NEMC Hardwick Park Winter Wonder 2019

I think this is the first time that the North East Marathon Club (NEMC) have put on an event at Hardwick Park in Sedgefield and it was a great success. Easy parking and a cafe and toilets on site.

A lapped course is never something I really enjoy, but it does have some advantages like good access to your kit and food and drink - each lap was 1.5 miles. I love the Sedgefield parkrun, for me it is the prettiest parkrun in the North East, but it is just two laps of the park. Today to get to 27m we would have to do eighteen laps. I was hoping this wouldn't put me off running round the park. It was a 6 hour event but we decided to stop after 27 miles.

It was cold and grey at the start at 9.30 and we were wrapped up warm.

We had devised a system of moving buttons from a belt to a pocket every lap, but I never got started as the lap counters did a great job. My garmin watch also conformed the distance well. There were no other marshalls but the course was well marked with chalk.

We decided to plan a little, not like us ! We decided to walk the hill in the woods every lap and then after halfway walk some of the other small hills. It gave us something to look forward to leading up to halfway. By the time we got to the last four laps we were walking some pretty small undulations, but that was fine. If possible we wanted to finish in about 5 hours so we could get coffee before everything closed.

After about six laps the sun came out, which had not been forecast until much later in the day. By the time we were on the last two laps it got grey again. No wind all day. Amazing weather for January.

Hardwick Park is lovely, if you have never been it is well worth a visit

There was some photographers on the course. This one was taken by Catherine Smith

and these by Pete King

We didn't find the laps as bad as we expected, there was always lots to see, there is a lot of swans, geese and ducks who ventured out of the lakes and ponds and on to the wide paths, but it was easy to run around them. As it was a nice day, there were lots of people walking, some with dogs, all on leads, lots of young children on bikes and toy cars so we had to pay attention to keep out of their way.

We slowed down after about 22m, but we knew it had been a while since we had ran that sort of distance. Many of the other runners had finished after 13 miles or 20 miles and the faster runners had finished so it was fairly quiet at that stage.

It was good to finish and we collected our medal, chocolate and socks, a good event. Would I do it again ? Not sure, it is very local for us, so we shall see.