Bright, sunny and relatively warm conditions welcomed the 55 runners to Upton Bishop for this 5.6 mile road race over an undulating course which mainly followed quiet country lanes around the South Herefordshire village of Upton Bishop.
One of the organising team, incidentally this year he didn’t actually take part in the race, was Nigel Misselbrook who is a long time member of Croft Ambrey Runners.
The race started and finished at Upton Bishop village Hall and after a short run along the main A road that passes through the village we took a sharp right turn and set off up the first of many hills, I didn’t bother counting them as according to our own Mike Blenkinsop they are better conquered then forgotten! although the last mile was mainly downhill which made for a fast finish for those that still had the energy.
The race was won by David Setchfield, who is a local runner and unaffiliated, in a time of 35:31 ahead of Gavin Jones (WVR) 35:35 and Ian Smith (Severn AC) 35:53.
The ladies were led home by 56 year old Beryl Sampson (Glos.AC/Newent Runners) who finished 16th o/a in 41:12.
Five Croft Ambrey runners took part: Andrew (now 18!) was 5th in 36:24, Martin (now 45 and still getting faster!) 7th in 38:14, a course PB by 1:20 (incidentally if there was a MV45 age group he would have won it) I finished a reasonable 23rd in 42:22 which is 33 seconds slower than the last time I ran here in 2010! Bryan Davies finished 36th in 46:23 and was one of the 2 over 70’s with Brian Simonds of Wye Valley runners who collected a bottle of cider each for being over 70 and completing the course both in perfectly respectable times. Finally Rachel was our only female participant and completed the course in 51:22 to claim 47th spot.
In all, a quite exhilarating and testing run and good preparation for Martin’s and my own run in Cardiff’s Half Marathon exactly a week later.