Over the years I’ve done a lot of road marathons that are considered very hilly, Windermere on many occasions, Snowdonia and even Great Langdale. I thought I had seen all the worst hilly road marathons but this year’s new Huddersfield marathon is right up there with Great Langdale.
Before the start, I was wondering whether I could dip under 3 hours 30 minutes. I’ve managed this at Snowdonia and Windermere but within a couple of miles of running I knew it was not going to happen. By the time I climbed the 2 mile hill at the end of the first lap, of this two lap course, I was resigning myself to the fact that anything under 4 hours would be a very good time on this course.
I enjoyed meeting friends before the start of the race, particularly Jim at the beginning of the race where we had a nice catch up chat.
Tough hill, wasn’t smiling at this point! It was a lot steeper than the photo makes it look and very long!
It might have been one of the toughest road marathons but like other tough marathons, beautiful scenery seems to always go hand in hand with the difficulty factor and this course was no different. The scenery was fabulous, at least for those of us that weren’t too tired to look up and take in the wonderful countryside views.
The race field was small it only had 102 runners but was very friendly and well organised. I was very pleased with my time in the end of 3 hours 50 minutes 32 seconds and 11th place. Great to bump into fellow 10in10 runner John G. during the latter stages of the run, felt slightly bad overtaking him in the last mile. I would recommend this race to anyone who fancies a scenic but very challenging road marathon. The finishers t-shirt was nice but I would have liked a better medal to sort of justify the effort to earn it. Will I be back next year? ….maybe 😉
A bit of post race larkin’ about!
