Pendine 10k 30th March 2008

Report by Darren Evans

British Summer Time- the last Sunday of March where, historically, the clocks are moved forward by one hour so that our farming communities can enjoy reasonable hours of daylight whilst going about their farming duties…. Apparently nobody thought to ask the triathletes and, thus, every year we get up, blurry eyed, to our Sunday training slog with an hours less sleep.

This year, a few of us decided that sleep depravation wasn’t enough. A 10k race at Pendine wasn’t enough. A 10 mile bike TT followed by a 10k on the beach after less sleep should just about do it! So three of us made our way over to Carew for the 10 miler, 2 of us then cycled onwards to Pendine to meet up with 6 other club members for the beach race.

What can I say about the 10k- sandy, flat, windy. There were 5 laps of 2km each involved, each time passing through the middle of a game of a rugby (which appeard to be between St. Clairs juniors RFC and some guy who’d thought it wise to wear an England shirt!) and a brief splash through some shallow water. A nice group of 4 runners took an early lead (all of us Pembs Tri!) but Rhiannon soon sorted that out, leaving Dave, Patrick and myself to battle it out for the minor places (made all the minor by being beaten by a girl!). Brian, Huw, Terry and Elen also fought bravely to make it through the wind and the increasingly soft sand!

I don’t have the results, but the top four was Rhiannon, Dave A, Patrick and myself. I didn’t see where anybody else finished (possibly something to do with fighting off the urge to be sick!) but everybody seemed to enjoy the event (which had a small field, but was surprisingly fast).

(Editor note - if anyone is aware where we can get the results - please let me know!)