The Sharpness 4 race

I recently ran the inaugural Sharpness 4 race, along with a small number of members of my running club. Sharpness is a dockside village in the Stroud district in the very south of Gloucestershire.

The Sharpness 4 is organised by Dursley Running Club. It is part of the Gloucestershire AAA race series, which I’m taking part in this year. It was created specifically to fulfil a demand for shorter races on the series. With the exception of the mile races I’ve run (Meteor Mile and Bourton Mile), it is the shortest race I’ve ever run. (I’ve never run a 5k race!)

Race HQ was at Sharpness Sports and Social Club, very close to the docks. There was plenty of well marshalled parking close to the social club. Registration was outside the social club and was very quick and easy. Once more, we had timing shoe tags provided by Lush Timing, the company which provides the timing for a lot of the local races I run. The race hadn’t sold out, so entries were available on the day.

Considering the race was part of the Gloucestershire series, there were surprisingly few runners. Without the big turnout from the host club, there wouldn’t have been many at all. I’ve got used to seeing the same faces at all the Gloucestershire races and quite a few of them were missing this time.

I’m not sure if there was a bag drop, but I just kept my bag in the car, which was easily accessible. The toilets were inside the social club. There were just two cubicles for the ladies. I only queued for about five minutes, but the toilets were being used so intensively that they just stopped flushing completely. When I went back after the race, I was relieved to find they were working again.

My eldest went along to watch the race, which was really lovely. He said it was a good one for spectators, as we were gone for such a short time!

I knew the race was ‘undulating’, so I wasn’t sure how long it would take me. To throw an extra spanner in the works, I had a cold. I always run with a cold and generally find it makes me feel better, but I wasn’t sure if it would take the edge off my performance. It was my eighth race in the series out of nine. (There are 12 altogether, but I couldn’t do them all.) As only the best eight races count for the series, I knew it wouldn’t be a problem if I didn’t do as well, as it could be cancelled out by the final race in the series – Guy Fawkes 5.

But, despite all this, I guessed it would take me about 30 minutes.

We lined up at the start line for the prompt 10:30am start and the race director talked us through the course. It sounded very complicated, but there would be a lead bike in front of the lead runners, so hopefully nobody would get lost! The race was entirely on open roads, so all headphones were banned, including bone conductors.

We started off with a short downhill, which was nice. Then we had an out and back along the docks to the right before turning and coming back very close to the social club. The road surface around the docks was very uneven, with a lot of loose gravel and potholes.

Before leaving the docks behind, we crossed a modern bridge, which was short and narrow and, I presume, would open up for boats. It was obviously on docks private land. The run director said: “Enjoy running over that! It cost £3 per runner!”. Wow!

We’d run a mile before we started moving away from the docks. At this point there was a bridge with some concrete bollards and very little space to get through. We’d been warned to be careful of the bollards!

Once we were away from the docks we started to climb. That makes sense. It’s always going to be flat by docks (or the sea or rivers), so the only way is up. It felt like we climbed for the whole race after that, although there were some downhills too.

We passed through Sharpness village and Brookend village. I ran through 5k in 22:30, which is a pretty fast parkrun for me. I was pleased with that time, taking into account the hills and my cold (although I was actually feeling fine). At 3.5 miles, we were still climbing! Surely we would need to start running downhill soon?

And then I was running downhill, over the bollard bridge, over the expensive bridge and past my son to the finish line. I crossed the line in 29:03, which I was very happy with.

The first male male finished in 21:25 and the first female in 23:49.

I was first in my age category. This confirms I’ve won the age category in the Gloucestershire AAA series. My main rival hadn’t been to the last few races, so she had only run six. She had signed up to Sharpness, but wasn’t there. If she runs Guy Fawkes, she will have only run seven and won’t be able to get enough points to catch me on eight races – I’ve come first in six of them and second in two.

There was water in a compostable cup, fruit and a wooden medal for all runners, as well as a free cup of tea in the clubhouse. I don’t drink tea, but my son was happy to take it off my hands! Presentations took place outside at 11:30. The top three men and women got a cash prize plus a bottle of win. Age category winners got the choice of wine or a tub of Heroes or Roses.

They did all the men’s prizes first – going right up to something crazy like age 85. The chocolates were disappearing fast! I’m teetotal, so really didn’t want wine. Luckily the women in the 40 and 45 category took wine, so I had the last box of chocolates. The older women had no choice but to have wine. I think organisers, not just of this race, but of a lot of races, need to give that some consideration.

But I enjoyed Sharpness 4. It was a very nice distance to run. If I decide to defend my title, I’ll be back next year.