The day was rather overcast and chilly as we arrived at the stadium in Woodbank Park for the PUMA Stockport 10 2013 race, organised by Stockport Harriers. Neither of us had been to the track before. Our first port of call was the tent to collect our race numbers.

This race is rather different to the Conwy Half Marathon in that race is not such a serious business. There was a fabulous commentator there called ‘Tom Potson’ who provided a fun take on the day!

 

Once we had collected our numbers, we went back to the car for a while to keep warm. I had been ill for the previous couple of weeks and in reality it would probably have been best if I hadn’t run but I had really wanted to!

  

When it was near to race time, we headed back to the stadium and joined the inevitable queue for the toilets. We also dropped off a bag containing our fleeces at the baggage drop point, as we would need them after the race.

 

We then joined the line-up for the start. Andy was keen and ready to go and I was still wondering if I was doing the right thing!

 

And then we were off (with  a burst of the Benny Hill theme tune), starting with one and a half laps of the track before heading out into Woodbank park, then  ran through Offerton then Chadkirk, up to Bredbury and then back to the stadium via New Zealand road (a little hill to finish with).  I very nearly quit as we left the stadium at the beginning of the race but hung in there and was very pleased to be able to complete the whole race. Andy was very good and stayed with me, encouraging me when I started to struggle! We did manage a fairly respectable time of 1:37:39 which gave us an average pace of 9:46 which was still better than our original target of a 10 minute mile (when we first booked onto the race some months ago).

  

The PUMA Stockport 10 2013 route was:

Having got showered and changed, we then spent the rest of the day proudly wearing our Stockport 10 race T shirts

  

It was a really fabulous race and both enjoyed it (mostly at least) and would thoroughly recommend it to anyone. A race that doesn’t take itself too seriously.