Scenic, If You Like That Sort Of Thing

I sit awake for quite a lot of the night feeling rather smug and admiring our excellent new tent. This is only its second outing and the Lake District is throwing its speciality at it, namely torrential rain and close to gale force winds, yet our new purchase is barely noticing. Everyone else is fast sleep asleep, oblivious. So it must be good.

A couple of weeks ago L dangled the Derwent Water 10 in front of me. I was tempted, if my leg was up to it. I guess there’s only one way to find out. The rain even stops and the wind drops. It's just me though, L isn’t doing it although she does do her own run beforehand then takes up supporting duties with the dogs.

Starting from Keswick, the runs takes a scenic clockwise lap around around Derwent Water. First off there’s half a mile or so along the pedestrianized centre of Keswick causing many shoppers to dive into shop doorways to get out of the way of the oncoming stampede.

Then we’re out on to the roads where the tourists get even more frustrated as the race causes a massive traffic jam. After a few miles though we’re onto the more minor roads around the lake and the problem moves on from the continuous impatient traffic to the continuous upwards trajectory of miles 6 and 7. Luckily the course does go down as well as up and I suppose it’s all very pretty. If you like that sort of thing.

My legs feel ok aside from a huge blister on my left foot which makes the last two miles agony but in a sadistic sort of way, it was all excellent.

I limp home in 1:22:17, which isn’t great but when compared with my last 10 miler in May at Burton starts to look a bit better. I beat that time by over a minutes... somehow.

It’s a no-frills run but not at a particularly no-frills price. There were no t-shirts/medals/ mementos and I didn’t even get a cup of water at the end. Water supplies at the finish totally ran out and apparently the kitchens at the school where the race started were closed, so they couldn't get any more.

Timing was done by a Parkrun style system with bar codes and seemed to work well enough.

L scrapes me up and drives me home via Sunday Lunch in the Watermill at Ings. We also take a detour down the M61/M60 and end up on Daughter’s doorstep. We even bring the coffee so that she can makes us a drink.

(Sunday 2^nd November)