Haworth Hobble

SAT 13 MARCH 2010
32 miles 5500 feet

Quite literally my 10th go at this 32 mile trail race in Bronte country was indeed a “hobble”. Compared to last week’s High Peak effort, it was a case of from the ecstasy to the agony. After an hour of decent running my right hip was giving me a toothache-like pain that had me hirpling along unable to extend my left leg fully. This morphed into a pretty sore knee also, so feeling truly sorry for myself I limped and lurched along to the penultimate checkpoint at 28 miles. I somehow managed to get the endorphins and adrenaline to blot out the pain and raised a decent pace for the last part of the race to scrape under 6 hours, 25 minutes down on last year. Walking back the few hundred yards to the B&B was agony, but a nice hot bath and a rest seemed to clear up things, and today the leg seems fine. Ex-Westies Damon Rodwell and Crispin Flower ran as a pair and finished just over 5 hours; fellow High Peaker Dave Rogers wasn't too far behind them; Trotter pal Stuart Barrie ran about 6 and a half hours. The selective memory genes are already convincing me that I had a good enough time to return yet again next year for this great event, so I suppose it can’t really have been that bad!

1st - Adam Perry 4h 18m
49th - Damon & Crispin - 5h 11m
60th - Dave 5h 18m
112th - JD 5h 54m
approx 350 finishers

Race details = http://kcac.co.uk/events/haworth-hobble/

Results = http://www.fellrunner.org.uk/results/race10/10_haworth_hobble.html