What a great weekend... an excuse to visit old friends and a beautiful area of the British Isles!
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| Claire and Catherine |
Saturday: The weekend started with a day trip to York (well...Clare worked and Catherine shopped!) followed by a leisurely drive up country through beautiful Yorkshire villages... Saturday night consisted of babysitting 5 and 7 year old boys (whilst M&D celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary) whilst following our tried and tested pre-race routine of red wine, nibbles and pasta.
Sunday (race day): At around 7am, feeling slightly dehydrated (we blame the celebratory pink bubbles – those bubbles steal body fluids you know!) and we headed for South Shields, to park the car near the finish and catch the metro to the start...
The start: following all the usual pre-race carbs, fluids and loo stop we fought (literally!) our way into the starting cages and we were ready for the off! Just over 9 minutes
after Mo started the race we crossed the start and off we went (you could see us on the BBC race coverage)...
Race highlights include... the being squirted in the face with water by Geordie teenagers (there was just a little too much pleasure in their eyes for our liking!); the life saving ice- pops at mile 6 (it’s very warm running in your school uniform!); the Red Arrows flying over Tyne Bridge as we crossed (again if you’re quick you’ll see on the BBC coverage moving into the middle of the screen for the club ‘jazz hands’ pose); the rain from mile 9 (we seriously needed cooling down!) and the coastline view with 1.5 miles to go. We squeezed (again literally!) down the finishing straight in a very respectable 1 hour 56 having thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and taken in the sights of the north-east.
The whole event was brought to an end with an amazing acrobatic display by the red arrows (a fitting tribute to pilot Red 4)...all in all a wonderful experience!!!