Race Date: Sunday 22nd September 2024

Race Report by Robin Nelson

This year I skipped the Spitfire 10k after 3 years racing there; last year’s changes meant four of the 10km would be run up and down the runway, which has dampened the appeal. Instead, my recent annual tradition of finding a race near my hometown took me closer to home, for my first Stafford 10k.

I must have angered the gods with my disloyalty to the Spitfire 10k, as weather warnings were followed by spectacular lightning & torrential rain on the Saturday. Stafford was already clogged up with roadworks, with further road closures planned for the race; but the organisers tweaked the course to avoid potential floods and somehow we were still on.

Number pick up was on the Saturday (pre lightning storms) in Victoria Park. Fun fact: The park used to be home to Isabel, a little narrow gauge train sat on a plinth, that Stafford’s Isabel Trail parkrun shares its name with. The names might be a coincidental though, as the train never ran along the trail, and there was a ‘Lady Isabel’ associated with Stafford Castle. The train, however, was named after a different Isabel, the daughter of the owner of the quarry where the train began its working life…

…three hours down an internet wormhole later…

Anyway, back to Sunday in a wet Victoria Park, and we were underway. The first km snaked along the high street and around the town square on slick wet polished bricks. I took some cautious, wide turns in my ungrippy road shoes.

Stafford 10k is another race advertised as ‘flat and fast’. I can confirm that it’s not the ideal town for hill reps. While they did find a hill for us to run up at 4km, it was barely a bump on Strava’s graph. A mere 10 metres. “But you run in hilly Sheffield. You live on a hill ” my inner critic whined, as the 45 minute pacer and his entourage promptly ran away, never to be seen again, I thought.

A couple of km later and parkrun tourists might have recognised the ‘back’ section of the aforementioned Isabel Trail parkrun. We deviated from it briefly, then rejoined (one of those flood detours I think). Aside from the slick bricks from earlier, this was the section where the rain was most in evidence, with plenty of water-filled potholes to splash through.

I noticed that I was slowly catching up with the 45 minute pacer towards the end of the trail. We were soon back on the roads, and the pacer reached the final sprint with enough time to turn and encourage a few stragglers, so I took the invitation to push for the line in just under 45 minutes, roughly where I thought I might be before the start.

Everybody was thoroughly soaked, including my family who were waiting for me at the finish, so I thanked the pacer, grabbed myself a race shirt, and headed off to get warm and dry.

I was the sole Strider amongst 1724 runners. Angus Smith (Corstophine/Strathclyde Uni) won the men’s race in a time of 31:55. The women’s race was won by Georgia Stanfield of Trentham RC in a time of 37:58.

Strider Results