Four Villages Half Marathon, 22nd Jan 2006

Report by Jonathan Dabbs

5 MTC members met up on a very cold January morning to run the 4 Villages half marathon. None of the talk was about the race, just how many layers to wear as the temperature was staying in brass monkey territory because of freezing fog (as Paul was later to find out)!

With over 1700 starters, it was bound to be a well contested race with plenty of people to run with to keep you motivated - the other motivation was if you slowed down, you ran the risk of hypothermia. The pre race kidology was very much apparent afterwards.

Cathy "I'm not very fit at the moment, I'm going to take it easy and use it as a training run" finished in an excellent 1h 47m, just over 3 minutes outside her PB for a half marathon.

Paul was straight to the point "I'm a c**p runner" before strolling home in 1h 37m - nothing wrong with that Paul, a lot of people would happily take that time.

Steve never really predicted anything, and kind of summed up his day. After forgetting his race number, he had to woo the officials to get another, and then unfortunately pulled his hamstring after 20 minutes (post race report from Steve is good news and he's back running again after only a few days). Because it was so cold, Steve didn't hang around for too long and drove off to St Helens to attend a BTA meeting. At this point, Paul had finished, and was also getting pretty darn cold as Paul's stuff was in Steve's boot, and all Paul was wearing was his sweaty race kit! The team rallied round and supplied some delightful attire which he wore with pride (especially Suzy's grans pink scarf and hat).

So, some great performances to start the year off with, and for those doing marathons in April, the first of 3 half marathon training runs - more reports to follow in the coming months...

Name	Time
Jonathan Dabbs	1:17:14
Paul Savage	1:37:44
Cathy Atkinson	1:47:04
Suzy Blackledge	2:02:07
Steve Collins	DNF

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