Race 1 - The Holmfirth 10k

Race: The Holmfirth 10K ( Yorkshire )

Distance: 10km

Time: 1 hour 9 mins

So the racing year started very far away from home! My friends and I had made plans back in the summer to go and visit our friend Annie who lives in Holmfirth and I had a quick check to see if there happened to be any races scheduled for that weekend. Lo and behold there was! I messaged the group and told them of my plan to run on the Sunday morning of our weekend visit and was happy that two of the other girls wanted to join me. I’ve never ran a race with friends before so was looking forward to a different race dynamic.

I wish I could tell you that we took this race seriously and therefore prepared for this race like true athletes, abstaining from all northern boozy temptations. This could not be further from the truth. It was a drunken weekend of halloween fun- although to be fair- we did walk 10K on the Saturday… in between pubs…..

Those of us running the on the Sunday were extra appreciative of the extra hour that the change of the clocks gave us that night as we were certainly not early to bed. However we were all up in good time, with Bale (Annie’s boyfriend) making us all jumbo bowls of porridge and Annie dishing out Berrocas (these have now become part of my pre-race ritual!) Our friends came to the local school to see us off and the nerves had definitely kicked in for us. It certainly didn’t help that the new super strict road racing rules mean that we could not have any music on during the race. This really was going to be a race of firsts- no music!? Unthinkable!

We set off at a nice slow pace. We really had no idea what the race had in store for us but we were all thinking the worst in terms of hills after looking at the route the day before. The first half of the race ticked by surprisingly quickly- with much of the race on pavements alongside a gently sloping main road. There were a couple of sudden uphill segments which we decided to tackle with a walk/ run method before getting back to a good running pace. Running with friends was a nice change- we started together but soon spaced out enjoying our own pace but always looking around for each other. We were overtaken pretty regularly by runners on the longer- lapping 15 mile version of the race but it wasn’t disheartening at all. Northern runners are by nature it seems so much nicer and the vast majority of those that passed us gave us words of encouragement which we often replied to with shouts of thanks and whoops and cheers of celebration at their awesome speed.

We plodded on and tackled a couple more surprise hills before the school loomed at us over the edge of a steep hill. At this point- Gemma- who had never ran a 10K before and I had been keeping a close eye on to make sure she could actually get to the finish- SPRINTED UP HILL TO THE FINISH LINE. It was incredible and I was laughing with pure joy to see her finish her first 10K in such style. We collected our running momentos which were little zip up lunch boxes and posed for victory pictures. This was it…1 down 29 to go.. And I couldn’t have started it in a better way- with friends by my side!

#run #holmfirthharriers #yorkshirerun #10km #holmfirth10k