Our first race - Manchester Christmas Pudding 5 miler

Picture the scene; it was twelve months ago, we'd already had the first significant snowfall of winter and the temperature was below freezing, my husband, greyhound and I were slipping across the car park of a motorway service station in a hunt for hot food. We had just run our first ever 5K together as a team. The achievement for my husband (who was still recovering from knee surgery and had been on crutches for five the first five months of the year) and our middle-aged greyhound (who's idea of running ended at anything longer than a 30 second sprint) was pretty impressive. We were attracting some pretty odd looks in KFC at 11am that Sunday morning, I can tell you. Which may, or may not, have had little to do with the fact we were a bit grubby after running and something more to do with the fact that we both dressed as Father Christmas and the greyhound was sporting a rather fine white nylon beard.

Fast forward a year and my husband is fully recovered and back to playing football (his brief flirtation with running as an independent sport, more or less over), the greyhound is most definitely fully-retired from all running events and we have this little scrap of a second dog who is very much keener to run with me than either of my previous team mates. And up and down the country it is the weekend of the festive fun run; all across the land, people were donning felt santa suits and highly flammable beards, ready to potter around various courses on the promise of a mince pie or Christmas pudding (or if you are really lucky, some mulled wine) at the finish line. But this year, the day is not bright and clear with fresh winter snowfall and frost, it is grey and wet and windy and pretty miserable. It was enough of a challenge just to get from under the duvet and out of bed this morning, let alone run 5 muddy, off-road miles in the wind and rain. However, the Bear does not recognise bad weather as any kind of limiting factor, so off in the car the four of us went. There are few events that are within a ten minute drive from your front door, so I guess I shouldn't really complain.

(Though Benny might complain at the indignity of his outfit)

The Manchester Christmas Pudding 5 mile run is a new race this year, and the company running it, I think, had only taken it on as a management project very recently. Therefore it was a small field of entrants on an untested course and I've already heard reports that they will be using a different location next year. I hope they do as it was pretty uninspiring stuff on a repeating figure of eight around part of Wythenshawe Park, but the organisers were fantastic and lovely and deserve to be successful and have a larger number of entrants next year.
We were the only person+dog competitors, and the man with the starter claxon did ask us to go to the back of the field at the start, which we did, but within 50 yards of the start we were in the middle of the pack, so I don't know what good waiting at the back was supposed to do.

In many ways, the race was the perfect next step for Benny and I; where we have been running on out own, or in small groups, or in beautiful, isolated terrain this was the complete off-road opposite. The fields were packed with Sunday league football matches with a full compliment of subs, referees, linesman, managers and spectators, and a healthy dose of early morning dog walkers too, just to add to the mix of distractions. We were less than a minute into the race when I found myself longing for the sheep and ladder stiles of last weekend! To be fair to the pup, he kept his mind on running a good 70% of the time. However, the remaining 30% of the time we were locked in a battle; he, desperately interested in what we had just run past or were about to run past, or the marshalls, or the other runners, or what was on the opposite side of the field and me, just trying to put one foot in front of the other with a bit of pace and trying not to fall over in the mud.

Because of the repeating loop nature of the course (which seemed to measure significantly longer than 5 miles on all of our Garmins), we met some of the faster runners coming back at various points and I have to say the eventually winner of the race showed himself to be a complete @rse; shouting at marshalls and swearing, totally against the nature of what is, essentially, a fun run. But on the whole, fast runners, slower runners and marshalls, rose above the miserable conditions and it was just that, a real fun cross-country run. Fifty minutes later (much slower than I had anticipated, slower than my off-road 10K PB!) and we were drying off with mince pies and mulled wine and catching up with friends, old and new, from the running community, all quarrels forgotten and happy to succumb to soggy, damp-dog cuddles.

Over the last couple of weeks I have been thinking long and hard begun to rationalise what I need to do in both my own and Benny's training. And today only served to reinforce the realisation that I must do loads more speedwork (Benny will be fine with speed!) while we build him up to longer distances. Over the last year, while I've been working at the silly long distances, I have lost any speed that I once had; where once I could trot out a good couple of hours of 8 minute miles, now anything less than 10 minute miles feels like sprinting! So bring on the shorter, faster runs - I know Benny is up for them, and we'll worry about the higher mileage runs when the weather is better (oh, and we'll be avoiding running around football matches in the near future).

Resting by the fire - still muddy but happy.