Hamsterley Half Marathon, 2 January
Report by Matthew Holt
Dave Allen and I ran the Hamsterley Half Marathon on Sunday. The race uses Hamsterley Forest to send runners around undulating trails, which are more use to seeing mountain bikes than runners.
After parking up, we collected numbers and grabbed a last coffee to keep us warm, as it was a tad chilly in the valley bottom where the race started. A mass start meant a bit of a bottle neck on the first bend, but then the running could start.
The first 1.5 miles were all uphill with 460 feet of uppy bits before the route dropped back downhill to the level we started at (how come the downs never seem to make up for all that pain felt while climbing up????).
After many more ups and downs and desperately trying to not walk, the course left the trails at the 7 miles marker, for a steep grassy section, which finally made me walk for a few hundred yards. A couple of fallen trees made for interesting scrambles, and then trying to get the legs going again wasn’t easy.
Finally, a more runnable section made the last few miles pass more quickly, with the finishing line coming after 13.8 miles, not bad for a trial half marathon and had 1700 feet of ascent.
The route was brilliant, plenty of mud and bogs as well as forest tracks, all in the of the County Durham countryside, which felt miles away from anywhere.
My time 2 years ago was 2 hours 8 minutes, but the course was slightly different and about half a mile longer then. This time I finished in 2 hours 9 minutes, with Dave finishing in 2 hours 21 minutes. To be fair, I wouldn’t usually see Dave for dust, but he was not feeling great, so I had the only unusual experience of me waiting for him at the finish line (it won’t be happening again!!).