This was unusual - a mid-week daytime special, one-off 1.7 mile run on Penistone Hill, Haworth, for anyone over 10 years old. This was organised by Dave and Eileen Woodhead of the WoodenTops. There was a very special reason for it; it was timed to coincide with and celebrate Alistair and Jonathan Brownlee's running in the Olympic triathlon. The brothers honed their skills in the rough tough WoodenTops fell races as youngsters.Before the run, some of us got the chance to hold one of the Olympic torches. It was surprisingly heavy. Tim Done took a load of pictures: Posing with an Olympic Torch. He also took plenty of the run itself, as did others. A large crop of pictures and video clips is linked on the relevant page of the WoodenTops site.
The rain started on cue shortly before we were due to start the run but fortunately the worst of it held off until afterwards. The speed of some of the youngsters around this course blew me away. 13th overall out of 170 finishers was U12 (Thomas Nelson). 9th was U14 (James Lund). 6th was also U14 (Seth Waterman). 5th was U18 (Edward Evans). There must be some potential Olympians among them. The winner was Tom Brunt in 10:29. Yours truly finished 96th in 15:07.
We watched the triathlon live in Old Sun Hotel pub in Haworth afterwards as the rain beat down outside. It was the only Olympic event I watched in its entirety. The outcome was spot on and the pub was very loud! Ali won gold (as expected) and Jonny won Bronze after an enforced 15 second time-out penalty (which probably didn't affect the outcome). Well done the boys!
The proceedings were saturated with TV and radio media. The Brownlees did themselves proud and the turn-out at the Brownlee Olympic Gold Run did them proud too. The 1.5 hour journey there was worth it.
Here are the pictures I took (none during the race, for obvious reasons).
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