Trunce – #3 [Report]

I needed to snap out of my post London funk and the Trunce is always a good evening fell race to pop along to.

There’s not that much one can write about the Trunce because it’s such a short, simple race – about 6km up and down some gnarly little hills and tracks through woods and 3 river crossings – which, depending on the time of year can be ankle deep or much worse if there’s been rain.

As it’s a race series held over several Monday nights through the summer, you get your number for life (for the princely sum of £1.50 entry) and line up in Oxspring ready to rumble.

It’s been a couple of years since I did a Trunce race and I knew the course start had moved significantly further up the hill which helps if you want to go out fast (I do!) as it cuts out a quarter mile climb right away and swaps it for a longer descent down the same hill for the finish so I’d anticipated being quite a bit faster than my PB from 2 years ago.

Tucked in behind the front row I went off reasonably fast but well within myself and decided I’d just run to a solid but not 100% effort level to get back into the swing of racing so was happy to let a couple of people pass early on as I could hear they were already working hard so early and I would pass them later but the front 4-6 runners all went off into the distance pretty rapidly and I didn’t see them again.

I probably only really traded places with one or two guys through the course of the race and ultimately ended up 9th overall in 25:55 which I was pretty pleased with.

The one thing I’m starting to wonder about now is that when I look up the people who win these sorts of races, they fall into one of two people – someone I’m never going to beat (a true speedster) or someone with a roughly similar 5/10k time to myself and yet I’m finding myself in this case 1:10 behind the winner or a minute behind second place so perhaps there’s more scope to place higher with a more aggressive strategy next time.

Am I selling myself short and going out too conservatively or not working quite as hard as I could be?

Either way, pleased to get back to racing!