Noel on Tour

Our new Club Treasurer reports from his travels down South...

On Sunday 30th June Noel Green completed the Woolacombe Half marathon for the second year running. It's a notoriously tough half and is often mentioned as one of the country's toughest with 1500ft of climbing taking in a stretch of the South West Coast Path plus some beach and sand dune running and is almost entirely off-road.

Fortunately it was a bit cooler in North Devon than in Gloucestershire (the day of the Cotswold Way Relay) but it was still pretty hot work.

He was saving myself a bit for the Man vs Coast race in Cornwall on the following Saturday so he was very pleased to shave a couple of minutes off last year's time and finish in 2:05 and was 5th out of 20 in my V55 age group.

On Saturday the 6th of July Noel completed the 'Rat Race' Man vs Coast adventure run. He thought the Woolacombe half was tough but this event is ridiculous. It comprised of 3000ft of up-hills, swimming, wading, running along streams, rock scrambling and very uneven, rocky paths. The race is advertised as 23 miles but my watch recorded 23.98 miles!

It was the most grueling physical thing he has ever done. Eventually finished in 6 hours 58 minutes which he thought was dreadful until he found out that he was 325th out of 1097 finishers and about 1300 starters. Some contestants took over 10 hours but hats off to anyone who finished. His famous last words... "I will not be doing it again"