At the weekend, Newport & District RC’s Aaron Nicholas took part in the Carding Mill Valley Trail 10k, a tough challenge at any time, but even more so in the hot conditions that were thrown at participants this year! Afterwards, he sent us this report of how he got on:

There were three distances to choose from at this race: 10k, half marathon and full marathon. As I’m just coming back from a hamstring injury, I opted for the 10k. I only entered on Thursday evening, so it was a little spur of the moment sort of thing.

Following a gpx route on my watch, and looking out for arrows along the way, I set off at a good pace to try and get some distance between myself and the pack; I was holding my own on the first ascent and was sitting in a comfortable 4th. Each distance followed the same route up until the 4k mark, where the 10k runners turned off. 

Aaron Nicholas after completing the race!

By the turn-off point I had dropped about 15 places due to the sheer elevation gains and the unforgiving heat of about 20⁰C. At the turn off, I realized I was leading the 10k race and upped my pace for a km to secure this position. Just after 6k my gpx file was playing up and sent me off course and I ended up running an extra 2.4 km to the finish. 

End result was 15th out of 45 runners in 1 hour, 23 minutes. 25 minutes off my pace, but equally happy knowing that it was only the tech that let me down today. It was a good race, with good aid stations, way too hot and massive elevation gains!