The Great Forest 10K Run – 6th September 2008

I didn’t feel great on the morning of this run. To be honest, I was close to not running. But having paid about £40 for me and the kids to take part (the kids were in the 2K fun run), there was no way I wasn’t going to make the start line. Very pricey, but as the run was for Marie Curie cancer I wont hold that against them!

I’d also been having problems with my legs for a couple of weeks before the race, and so had decided to treat the race as more of a long training run than anything else. This thought was made even stronger due to the massive amount of rain experienced in the area for the week before the race.

One of the reasons I wanted to run this race was due to the fact it was around Bedgebury Forest, and as such I thought it would be good to run an off road race. In the end this had both its pros and cons. It was certainly scenic which was nice, but with only a few hundred people running (and most people being on the slower side), it was quite a lonely race to take part in. The marshalling was also pretty non existent. So much so that everyone missed the start line. We were all hanging around waiting on the wrong side of the start line, which was at a T junction within the trails in the woods. There was no indication whatsoever of which route the start would take.

The course on the whole though was pretty good. Much hillier than I expected – which meant the downhill sections weren’t that quick (due to the amount of rain). All in all though, the course was good underfoot, with the vast majority along decent wide cycle paths.

My time was 48min 49sec. The slowest 10K I’ve taken part in. But overall I was pretty happy with my performance. I was 59th out of about 330. Which I am very happy with.

I’m not sure if I’ll take part again next year though. It was nice to run through the Forest – but the level of organisation, and plastic medal (!) didn’t really warrant the cost of taking part (even if it was a Marie Curie run).