Having decided to abandon my planned trip to the Lake District on Wednesday morning, I went to the website of the Run Rabbit Trail Festival, and found that entries were still open. So I signed for the 10km race on Saturday evening.

On Friday, the organisers decided to go ahead despite the yellow warning of high winds on Saturday (there is quite a lot of running through woodland, with potential danger from falling branches). I took a fairly early train to Market Harborough, which gave me time to extend the cycle ride to the race venue at Marston Lodge, adding about 3 miles and some extra hills. I stopped off at Rupert's Viewpoint, where Prince Rupert had assembled his troops before the battle of Naseby. But was I heading for a right royal defeat, like he was?

At the race, I avoided going off ridiculously fast as I had done last year, but I still felt very heavy in the first few km, and found myself walking up a few hills that I had run up last year. [Yes, Northamptonshire does have some hills!] The first 2km are flattish, but the rest of the course is unrelenting undulations, and it actually seems surprising that there is only about 160m of climbing and descent. Anyway, it came as quite a shock when I arrived at the finish and the results display showed that I was a minute faster than last year. The wind would certainly have slowed us down on some stretches, although arguably the ground conditions were better; there was some softness, but no mud, underfoot, in contrast to the rock-hard ground last year.

I was 31st out of about 130, and took only 31% longer than the winner, but these are meaningless statistics, given that probably more than half the field were doing this as the second event of three in the weekend of trail races. I was first M65, and ahead of the first M60; but the participation in these trail races is very different from fell races: far fewer oldies (there were only 6 M/F60's and older that I could see on the results display), and a much higher proportion of women (about 40% in this race). But maybe the biggest contrast between trail and fell running is revealed by a comment made by a woman who had been running near me for part of the race: she remarked on how fast I was going downhill! Now, no-one has ever said that to me before.