Ellie and Dave W. do Dorset in style!

Whilst the obvious choice of race this weekend was the Great West Run, Dave Wright and myself, Ellie Sutcliffe, had other motivations. We are both, along with Dave Stone, running the Dartmoor Discovery 32.3 mile Ultra marathon in June and so we needed to get in a long training run in beforehand. The North Dorset Villages Marathon seemed like a good place to do that and for myself came with the added bonus of being just 10 miles down the road from my term-time residence in Sherborne.

Dave would have had a much earlier start, however, as the race sets off at 8.30am! Conditions though were ideal for marathon running; a little chilly to start but warming up along route, never getting too hot or too windy.

I felt like I had unfinished business with this course as I ran it last year as my second ever marathon. I set off far too ambitiously, blew up about two thirds in, and ended up losing the lead at the agonising 25.5 mile point! (I later found out that the woman I lost it to had been paced by her husband on his bike and he was feeding her the gap to me, only adding to my annoyance!) I did not need to prove anything time wise after achieving my sub-3h target at Taunton and I did not want to damage myself too much before Dartmoor, so I set out to run an even paced, confidence building run, and hopefully pull off a cheeky win. This was the most comfortable marathon I have run and all my mile splits were fairly even. I didn't crash at my nemisis mile (19!) and felt comfortable and in a rhythm. I crossed the line in 3:02:54, which gave me 12th place over all and 1st female, by almost 30 minutes! It was also the Dorset County Championships race and so as I live here and will not be participating in the Devon champs at Dartmoor Vale, I decided to enter, so that was a nice little bonus to be crowned as Dorset champion.

Dave Wright also had a stormer of a run and totally smashed his PB by over 10 minutes! His previous best was a 3:26 clocking at the Dartmore Vale race last Autumn. The North Dorset is by no means a fast course: it's constantly undulating and it also measures in at slightly longer than 26.2m. So a new PB of 3:15:55, 34th place and 5th MV50 has to give Dave masses of confidence that he is coming into his best form with the DD just 5 weeks ahead. There were 343 finishers, meaning that Dave finished just inside the top 10%.

The race was won by Steve Cannon of Lytchett Manor Striders in 2:42:00 dead. A good time on this course.

This is a super friendly and superbly well organised marathon by the Gillingham Trotters and as long as you can tolerate the early start, it's well worth a try... if only for the beautiful scenery and pretty villages that you get to see on route!

Being started on the North Dorset Village Marathon in Sturminster Newton by the town crier!

Dave Wright pushing on towards a massive new PB of 3:15:55.