Tuesday (9th June) saw the 29th annual Blaydon Race.
Originally a horse race in 1862 it starts from the original starting position which is Balmbras pub in the bigg market.
The race is 5.9 miles (10k) and goes along scotswood road (as in the famous geordie song) to reach the finish line in Blaydon.
This year our own Tony decided to run it up until a day before the race took place.....So I decided to step in unfortunately without any training whatsoever.
Thinking I would get a quick start I decided to start with the elite runners and found after about 200 metres I had one hell of a stitch!! It wasn't until around mile 2 when I found my own pace with the encouragement of a few bystanders and staff from Vickers cheering on.
The race itself is fairly flat but has a few hilly bits at the end. I have done the great north run before but this is totally different and the majority of runners are from running clubs.
Battling on past various music from local bands I got to the finish line at a time of 49 mins - not bad considering I had predicted a time beforehand of 1 hour.
The winning time was 29 minutes this year. Normally the winners are usually from Kenya but it was good to see this year's winner being a local maths teacher who was 38 years of age which got me thinking.... If I train for the next few years who knows???!
I really enjoyed the experience and shall be doing it next year along with the other 4000 runners. However I won't be starting as fast again and will certainly be doing some training.
R
