Little did I know when booking this event that it would not turn out to be quite the Festive event we had planned. Geoff returned from Bangkok on December 4th and dropped a bombshell, He intended to put his house up for rent and return to Bangkok ASAP leaving no room in his life for me, anyone that knows me will know how devastated I am.

It would have been easy to take time off work and hideaway for a while but that’s not my style and on Saturday 7th December I found myself driving to Kings Forest in West Stow Country Park to meet Gina and Jayne for our 20-mile challenge, an event put on by Positive steps in aid of the St Nicholas Hospice Care.

The event had a nice festive atmosphere, most people had made the effort to wear some kind of festive clothing, including me !! and the whole event was very well organized.

The half marathon distance and the 20 milers start together and stay together until the 20 milers go on to complete an extra lap. After all the rain in the week leading up to this event we were very lucky to get a nice dry bright day and much to our surprise there was little mud or sand on the route, it was just nice and springy underfoot.

The marshalls were fantastic friendly and very encouraging, and we had some of the Famous cheesy feet at the feed station, along with cinnamon trees and other goodies. We did wonder if we would dislike the fact that the route was made up of 3 laps but you actually don’t notice.

While enjoying a cup of tea at the finish it was nice to chat with some of the volunteers, one man was telling us how much he loved marshaling at these events, was also interesting to hear there had been 82 nonstarters, which is a shame when so many others wanted a place. and amazingly £6500 had been donated to the hospice.

All considering it was an enjoyable day and good therapy for me surprisingly we did well with a moving time of 4.34 and elapsed time of 4.46…..

Next it’s the ELY NYE 10km then the LDWA 26 mile Stansted stagger