Racing in Sherwood Forest

We did another one of our trail blazer races the other weekend. These are great purely because they give you an excuse to get out of London and into an awesome forest. This team really knows how to put on a great race, so well organised and always in such great locations. We took the train up to Doncaster on a Friday night. The trains up north are in a really weird state, it seems like there are two different train lines, one goes to Birmingham and takes ages, and the other goes to Doncaster and is a lot quicker. Only downside is that it's run by the First group, my most hated train company. Since we left it a bit late, it wasn't that much more to get first class tickets. And I do have to say the first class to Doncaster was one of the better ones, they will actually bring you a proper meal at your seat. Not just tea and biscuits, but a full 3 course meal if you so desire.

It did mean we had to sit next to this awesome upper class group travelling up to a wedding. Working for an Australian bank in London, it's not often that I am really exposed to the British class system. And this was just such a great group, they were drunk, and loud, and had the full accent thing going on, they would be on the phone to their daddy's who were off in the middle east driving Ferrari's or something. And then the person on the train serving them would have the real northern accent. It was just such a juxtaposition.

It reminded me of this really bad movie Dave and I had watched recently, Hollow, not a great movie. But the 4 main characters were these terrible upper-class twits who you were happy to see killed off in gruesome ways. It was kind of like the people on the train were off on a journey to recreate that movie.

Anyway the race was good, I was having a little battle with a lady the whole way round, she got me at the water stop and put in a bit of distance. But then about 500m from the finish she had stopped to walk! So I came past her right at the end, she obviously didn't want to give it up though, so there was a bit of a sprint to the finish. I think it was a draw in the end.

They do them through winter as well, except they have names like IceMan and MudMan, so I think they may be going for a different feel. Though to be honest it could be a completely different company putting those races on.