On Friday September 18th I completed a race called the Phoenix Manchester Friday Firecracker. The race is not a usual race, as it's not based on time but on distance completed in the 7 hour cut off. 42 brave runners started at 8:30am from race HQ, a local football club car park with changing facilities and toilets.
The weather at the start was a dry and mild 12 degrees centigrade with rain forecast for early afternoon.
The course takes you towards the river Mersey, where it follows the river for around a mile, then does a loop around the Chorlton Water Park and back on to the path before returning to race HQ.
The loop was altered slightly for the day, to 2.9 miles (just under 5k). The course was a mixture of gravel, dirt & tarmac, quite uneven in places with a lot of puddles, tree roots, cyclists and dog walkers to navigate.
Considering it's on the edge of Manchester, it's remarkably scenic, with lots of fields, trees and wildlife. For the majority of the course, it was only the distant rumble of the M60 ring road that gave away that we were in Manchester.
My aim was to keep running at a steady pace for as long as I could then walk/run until I'd had enough. The first 6 laps I was pretty much doing a lap in 30 minutes. I went through 6 laps at bang on 11:30am so my pace had been consistent. laps 7 and 8 I did start to slower, laps 9 & 10, I was “jeffing”, doing a 2 minute run, 1 minute walk.
At the end of lap 9, my wife had arrived in the car park to provide support but by the end of lap 10, the weather had changed for the worse, with a heavy rain shower and increased winds. So, as my taxi was waiting, and the weather was no longer pleasant, I decided to call it a day.
Official stats: Event: Manchester - Friday Firecracker - Distance: 29.1 miles - Time: 05 hours, 37 minutes, 20 seconds. I came 4th based on distance covered!!!
Stafford 10k
On Sunday, six members of Newport & District Running Club made the short trip to Stafford to take on the town’s annual 10k road race. Run annually since 2016 (bar a two-year pause for the Covid-19 pandemic), the race was celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, and with it introduced a new course.
This year, runners took in a loop to the west of town centre, taking in Castlefields, Highfields and the Wolverhampton Road, before completing a loop of the town centre to finish the race, which had its start and finish lines just behind Victoria Park, with Race HQ in the park itself. The new course presented a fresh challenge to runners, with around 80 metres of elevation gain, around double that of the old course.
There were 2,396 finishers this year, and Alex Cochrane led the way for NDRC, finishing 143rd overall in a time of 41 minutes, 33 seconds. Harry Stokes was in hot pursuit, taking part on his 16th birthday, and taking 156th position with his time of 41:58.
Neil Fairbrother was next, finishing 415th with a time of 47:18, just ahead of David Evans, who clocked a time of 48:10 in 462nd place. Stephen Mansbridge finished 1,797th with his time of 1:07:41, whilst Donna Hesbrook-Edwards ran a time of 1:14:24 to finish 2,030th.
