George Ogle Memorial Race

[Thu 31st May]

Last night Dave Bradley and myself travelled the short distance to Swalwell, near Blaydon to take part in the George Ogle Memorial Race, one of the North East's newest races. Hosted by PB Fitness running club the race is advertised as 6 mile (measured by GPS on the night as 5.7), all off-road and is a mixture of trails and paths.

Starting just outside Swalwell Visitor Centre in Derwenthaugh Park, the run follows the path through the park, rather unfortunately up the hill at the far end and onto the Derwent Walk, aka the C2C cycle route. A slight detour is then taken from the Derwent Walk as the race route takes to paths through woods and around fields before returning back to the Derwent Walk for the 2 mile return to the finish at Saltwell Cricket Club.

All in all a thoroughly enjoyable run on decent tracks, with hilly bits on the paths to test the climbing legs, a shame that it attracted only a hundred or so runners as it is a very friendly and well marshalled race.

For the record, Dave with bruised ribs finished in 42 minutes and for myself with knee ligament trouble it was just under 45 minutes.

Steve Walker