Wingerworth Hobble 16th November 2019 Race Report

Today, Saturday 16th November 2019, we held the 1st “Wingerworth Hobble”. A slight variation of our famous Wingerworth Wobble course, just with a new finish up the hill leading to the Barley Mow field. This new area enabled us to organise a funnel finish as we clock everyone through, so thank you to Jeff Halford and John Nicholson for giving us permission to use their land. After the atrocious weather leading up to race day we should have called it the 1St “Wingerworth Squelch”!!

Despite the weather a total of 93 runners took part; 53 of them from 15 different running clubs. Nice to see such a wide selection of club’s members attending our relatively small event. So, our runners arrived and prepared for a slippery, wet and muddy route – sorry to anyone who wore their new trail shoes for the first time!!

The conditions for running weren’t the best, so we expected the runners to take a little longer being weighed down with heavy mud. This wasn’t the case for the winner Luke Beresford, a Ripley Road Runner, who flew round in an astonishing 31 minutes and 12 seconds. Just behind in Luke’s slipstream was Darren King of Clowne Road Runners, who couldn’t quite catch up, but still finished in a great time of 31 minutes, 21 seconds – just 9 seconds after Luke.

The fastest lady was Hannah Barnett of North Derbyshire Running Club. Hannah finished the gruelling course in a cracking time of 39 minutes and 5 seconds. The second lady finisher was Sarah Allcard of Steel City Striders, shortly after Hannah, Sarah made a very respectable time of 40 minutes and 1 second.

For the first male and first female we presented a beautifully packaged fruit arrangement and gave a running book to each of them. Thank you to Andy at Frutura, our local greengrocer at Edinburgh Court, Wingerworth, for providing the fruit hamper. Hopefully these healthy prizes will go down well for their 5 a day and some inspirational reading too!

There was such a lot to do and co-ordinate on race day, that I didn’t get chance to acknowledge everyone’s help and support who had been involved in supporting us and making the event a success.

Thank you to Simon Beardall, Head Teacher of Deerpark Junior School, who allows us use their facilities for our race HQ. Also the ever reliable Wingerworth Scouts who are well organised by Scout Leaders Matt Aldgate and James Land. Further thanks go to St John’s Ambulance personnel and all our volunteers: the marshals, timekeepers, adjudicator, sweep runners (who paid to come last!), the result recorders, raffle helper, and the school PTA who ran the kitchen on the day.

We are pleased to donate proceeds from our event to charity. This time our beneficiaries from the Hobble are:

• Deerpark Primary School
• The Royal British Legion
• Wingerworth Scouts
• Ashgate Hospice

Thanks to everyone who attended. We hope you all enjoyed your morning with us – we certainly enjoyed meeting friends both old and new. For anyone who would like another go around our course, the provisional date for the Wingerworth Wobble is likely to be on Saturday 28th March 2020 – we will order blue skies and sunshine ….. hahaha!!

Hope to see everyone next time!

Roger Barrett – Race Director

Photos

More pictures available on our Facebook page.