Clumber Park 10K - 7 October 2007 - Dawn Fletcher and Martin James

Martins comments

I decided with so many quality events happening I had to take part in one of them so off down the A1 I went with my wife and two baby girls.  I had not entered in advance – poor planning on my part.  I arrived at clumber park at 09:00 – the traffic was building up.  As I had not entered in advance I had to pay £4.50 to get in to the venue.

Conditions were good, not much wind, dry and about 13 degrees C.

The race started a few minutes late to the sound of a strange whining horn.

I had not taken part in this race before so did not really know what to expect.

The route has many fairly steady hills and is obviously set in a beautiful woodland environment.  The marshals were good and one drink station existed about half way around.

The finish was OK for me – I was aiming to do my first sub 40 minute 10K but I clocked it at 40:04.

I then spent 20 minutes looking for my wife who had gone to feed the ducks with Sophie and Caroline.

I had my camera with me and took a few photos which have been uploaded to the photo page – sorry if I missed anyone with the camera.

I understand that the finish got very congested later with long lines of people waiting to finish – these are the comments made by the National Trust (I think):

“A record number of competitors enjoyed the Autumn sunshine and excellent scenery around the National Trusts Clumber Park with over 1,000 entrants taking part. The organisers (The National Trust) would like to thank everyone who ran, and all the helpers for making this years race a great success, despite the slight delays at the finish area.

The organisers of Clumber Park 10k will work, with assistance from Worksop Harriers & AC, to ensure that this problem is resolved in time for next years race. We will post copies of the results on this site once they are available”.

I will probably be back next year.

Dawns comments

We had decided to celebrate Eddie’s birthday by letting him run a 10K (you know I hate them).  We couldn’t have picked a better one, the venue was excellent the course ideal I thought, gently undulating and traffic free and well supported all the way round.  It was marked in kilometres, which although there are more of them, come around much quicker than miles!

The weather was kind, not too hot, no wind, a perfect autumn day.

It was nice to see the club very well represented, I had a quick count up and I think there were about 16 of us, Martin has some excellent photo’s up on the website.

After a quick wash and brush up in the back of the car we met up with the family and went off for a very large lunch, (this is getting to be a habit) at a lovely pub in Elmton, you might have guessed they had 6 real ale’s on, which Eddie had to sample, well it was his birthday.

If you haven’t run this race it’s definitely one for the diary, we will be sure to mark it down for next year.

		Photos taken by Brian Townsley