Dovestone Diamond 2015

A big improvement on last year in some pretty windy conditions.

This is a great race but a killer start where you need to be near the front of the field to avoid getting involved in a traffic jam at a gate early on but apart from that it’s a very runnable 10k trail race.

After the initial climb up from the start you carry on heading up into a treeline around the top of the route and it eases into a singletrack around 2 miles where you head out to the turnaround where you can somewhat depressingly see the leaders heading back down the other side of a valley.

Still, once you’re around that turnaround it’s a nice road section down to the top path of the reservoir giving a bit of respite before the slog around the remainder of the course where this year the headwind along the edge of the res was brutal. We went round a corner at mile 5 and it felt like I’d hit a brick wall.

Heading to mile 6 is down the gnarly steep grass bank at the side of the rest then a finishing third of a mile that seems to go on forever.

Happy overall to finish in 9th place in 41:33 which is a couple of minutes faster than last year and a better run race.