Riverhead Rampage 2018
James and I haven’t done an “actual” event in quite some time as I’ve found I prefer to not to be surrounded by 100’s of other people when I trail run and James only tends to do things like this when I am (because in short, he can’t be arsed finding an event and organising the transport/accommodation and perhaps more importantly he definitely doesn’t want to pay for it) 😉
However the kids are getting older now and we are making a concerted effort to get them out of the house and doing more physical activity. Miss 10 is quite happy to come out and walk/hike/run or bike with me, my baby is much harder to “amuse” so the Riverhead Rampage seemed like the perfect family outing, it’s close to home, cheap (in comparison to other events) and the clincher was they offered a family discount so after some discussion we made the family decision to enter the 5km event.
2018 is the fifth year of the Riverhead Rampage and as you’d expect after so much time to iron out any kinks in their systems, the event ran like clockwork. There were friendly marshals scattered along the route and just enough on course markings that even us tail end charlies who hadn’t bothered to look at a course map could find our way through the forest without too much trouble when we lost sight of those ahead of us.
Thankfully (for someone like me who hates sharing trails) there weren’t too many bottlenecks and after the first hill we found that we were able to quite comfortably travel at our own pace without being held up (or holding up others), although there was a section of the course that intersected with one of the longer events which meant that we had runners coming towards us (at pace) which was a little disconcerting for a 10 year old and I will note here, that it was easy to tell the road/recreational runners from people who run trails regularly – how you ask?
Trail runners smile and say thank you when you stand aside for them ..
Manners (or lack thereof) aside it’s a great “little” and well run event and both James and Master 8 are in training for next year. Miss 10 and I will invariably just wing it. 😉
Till next time
