A Sandy Sunday Race

Claire Longman was in Mounts Bay this morning lining up for a race on the beach with just one other TRCer, Jonathan Ford-Dunn…

Mounts Bay Remembrance Run

On Saturday night Dave and I found ourselves at a Charity Ball in Falmouth drinking too much wine and hearing a lot of ‘you’re not?!!’ when we told people we were racing along the beach at Marazion the next morning!
So when the alarm went off this morning the first thing I said to Dave was ‘I suppose we should run seeing as we told so many people last night that we were!’. I have to say I didn’t feel much like running, let alone racing, but we had both run this race last year and enjoyed it despite last year’s race being amid torrential rain! Today looked better at first glance but when I looked harder I could see the trees at right-angles and I realised we might be in for a dry day but ‘blustery’ (that’s what the weatherman would say), more like ‘gale force’!

Well we donned the compulsory red gear, drove down, got registered, and went down to the beach. We then spent the next 10 minutes trying (unsuccessfully!) to hide from the cold wind but when it was nearing 11am we made our way to the start line and they blew the whistle for the 2 minute silence. I am lucky enough not to really know anyone who has lost their life fighting for our country but, even so, it was very poignant standing there hearing only the wind rustling all our race numbers and I couldn’t help but generally think, as I looked out over the Bay, how lucky I am to be able to run in places like this with my family either lined up beside me or on their way down to support.

We were very suddenly shocked out of our thoughts by the hooter that sounded the start of the race and we all jumped over the line (which was written in the sand – quite cool!). Then it was basically along the beach as far as we could see. Last year the tide was in and we had to run over the shingle which was hideous so I was very pleased to be able to run along the tideline on much harder sand this year but that did mean wet feet from the start to the end of the race. One very sensible man was barefoot.

It was about 2.3 miles down to the end of the beach and, as we approached the turn, I started to pay attention to the people coming back the other way, all battling the wind so I knew what was coming!!

At the turn there was water and, as I was still pretty dehydrated from the night before (!), I thought I’d better have some then had to somehow work out how to drink it in a gale force wind – cue comedy sketch material with water blowing out of the cup all over my face but very little in to my mouth!!

The next 2.3 miles was like a very tough resistance training session as we fought our way back to the finish line, the only saving grace being that I was able to catch a lady from Newquay Road Runners who normally beats me in road races and, as I was able to count the runners coming back the other way, I knew I had moved up to 4th lady.

At the finish I had a lovely cheer in from my daughters (followed by a hula hoop from each!) and we were presented with our medals and a neon woolly hat as a race memento (that’s a new one but I like novelty mementos Mounts Bay so thank-you!). When it came to the presentations I was really pleased to learn I had managed to scoop another little trophy to add to my collection from 2011. Age categories were different to normal (they commented that this will have to change next year due to this race becoming part of the MT GP) so there were prizes for the top 3 as normal but then age categories were only under-20, under 40 and over 40. They also did something which I have never seen before (and which I don’t really like) in that no-one won 2 prizes so, although I was technically 3rd in the age category I actually got a trophy saying I was 1st because the first 2 already had a trophy for overall winners. I would much rather have the 3rd place one as now it looks like I was better than I was and I’ll have to explain it every time anyone comments!! I can see that it means more people get prizes this way though so maybe I’m just being a bit hungover grumpy??

Anyway, despite the rain last year and the wind this year, I love this race and I already have it in the diary for next year and hopefully, because of the MT GP, there will be a few more TRC runners there in 2012.

Claire

Results

Overall Results

Mounts Bay Harriers Remembrance Run 2011 results

Gallery