Grasmere Gallop 2014!

Today we had a change of scenery and took part in the National Trust Grasmere Gallop 5.7km fun run alongside some of our cheetah friends who were running either the 10k or 17k trail runs. We'd stayed overnight at Low Wray campsite near Ambleside. The weather forecast for very early Saturday morning onwards was heavy rain so we were pleasantly surprised when we woke up to slightly overcast skies. A glimmer of hope for the run as we cooked and ate our breakfast outside our tent.

Alas, the break in the weather was short lived as it started spitting as soon as we pulled up to park the car at the Grasmere sports field. We headed over to the registration tent and were given our running numbers then headed back to the car for a bit to take shelter and have a snack.

By the time we needed to head to the muster point it was raining quite heavily and William was not amused! Once we were being piped to the start though he didn't worry so much about the weather as he was too busy looking at the onlookers and the man playing bagpipes!

We had a slow start leaving Grasmere village and climbing up the hilly road. Both boys were a bit stop/start here, but I can't blame them going up that hill! The descent to the lake shore was much more exciting for them and William thought it was much better than being on the road. We also had a brief gap in the heavy rain whilst on the shore which was nice.

Once we climbed the short path back up to the road to loop back into Grasmere things went very quickly! Both boys quickened their pace on the downhill section and William barely stopped running all the way back through Grasmere and the path to the finish line. Sam was hot on his heels though and finished just 1.23 after him. Official times for the boys were 55.37 for William and 56.50 for Sam. So proud that they managed such a hilly route that was a little further in distance than they are used to and still finished in under an hour. All that WWC cubs training is really paying off!!  We all received brilliant bright chunky medals for finishing and got to choose from a selection of traybakes, delish!

Would definitely recommend this run for anyone wanting to do something just a little bit different from a basic 5km road run and of course there is always one of the longer runs to choose from too. We were hoping for another Cheetah picnic after today's run but with the heavy rain not letting up it wasn't to be. The boys were getting even more wet and chilly so we left soon after to dry them off and pack up our campsite. Hope to do this run again next year (with some sunshine this time!).