Its always nice to get out of the towns and run a race out in the countryside. Running through a forest and alongside a reservoir is good for the soul and makes you feel at one with nature. That is of course unless you are swamped by a plague of blood sucking midges covering your arms and legs with nasty, itchy bites that irritate the hell out of you for the next 3 days. My skin reacts particularly badly to bug bites and I'm sitting here unbearably itchy and irritated. A nice race yesterday but was it worth the price I'm paying now. In a word ... no. I won't be going back to Kielder in a hurry.
OK, moan over, time for the race report. These kind of races are difficult to set targets for because they aren't accurately measured and you're never quite sure how tough the terrain is going to be. The race started and immediately a group of about half a dozen zoomed off ahead. I wasn't daft enough to go with them and settled in to my pace a little way behind. The early part of the race went through the forest with some uneven terrain and included quite a few stiff hills. Possibly not the most difficult course for a season trail runner but I do most of my running on flat roads and I found it quite tough.
After a mile or so the leading group had disappeared out of sight and a few other runners came past me. I was unsure of how hard to push the pace. I didn't feel all that great and feared there might be some tougher sections in the latter part of the race. I erred on the side of caution and maintained my steady pace but tried to keep the two in front of me in my sights, hoping I could pick them off later on. At around halfway a marshall informed me I was in 10th place. Determined not to let that position slip any further I slowly reeled in the guy ahead of me. We ran together for a short while before I opened a gap of around 10 yards on a gentle downhill.
Happily, the undulations were definitely more down than up by now. A little further on and I caught another runner who'd been ahead of me since the start of the race. As I closed on him, I allowed myself a little rest and ran in his slipstream. To be honest, this tactic was enforced on me because the course diverted down a narrow footpath. If I'd wanted to pass I would've either had to push him over or run through three foot high vegetation. I ran close enough to him to realise that he was really struggling by now and as soon as we turned on to the open road I knew I could overtake quite easily.As the route opened out again I stretched my legs and kicked away. It was a tentative kick for home as I wasn't really sure how long we had left to go. As it turned out I had further than anticipated left but managed to keep it going to the end, waving at the kids in the home straight and finishing in 8th position. The sun was shining by now and it would've been nice to spend the day out there but with those damn bugs still flying around we packed up the car and headed back to civilisation.
