On a cold, but bright Saturday morning in November, I rolled out of bed. Full of a Winter cold, I was slightly apprehensive about taking part in a race when my nose was more likely to run faster than my legs. Fortunately, MoRunning Brighton started at 10am, which gave me a much needed lie-in, and also gave me a little time to shave around my rather poor moustache effort, which I hadn’t given enough time to grow in.
I parked by the iconic Proud House in Stamner Park and walked to the event village, bristling with upbeat atmosphere, where an MC talked through the imaginative runners wearing splendid fancy dress, including a giant chicken, a gladiator and suitably bushy-moustached Dick Dastardly and Muttley, complete with (cardboard) flying machine.
After a rousing warm up session hosted by British Military fitness, the sun rose higher in the sky and my wife who was running for Women’s Running set off on the 5K race, leaving the park via a short hill into the woods.
10 minutes later, I started the 10K and ascended into the woods where I joined a trail that was mostly uphill for the first kilometre. It was a dry day, so the leafy trail was pleasantly springy and grippy underfoot. The woods were dense enough to stop my GPS watch from picking up a clear signal, but allowed plenty of shafts of light through to illuminate the way forward and the course was very clearly marked out.
The 10-minute head start that the 5K entrants had meant that I got a chance to overtake the participants in heavier costumes and see them close up.
The 10K was two laps of the 5K route, with both ending in a great fast downhill stretch descending from the woods across the grassy stretch to the finish line where we’d begun, where I just managed to beat a runner accompanied by a dog, coming in at 47:40.
It was a thoroughly enjoyable event and as we printed out our results at a stall near the finish line, we realised our sniffles had gone, perhaps plugged by all those ‘taches?
MoRunning is over for another year, but if you would like to run any other The Fix Events run, they are offering Men’s Running readers the chance to SAVE 10% off any of their upcoming races with promotional code FIXEBIRD-MWR-2017. Click here to find an event near you.
Details of 2017 MoRunning events coming soon.
