Let's do the Hoe down!

Sunday 19th February saw 2 Harriers - Roger Rowe and myself, Ellie Sutcliffe - travel south down the A38 to Plymouth for the annual Plymouth Hoe 10 mile race, which also incorporates the Peninsula Challenge (Devon v Cornwall) and the Devon county 10 mile championships.

Conditions for racing were perfect, cold, crisp, sunny and with little wind. Add this to the fact that the organisers had altered the course this year to make it faster and less complicated, PBs and course records were all up for grabs. The organisers had also promised that there would not be a repeat of the marshalling fiasco that befell the race last year when many of the lead runners were sent off course... unfortunately, however, there was a minor repeat, which I'll explain later.

Roger set off hard and had tucked himself in behind the leading runner in his Vet 65 category. He was just waiting for the moment to strike and reel him in when, 4 miles in, Rogers' hamstring tightened on the climb up to the Hoe and he took the sensible decision to retire and not risk a full on pull. Fair play to him for that, and hard lines.

I meanwhile was running with the added incentive of proving my credentials to the Devon team manager who had not picked me for the Devon ladies team! I tucked in behind the 4th lady from the team for the first 3 miles and then made my move on one of the hills. I increased my gap to about 300m at one stage but then.... disaster. At mile 7 I, along with a fair few runners in front of me, were sent the wrong way at a roundabout. Instead of making a sharp hairpin turn to the right, we ran straight on and under an archway near the docks. By the time the marshall caught up to us and shouted and we all turned around, this Devon team athlete who I had pulled away from had reached the roundabout and so caught me up. I worked hard over the last 3 miles to regain a lead and ended up beating her into 8th place - the 7 women above me being all Cornwall and Devon team runners - by 12 seconds.

I reckon that this marshalling mishap cost me about 30 seconds and meant the difference between a sub-64 minute clocking. As it was, I knocked exactly a minute off my PB to finish in 64.18. 58th over all (out of 483 finishers), 8th female and 3rd Devon senior female, so not all bad I guess!
Running up the hill at about mile 3.5 towards the Hoe.