What's harder? racing or organising a race?

Today we held our anual Gravy Pud fell race. By the time it is all over I am well and truely shattered.

Today I headed off for my run at 7am.  Thought I would be running with my mate Matt Shaw but he bailed on me due to bad stomach.  I think he had been out celebrating a great 4th finish in the Manchester League XC yesterday!!!  So I was off out running, in the dark and wet conditions.  After 6 mile I was ready to head off road as it was just coming light.  I headed off on my fell race route to check my marking tape hadn't blown away in the night.  On the tops of the moor it was sleeting, snowing and raining all in one.  I was freezing and wanted to be home.  I arrived home, quick shower and brew and back out to the race.

The fell race last year was a victim of the snow and we had to change the route to a flat round the resers race but this year the fell race was back on the usual route.  It's a tough course, some very good climbs in what was the wettest weather we have staged the race in.  The work before the race weekend is easy, involves filling some forms in, changing the date on my race risk assessment and printing some entry forms off.  I was expecting about 100 runners and even thought we could loose a few due to the wet weather this wekeend.  How wrong was I? Instead we eneded up with 168 hardy fell runners gathering to run the race which was very pleasing.  This is a record turn out for this race which this year is supporting CADS which is a charity for getting children, able and disabled to play sport together.  Details here. 
The race is ran from Tintwistle near Glossop and is a challenging course considering it's only 12 miles from the centre of Manchester.  Marking out the course I did Saturday afternoon.  The everyone races Sunday morning and then we get to run round it again to collect all the tape in.  Makes for a busy weekend.  So what is easier, racing or organising a race?  It has to be racing by a mile.  As I stood in the freezing sleet this morning recording finishing numbers and times at the same time, on a sheet of paper that was slowly washing away was not nice.  I was shaking with the cold as Jason called out running numbers to me.  I made two mistakes as well on the results but will blame it on the cold!  Usualy when at a race you get to turn up, pay, warm up, race and go home.  Not really thinking about the people marshalling, recording times, or taking the course down.  All our runners would have been home and dry by the time we finished collecting the tape in.  But it was well worth it to rasie a lot of cash for this years charity and to receieve so mush positive feedback from the runners.

Results of our race can be found at www.nblg.co.uk

Many thanks for reading and enjoy the weather!  Donna is sat next to me getting excited because it's starting to snow!!!