The 29th Dorking 10 Mile Road Race was held on Sunday the 1st June under UKA rules and incorporated the Surrey County 10 Mile Championships. The Dorking 10 claims to be one of the premier road races in the south of England, attracting over 700 entrants annually, many of whom have run the race previously, and caters for runners of all abilities.
As far as I’m aware there were only four of us from 26.2 (Libby, Lucy, Steve and moi) with very large turn-outs from Clapham Chasers, Collingwood AC, South London Harriers, The Stragglers and Wimbledon Windmilers to name just a few. As a club member that runs at the back of the pack I will leave it to one of the other three to give a proper race report. Full results can be found on the Sport Systems website.
At 9a.m. we started off from Brockham Green which was good, as there is room for everyone to move around without being on the road until the actual race start, and so much nicer for family and friends as they could see us go off. The route had us first going round a small inner loop and then we continued along a larger outer loop back towards the finish which was under the rugby posts on the Big Field. Unfortunately there were a couple of car drivers out on this Sunday morning that were a little impatient, shall we say, in wanting to overtake the runners. The course was reasonably challenging in some really picturesque countryside which takes your mind off the hills. It certainly made a change to running the almost flat Harry Hawkes 10 or Cabbage Patch 10 courses. As far as being a pb course it certainly isn’t for me as I need an extra 5 to 1o minutes to complete this course.
It was a very warm on the day, and definitely a vest only affair, with the three water stations out on the course being greatly appreciated and the total ban on headphones this year making complete sense. Race organisation and planning appeared to be excellent, with plentiful parking and changing facilities. No medal for running ten miles but a fairly decent boot bag was given out at the end. Finally I would like to point out that I did not walk up any of the hills this year so not that challenging if you are thinking of running this event next year when it will the 30th Dorking 10M.