David Currie

Fortunately my current desk location in Hursley is away from the windows otherwise the sight of the rain hammering down might have deterred me from turning out for tonight’s RR10 – my first for the year and also the last of the season. The race was, however, actually at Hursley and, with the disbanding of IBM Hursley Runners earlier this year, it was my first chance to actually compete in this race.

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Having driven through the pouring rain (and crawled through the roadworks on the M27) it was a pleasure to arrive at a sunlit Wilverley Plain for my first Tuesday night run of the year. It made a nice change for an hour long run not to involve half an hour running up hill followed by half an hour running downhill and also to have something other than solid rock (or bilberry) underfoot! Even better was the fact that I could buy six pints (admittedly three of which were shandies) and a corresponding number of packets of crisps and still get change from a twenty pound note!

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601My cunning plan to gain a personal best at this week’s Sognsvann Rundt Medsols was to run three laps for the first time. This nearly backfired when, at around five o’clock, the heavens opened. The rain was short-lived though and by the time we were running from the car (parked as close as we can get without going through the toll) to the start there was a wide expanse of blue sky.

As everyone lined up at the start it was clear that numbers were well down – no great surprise as we are now well in to the holiday season here. My legs felt fairly fresh on the first lap as they should have done having not run since the same time last week and having had a reasonable warm-up for a change. I resisted the temptation to race the first woman to the line only to find, as usual, that she carried on for the next lap. Given that she continued to pull away from me it was fortunate (for my male pride) that she then proceeded to stop at the end of the second lap. Indeed, everyone in front of me stopped at this point so I set out on the third lap in the lead.

Needless to say a stitch kicked in at this point – probably something to do with working at home in close proximity to Christine’s baking! Fortunately it eased after a few hundred metres and by half way round the last lap I was able to stretch out my legs a bit again. Perhaps just as well as the second and third placed runners were only about 20 seconds behind. So – a personal best both in time and position. Perhaps I should stop there!