to ensure I was doing the right course! Things improved after that and in general I had a reasonable run on M21L with no major blunders. It was hard work though with much of the forest reduced to a large mud bath and at times the course just seemed to be designed to take us in to every corner of the map. I ended up in 6th place, a respectable 2 minutes down on second place although Geoff Ellis was a further 3 minutes ahead.