Race Date: Saturday 5 January 2019

Race Report by: Stuart Jones

Things we learnt:

• Heels hurt, not hills – especially if, when wearing borrowed spikes, you rub twin heel-sized blisters on your heels.
• Siri does not know ‘arm sleeves’ – but apparently they make you so slip-streamed and aerodynamic that you finish first Strider.
• The official Millennials’ Costa Travel Cup (£19.95 on eBay) does not fit under the Costa Express machines in WH Smith at Wetherby Services – but this hardly matters as that will be our last visit this season.
• The Brownlee brothers are not actually fictional characters – one of them turned up this year, and finished top three.
• You ‘hum’ into the wide end of a kazoo – and Jingle Bells sounds a lot like the theme to Robin Hood.
• Dry conditions underfoot lead to two minutes off previous times – no mud to speak of.
• Things are better together – we had thirty six runners out today, and a bit of a party on the coach there and back.
• Oxygen tents don’t work – our resident expert in hypoxic generation tells us not: you have to actually live at altitude (not just temporarily visit).
• Crop top running vests are out of fashion – unless it was just too warm for them (hardly any were being worn).
• The ground does not know if you’re wearing brand-leader spikes or Decathlon.
• Though certain fast lads may not love running off-road, they are still fast when off it: and a bacon bap from a road-side Greasy Spoon after Parkrun does nothing to slow them down, either.
• Cross Country distances have not been gender equalised for this year, despite a popular petition and a Committee vote on the subject: it was felt that increasing participation shows that current arrangements appeal and are inclusive.
• Fastest Female Strider on Fell = Fastest Female Strider at Cross Country. (The same is not true for men!)
• You can take a football rattle to Cross Country even if you can’t take one into a football ground.
• Running runs in some families – and so we have a new, totally unofficial, category: the Family Pairs Championship (see later).

You get the idea – we had a really good day out at ‘Yorkshires’. After a Parkrun warm-up (or not) a bus-load travelled up together in the usual cheerful, comradely atmosphere.

Before any competitive running, we had a simple medal presentation to the Women’s Team from their success in the South Yorkshire League 2018. Whoop, indeed.

There is a whole programme of races but, as grown-ups, we are only there for the sharp end of events. Women go first, a measly four medium laps including the same steep bank on each lap, running a little over 8 km. Leeds and Rotherham were most impressive as teams. Barnsley were simplest and crudest in their response to being urged up the bank (think raised middle digit). The Senior Men’s Race was the last of the day, running pretty much the same route (one medium and four larger laps – five times up the bank), a little over 10 km. Normally this would be churned up and made wet by the thousands of feet that have gone before, but not so today.