I have always been put off running any of the Rutland Water races by the nightmare marathon training runs that I’ve endured there, incorporating one particular hill that is the stuff of nightmares, particularly if you are used to training week in week out in a city so devoid of hills that it classes a flyover as a hill! However, I gave myself a talking to, and decided at the very last minute that after effectively taking the summer off from most forms of running, particularly distance, I needed to ‘woman up’ and get cracking with some decent training, which is why I coughed up £28 quid and found myself at Rutland Water yesterday morning.

I got to Rutland Water at about 8.15am (the race was due to start at 10.05am), leaving plenty of time to get there because I’m not familiar with the area and realised that it didn’t start in the same place as the parkrun. The address given was Sykes Lane, which is the side near Empingham. The turn off was clearly signposted and parking was very straightforward. I was directed to a field and charged £4.

The field I parked in was about 500m from the race HQ. As I walked from the car park to the HQ to collect my number, I realised that the wind was going to be a bit of a challenge, as it was practically blowing me off my feet as I arrived there (not that I’m prone to exaggeration!). Number collection was very straightforward, and queues were short. The race was limited to 1300 entrants, including the marathon entries, so it was quite a small race in the great scheme of things.

There was a well-organised bag drop. Toilets were a variety of the public toilets that are there near the café and, in addition, there were the usual portaloos, a fine line-up of about 20, which coped very well with the demand.

The race start ended up being delayed by about 20 mins due to weight of traffic in Empingham, where queues must have formed by people arriving later than I did.

The race start was a bit chaotic, with the Marathoners in theory going off 5 mins before those doing the Half. In reality, I think perhaps due to the late start, people had all just become a jumbled mess in the pens, and the organisers just set off clumps of people about a minute apart. The race was chip timed though, so it wasn’t the end of the world, although there was a bit of congestion to start with.

The race course fairly quickly took us over the dam, where you felt the full force of the howling gale. The traffic of people was pretty heavy, but it was easy enough to pick your way through. The course got very congested at about miles 3 to 4, which was also where the first hills reared their ugly heads. The paths were fairly narrow, and by this stage the speedy runners (and Dan and Jeff I do mean you!) had got to the turnaround point at 5 miles and were making their way back. The two-way flow made overtaking on the hill quite tricky. At the turnaround point you start to head back and enjoy some of the downhill that you’ve just finished labouring your way up. Now I’m not the best mathematician in the world, but even I could work out that having the turnaround point at mile 5 meant there must be an add-on somewhere else. We retraced our steps back the way we’d come, past Normanton Church, then over the dam, until we got to the start area, where by this stage I was praying that my Garmin had malfunctioned and we were actually allowed to finish, but no such luck. The last three miles of the course takes you out for a further 1.5 miles of hill after hill, until you get to a turnaround point with a welcome water station, and you have to run the 1.5 miles back to the finish.

At the finish line you are presented with a medal and then directed into a large marquee to get your tee shirt, both of which were well worth the 13.1 miles of pain. Also at the end there was a table full of cookies; a place offering massages; and a tent where you could get a print-out of your time.

The race was well-marshalled, and there were (I think) 3 water-stations, two of which were also offering bananas and gels.

Race results were on the website by about 7pm the same day.

Although I found this race probably the hardest half I have done, due to the mix of hills, trail and wind, I would probably be up for doing it again next year, as the sense of achievement at the end made it all worthwhile.