On Sunday, Newport & District Running Club’s Neil Fairbrother took part in the Potters ‘Arf walk, and ended up winning it! Here’s the report, in his words:
Over the summer, I got injured from running. Again. It seems to happen regularly. Usually, in fact almost exclusively, my achilles. My right achilles specifically. In the Spring of 2024, it went again. I went to a physio and thought I’d finally got on top of it. My mistake? Not strengthening the left one. So, of course, in 2025, for the first time ever, my left achilles took its turn to fail on me. Now, I suppose I’ve been a keen walker longer than I’ve been a runner, so, over the last few years, when my injuries hit, I’ve taken to trying to walk parkruns as fast as I can. In 2024, I got down to 37 minutes, and this summer I managed to go even faster.
On one of those occasions, I found myself wondering how fast I could walk longer distances, e.g. 10k or Half Marathon. And when I get an idea in my head, it tends to take over. As such, I decided to try to find a half marathon to walk, and it didn’t take too much research to find that the “Potters ‘Arf” have a walking half marathon as part of their event. And the walkers set off 90 minutes before the runners, which means that everyone tends to finish at the same time. This sounded ideal – a local race that I could enter as a walker – sign me up! So I did.
I spent the summer doing increasingly longer walks around the local lanes to train up for it. I got up to 16km in early September, and then had a few other events take over my training, such as the Historic Churches Trust “Ride & Stride” (84 miles cycled in one day) and the Stafford 10k last weekend, which I walked in 66 minutes – that felt like a good way to end my preparations. The day before race day I had a nice easy chatty parkrun with friends, and I felt like I was ready to test myself over a half marathon walk.
Come race day, I was there nice and early, found the start (next to the Sir Stanley Matthews statue in Hanley!), and saw there were quite a few other walkers, including some amazing fancy dress where people were walking for charity (Mario and Luigi pushing a “Mario Kart”, anyone?), and the atmosphere was great. We were all lined up in the start pen, and started dead on 8:30am, with a countdown from the large clock by the start/finish line. I started right on the front row, as I had an inkling that I would probably be amongst the front walkers.
As we started, we set off down the road in Hanley City Centre and I was in the lead from the start. I wasn’t up to full pace yet; I was a little intrepid, as I wasn’t familiar with the route, and it didn’t seem to be marked out. I asked the guy just behind me (this turned out to be Phil, last year’s winner) if I was going the right way, and he replied to the affirmative, even telling me that they had a lead bike last year. That would have been very useful this year! It quickly became clear that the marshals weren’t in place yet, and if I was going to lead the race (as it seemed at this point), I would need to self-navigate.
Thankfully, I had made a Google “My Maps” map of the route which I could follow on my phone – a bit annoying, as I wanted to keep my phone in my pocket, but needs must. Luckily, after leaving the city centre, the next couple of miles were on a dead straight road leading south, so only occasional checks of the map were required. I passed a not-open-yet water station, and eventually turned left onto a road heading into Bentilee. At this stage, I had lost sight of second place behind me, even when I looked back. The road up Bentilee was a steep climb, where I saw a colleague who had come out of her house to cheer me on – nice to see a friendly face, especially when I’ve not even seen a marshal yet! Once over that hill, it flattened out for a while, and I could see people setting up speakers and so forth to, presumably, blare music out at the runners later on.
On the way out of Bentilee, I made my first navigational error, as my map was slightly wrong, and I’m not sure the marshals actually realised I was a competitor, despite my race number! This detour probably cost me about 300 metres, which isn’t insignificant when walking! Once I got back on track, I asked a marshal (they were finally getting in place) which way to go, and he told me to go whichever way I wanted! Again, not sure he thought I was in the race, and not helpful.
As I passed half way, I started to come across more marshals and closed roads, so it finally felt like I was in a race. I took another wrong turn (or rather, missed the turn this time!) just after 9 miles. I think this cost me another 300 metres or thereabouts, so at this point I knew my final time would be much slower than it could have been. Thankfully, once I was back on track, I stayed on track. I heard from my partner, via text, that the runners had been delayed in their start time, so I was fairly sure that I wouldn’t be overtaken by them before the finish.
The last part of the race was quite tricky, with a tough hill around the 11-mile mark. The last mile or so wound its way around Forest Park, just north of Hanley City Centre, and some young cadets were marshalling there. From there, it was a short walk into the city centre and the finish line, where I finished during the fun run, which itself had been delayed after the runners’ race had started late. The announcer did spot me just before I crossed the line, amongst the fun runners, and I was declared the winner of the walk, after 2 hours and 35 minutes of walking, and 13 minutes ahead of second place! I was asked to stay behind to collect a trophy, which I was not expecting, alongside the first female walker.
Overall, it was an interesting experience – I was amazed to have won, and glad to have done a fairly quick time, although without the detours, I feel like I would have been around 2:30-2:31. It was a shame that the first half of the race felt so lonely with no marshals or even a signed route, and I was so glad I had made the map on my phone, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to self-navigate as I did.
Newport & District Running Club 