A disappointing turn out for this year’s event. It obviously didn’t create the interest of our usual timed event, which attracts a very high proportion of on the day entries.
Still, I hope those of you that ran produced the sorts of times you were looking for and most importantly; suffered no injuries or accidents.

So just remains to wish you all the very, very best for the New Year, it can hardly be worse than this one.

Mike Murray

10 miles in the legs starting to wain (in fact I think they had been whinging since around 10k). If only I had just kept my mouth shut 2 months earlier, to give you some context, for some reason I had been missed off an email circulation at work offering the first ten respondents the opportunity to run the half marathon in Malta with accommodation etc. paid for by work. All we had to do was raise £250 for CHIPS charity. 

The Retford Half Marathon though 80 miles from Hull is not unkown to Hull runners. It is organised by Retford Athletic Club and attracts approximately 1 200 entrants each year. It leaves Retford from Retford Oaks Academy on Babworth Road and travels through the local North notts countryside, which looks very similar to our East Yorkshire countryside unsurprisingly. The first 5 miles are flat and there are a few rises(including a small railway bridge at mile 11 which we never appreciate running up), the last couple of miles are downhill but because the road (Worksop Road) is not closed and runners are required to run on the left you have to be careful when overtaking as the footpath is narrow in some places. So its not like the North East Lincs or Boston halfs which are very flat but not too arduous and a good time beckons for those who have trained appropriately.

Myself and Tim Groves had ran in the Yorkshire Wolds HM on the Saturday and Paul Wray ran a 19:07 at Hull parkrun so what better start to a Sunday morning than standing at the corner of my street at 4:30am to be picked up and driven to Keswick.

Myself and Kris Hopkins decided some time ago to take a crack at the Bob Graham round. For anyone who doesn’t know what that is I will paint a quick pic.

Bob Graham round is a 66 mile run to be completed in 24 hours, simple. Add to that 27000ft of climbing over 42 peaks (mountains) that is almost the height of Everest. The average peak is around 700 meters, which is the height of 9 blocks of high rise flats on top of each other. 

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