AMAZING FEET ROC FENCING WYRE FOREST 8 - Or as Jacky Fellows calls it… Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud!!!

She writes:

I ran with Melanie for the first time last Tuesday at the club and was bemoaning the fact that I had missed the Wyre Forest 8 because of injury, but as luck would have it, she told me that she just so happened to have a spare number for the rescheduled race.

We arranged to meet up on Sunday. Melanie’s dad drove us to the Wyre Forest visitors centre in plenty of time for the start. It had started to rain as we set out from Wombourne and it got steadily worse as the morning wore on.

Roland (Melanie’s dad) went off with the dogs and we headed for the start. The race started well and we worked our way along good tracks through the forest, admiring the scenery as we chatted…then came the mud… I’ve never seen so much mud…it must have gone on for a good 2 miles.

I started pretty much from the back and managed to make up a couple of places past women who were gingerly picking their way through what can only be described as a quagmire! Me, being me didn’t bother to watch my step, I just ran straight through the middle of it…I did lose my shoe at one point which set me back a bit…and then I had to powder my nose behind a bush…which pretty much put me back where I started.

The mud and the hills took their toll and I had a real dip in energy at about the 3-mile mark. I was really disappointed that I had to walk up a couple of those hills but by the 4-mile mark I’d eaten a couple of jelly babies and managed to get my second wind.. It was at this point that the only other runners I could see disappeared into the distance and I was left on my own…the scenery and the solitude were wonderful.

I’d got into a rhythm and was comfortable. I really started to enjoy myself. The marshals were brilliant; they gave me so much encouragement and told me how fantastic I was doing. I finished the race in 97:58 which under the circumstances wasn’t that bad. It turned out I wasn’t the last either as there were a few behind me. Melanie greeted me at the end; she’d finished several minutes earlier (well done Mel) and we went of for a well deserved cup of coffee.