Lesley Pymm reports: A slightly less well attended event was the Sandwell 6 Towns 16 miles on Sunday. There were two runners on this distance and more on the marathon distance that started an hour earlier.
I can tell you that I was second, and was 1st woman in my event. Even more amazing, I ran with the Kenyan for the first 8 miles!! The Kenyan man who won it was not very confident about the self navigation – I don’t think he had realised that it was self-nav until he got there – so he ran with me.
When we got to the second checkpoint at about 8 miles there were some of the leaders from the 26 miler there so I suggested that he may get a better run if he went on with them. He got in about 15 minutes ahead of me in the end. Anyway, the route was quite interesting.
There was a lot of canal work, but as you had to concentrate on the route and it went off the canal at times, I found it less tiring than the BBCHM that I did a few weeks ago, even though it was 3 miles longer. There were some really interesting bits that I did not know about – little tunnels under the cut, nature reserves etc. We were given local history notes, but when running it is difficult to concentrate on them as well, so I had to read them at the end.
There were 3 checkpoints on the 16 miles and 4 on the 26. The marathon went through the Netherton Tunnel, so they had to use a torch. It was well organised and there were walkers as well as runners, but still not that many people. It was part of the Sandwell Show and entry gave us free parking for the show, which was worth £3. The weather was kind this year, dry and not too warm. A good training run where you are never going to pb as you have to keep looking at the directions. For the record, my time was 3.45.
Well done Lesley.Congratulations on being the 1st woman in your event. You have really `set the bar high` beating the Kenyans! I would have certainly needed a large ball of string and a compass to run in such a race. Barrie Roberts