Crewkerne Nine

Crewkerne Nine

Sunday 30th May saw the Westgates at the 30th running of the Crewkerne Nine. A truly splendid, demanding, undulating nine-miler, that unfortunately must lose runners who prefer to do the fastish Wells fun-run 10K, held on the same day. Obviously no contest in our preference.

Preparations for the race went well, huge self-restraint was needed to restrict myself to one glass of yellow raspberry wine on Saturday night followed by nine hours deep sleep. Omens Sunday morning were encouraging as I managed to find one of the rare parking spaces in the high street near the town hall. Weather was improving and becoming almost warm and for some reason, as I helped the blind Chard runner to the urinal, I felt I was going to have a good run.

Sky TV was out looking for a story, this is David Laws territory!! And yet they seemed to find the start of the race sufficiently newsworthy/more interesting. My target was to beat Dave C, who I managed to catch at about 7 miles in 2007. In theory anything over 7 miles should be long enough to catch Dave, but if he gets off to a good start and I get the pace wrong, he wins. My first mile was 6:45 with Dave ahead out of sight. Rod Appleby, another rival who I rarely beat, went bounding past me on a steep downhill. I went through 2 miles at 14:03 having slowed a bit. However I was settling into a steady pace and soon went back past Rod. Drinks stations were frequent and at each I took 2 cups, one to drink and one to tip over myself. Unfortunately during the last mile, the cumulative effect of the weight of water and dodgy elastic meant I had to keep pulling my shorts up.

Mile 4 to 5 went well – 6:30min and I felt good. On the straights I could see Dave ahead, and on the hills I could sense him slowing until there were only 4 runners between us. After mile 7 (49mins) I didn’t look at the watch again, just at Dave ahead and concentrating on getting up the hills faster than him, intending to create an unassailable gap so that he would be unable to catch me with his devastating sprint on the final downhill.

I caught him at about mile 8 and went past; pushing on ahead with everything I had left. It worked and I posted my best Crewkerne time in 5 attempts, knocking a few seconds off my 2003 time. Lesley, as ever had another excellent run knocking over 4 mins off her previous best, and getting Maiden Newton in the prizes with 1stFV55.