Killerton 2019 — Caution Slippery when wet
Matt once again proved himself to be an invaluable member of the team. We spent 15mins trying get stakes into the ground on what particularly tough section of the course, which led Matt to excavate the ground with his bare hands. Sadly no buried treasure, we had to borrow some NT traffic cones in the end for this bit of the route.
Over to Matt:
Wow what an event Killerton 2019 was.
I love the National Trust House and Grounds at Killerton. This is my second year at the event as team lead out on course. It could not be more of a contrast from last years heat and hard conditions.
My weekend start with Parkrun — a group of the core team are keen park runners. In fact we have a run director and founder of parkrun bath in our team at Relish. The course is different to our 5 k and was excellent to start my weekend with getting reacquainted with the beautiful surroundings.
After a cool down and quick change it was time to start the course setting out. Quite a task with a 5k, 10k and half marathon plus kids race taking place all on the same day. The task was not one you could easily complete solo so we went on mass. Tom our fearless race director and ex GB athlete , Helen the ultra runner, Tommy the national trust ranger on quad bike and me a slightly overweight, try hard, enthusiastic runner plus Josie our canine companion took on this task.
It was actually quite a hot day. Having Tommy on the quad bike was a huge help. It meant we could have all the signs, tape and stakes in the trailer savings us carrying everything. Quite brilliant in fact.
Once the course was set out we returned to the event village to help finishing with the remaining jobs. Thankfully Ollie and his team and worked very hard to get all the tents up which was a welcome relief.
We had accommodation booked so it was off for some food and a early night.
Sunday and race day. Out on site at 7.15 — I wanted to get there earlier but we had been booked in to a BnB and our host rose early to do us a breakfast so it was rude not to take advantage.
Course check was tough. There are highland cows out on course who love to rub up and take down sign so quite a few had been moved. Also it became clear that some of the course was very slippery as it was tipping down so I wanted to get more warning signs out.
Course checking took just over a hour and half. I was back to take marshals out on course and set up the drinks station.
Luckily we had a lot of repeat marshals so it was easier than normal. Special mention Dan, Naomi, Caren and Paul for doing a awesome job.
I then had to check the marshals were in place for the start of the race — this meant me running the course for a third time — I was broken by the end of the weekend — this was a result of Tom not giving out walkie talkies and marshal 2.9 not having phone signal! [Tom: Matt said he wanted a weekend of running, so I was only trying to oblige ;-)]
A relatively quite event apart from me cutting my thumb when cutting oranges — that was a first for me!!
A easy pack up at the end of the day and home. Another lovely race weekend.
