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Sunday 24 September 2017

The Cheering Gang


Given the fact that Nottingham is overzealous with it’s road closures for the Marathon/Half Marathon and the tram isn’t very convenient for the Embankment, I employ Shank's Pony to get to the start line. In truth, the walk probably served as a pretty good warm up.

The course is more or less the same as last year's with one dead turn thankfully taken out. So just one more to remove please but this is certainly one of the better courses they’ve had.

L and Daughter both support this year and in multiple places but the cheering gang (the dogs) are left at home.

Just ahead of seven miles I get chance for a sweaty snog with one of the crowd, which was L of course but then everyone else backed away in terror when they saw me coming.

I have a good run and finish in 1:44:50 and pass Richard Whitehead en route, in the end beating him by a couple of minutes. 

It's again an excellent event and with a t-shirt for all finishers this year for the first time. It's a cotton one too, which I prefer. I have so many technical ones already.

My only real grip is that Nottingham still persist with the notorious water pouches. Oddly some people do seem to like them but I assume these are the folk who possess the black magic required to get something substantial out of them. Personally I probably consumed only half the amount of water I wanted to and I really don't see how they get these things through their H&S Risk Assessment. I run races up and down the country and have never come across these dreadful things anywhere else.

These are a blot on what is otherwise, fantastic race. Although I still maintain that they should be taking this race into the city centre like the big cites do - Sheffield, Leeds, Birmingham, Manchester etc etc. Which perversely would contain the race more central and therefore probably even reduce the number of road closures.

Then I hobble to the train station from where I get the tram home.

(Sunday 24th September)

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