Borders League – Tattenhall

The second Borders race of the season and for some reason I was put in charge. Perhaps the grey hairs coming through give me an air of authority, but it meant that I had to act like the grown up and scan everybody’s barcodes.

I knew that most of them would have to wait for me to finish the race, so I asked Anne to bake a cake to keep them occupied. Chocolate cake – not many people don’t like chocolate cake but just in case, two of the others had baked as well. Ruth had made an apple cake with her very own garden’s apples, and Sue had brought flap jack. So, we were well catered for. 

The problem was that there was a fixture clash. Cross Country was happening on the same morning, and both sides needed certain minimum numbers for men and women to not get penalised.

We have got lots of people in the club but less than half of them race at these club events. Plus, we currently have quite a few injuries and people being away because of Half Term, so it was touch and go as to whether we would make our numbers. 

Reader, we managed it. 

By the skin of our teeth and Rob (our XC captain) ringing round several people at the eleventh hour to see who was here/fit/willing to put on the jade vest and save our pride.

We actually had more than enough for the men who needed seven, but for the women, who are in league one, we needed a minimum of six and we got exactly that number. Phew!

It was a murky looking day, but dry and, with very little wind about, so perfect weather for running. Ruth and her husband Wayne picked me up at half nine along with the Pensby flag – apparently XC had first dibs on the gazebo.

Tattenhall is quite posh, there are some lovely looking houses there. I’m not quite sure what they thought of the hundreds of vested runners hogging the roads. Most of the cars that did occasionally pass us were considerate but one person in a Range Rover appeared rather impatient with one runner who wasn’t enough to the side for its wide load.

Other than that, the race appeared to occur without any mishap. I didn’t see any ambulances hurtling past like I’d seen at the Chester Marathon, which was good. The route was all country road. We didn’t quite get up to the tops of the hills but there were some serious undulations in the middle of the six-mile route. 

I had done a walk the day before with friends, around Llangollen, and I was a little worried about my legs feeling tired today. The first couple of miles did see me with my cheeks out like some bellows on a furnace, but then my breathing started to settle down, and I didn’t feel too bad, despite the rising ground. My third mile was my slowest by a couple of minutes because of the hills, but I felt comfortable enough to keep going and not walk for a bit.

The last bit was fairly flat so I tried to mentally increase the size of my lungs, and physically the length of the my stride, and I had enough to push through to get under the hour for my six miles, which was not bad given the inclines in the middle. 

I did find the Pensby posse scoffing cake when I arrived back, and they had happily not all wondered off which made my life easier scanning their barcodes in. Ruth, our last Pensby in, who’d kept the back marker company for quite a while, managed to sneak ahead of the person in front of her after the final hill and keep her foot on the pedal to keep in front all the way to the finish. 

It was a great morning all around, I think. I was so pleased that we’d got all our results in that I managed to email the list to the organiser about five times, not realising that it wasn’t instantaneous. It appears that this great responsibility wasn’t entirely misplaced then.