Frostbite Race #5 – Bourne Woods
I think it’s fair to say that of the Frostbite courses, Bourne Woods is the most iconic and for good reason. It’s a wonderful venue for a race and a total of 54 Werrington Joggers turned up to take on the testing hilly course. A great turn out.
As ever, detailed parking instructions had been issued. I parked up at Warners Publications. This being my first Bourne race I had no idea where to go from there so just followed the crowd. It was a 10-15 minute walk to the venue and the route was helpfully signposted with arrows.
Being a crisp cold day, many of the pathways were covered in frost and I was concerned parts of the course would be slippery, but in the end I found grip was good. With no wind, conditions then were perfect (although I would’ve liked more mud).
The race starts on a small rise on the stony paths through the woods. These pathways were much better to run on than I anticipated. The first hill is a climb of about 60ft over the crest and onto a lovely downhill section including a turn onto Wood Lane and out of the trees and into farmland. No established pathways here so there was mud, but not much. As we looped round and back into the trees we got back on the pathways and started on a long uphill section climbing over 100ft in total, hard work rewarded by the run downhill that followed. A looped section through the trees took us up the last hill and onto a long straight downhill finish that was fantastic.
Overall we finished 3rd on the day, so an excellent result. Our scoring runners were Paul Halford, Jack Green, Jeff Lucas, Dan McDonald, Phil Hamlyn, Ellie Swire, Malc Jacklin, Jeremy Green, Sadie Boor and Ann Wood.
Genuinely I thought this was a hugely enjoyable if tough run. Well organised and marshalled, not an easy venue to stage a race of this scale at. I can’t wait to do it all again next year, hopefully with more mud!
The last Frostbite race of the series takes place on the 10th March at Jubilee Park, Huntingdon.