Military Run
Braving the cold winter weather and getting their running gear on Pauline, Roger and Neil bravely tackled the cold to do the British Military Fitness 5k run. An off road run with water obstacles, muddy trenches, trees and hills. Arriving far too early on a cold Saturday morning in Redhill the 3 brave Chaingang got ready to clamber through the mud and into the hills.
After a bit of a wait and the cold getting into every part of our bodies the military style warm up began and what a warm up it was! We were all ready for a lie down once it was done but with no time to rest the starting gun was fired. The beginning of the run was up what was described as a steady hill, although there were a lot of people walking at the top who may have disagreed with this description. We very quickly forgot about the cold as we continued the run through the Surrey countryside. The first 1.5km of the course was on fairly solid ground, after that it got rather slippery the grassy field tuned to mud. Once we cleared the mud it was up yet another hill where along with some other runners we were trying to work out why we thought this run would be a good idea.
The course continued to go uphill and get more slippery which slowed down the pace a bit, we could soon hear the sound of splashing water and people getting shouted at to hurry up but could not quite see where it was coming from. Once around the next corner the extremely muddy waist deep pond we had to run through came into sight. Well there was no other way round so in we jumped, I would not like to guess what was in the really thick mud that surrounded our ankles so we just ran through and got out quick to be confronted with netting on the floor which we dived under and began to crawl through. Once out of that section there were lots more rather big and deep puddles to get through but is soon looked like the finish was in sight. It wasn’t! There was a nasty little uphill section hidden away, one final push and we were up that then it was down a mountain board track and to the finish line. We did our best to get cleaned up and headed to the pub to warm up and for a spot of lunch, this is where we decided it would be a good idea to do the Santa Run…
