28 June 2015 – Tamworth Gate Gallop

Stuart Gregory was the only Strider to travel to the 30th Tamworth Gate gallop, a 10km cross country race, with the support of girl friend Natalie at the start and finish line.  As per normal Stuart started at the back of the 381 strong field and paced the first 2km at a steady pace, with so many runners and single track footpaths it was a given that times would be somewhat depressed unless you were to the front of the field.  Around the half way mark when the tracks became wider, many runners were able to put their foot down and make up for lost time early on.  At 6km it was the first couple of the stiles and, as there was no one around, both were jumped with ease, as 8km approached things got very slow again as a number of runners started to struggle with the next set of stiles. So it was off to 9km six minutes behind my PB for that course it was finally time to make some time up over the final 1km, which proved to be my fastest making two minutes up and overtaking a lot of runners in the final 400m, to finish in a expectedly slow time of 1hr 8m 27s. [Stuart]