Spires and Shires 2011 by David Jelley
The Shires and Spires race is a 35 mile undulating race along quiet rural lanes and tracks in North Northamptonshire. For me it is also a journey through my memories of growing up. I was born in Northampton in 1956 and by the late sixties I was riding many of the lanes used on the race route on my Dawes “racing bike”. The land from the start at Lamport to Haselbeach is captured in the book “Wild Lone” by the author BB. It is a beautiful depiction of rural Northamptonshire before the second World War. The lanes between Naseby and West Haddon were full of blackberries in the autumn and as I ran them on Sunday, I was thinking of my Mum who died in Northampton last year. She loved picking blackberries and looking out at the rolling hills and sandstone churches of this part of Northamptonshire.
By the time the race reached West Haddon I was running a little ahead of a group of runners and a long way behind Stuart mills (who had left Lamport like a man who has been told he has 15 minutes to run to the newsagent 5 miles away, to claim him million pound lottery win). Anyway my nostalgic memories of my past, were interrupted by suddenly catching sight of Stuart’s distinctive bright orange top. I knew the course route from beginning to end, so I had a real advantage over other runners who were struggling with the small map. I caught up with Stuart who had taken a wrong turning and we started chatting – it was at a point in the race where, in my pre-race preparations, I had decided I would run really steadily, so I had some energy to run a long road section after Long Buckby at a fast pace. But running steadily with Stuart was impossible – I did my best to keep him talking so at least he’d have less oxygen but that didn’t do any good – I then tried to shoo him on but as the gentleman he is, he insisted on staying for a bit more chat – so I hung on thinking that if I could make it to the Long Buckby to Great Brington road he would find it too tempting to speed off and I’d be left to run at a calmer speed! He did finally leave me a mile or so before the 3 rd checkpoint. This gave me time to squirt two carbo Shotz gels into my mouth (a truly fantastic product for ultra running). By the time I reached Upper Harlestone I was feeling good again and drifting back into memories of the hard winters in the early sixties when we skated on the lake – no health and safety concerns then – we just sent Fffffreddie (he had a stutter) out onto the lake and if he didn’t fall in we started skating.
So deep in memories I suddenly almost ran into Stuart again who’s internal GPS was malfunctioning a little that day – so another section of Stuart jogging and me sprinting along behind took us over the fields to the final checkpoint at Teeton. A nasty long hill up to Creaton enabled Stuart to drift away again. I managed to keep a steady pace across the final fields and when we started up the road, which we had flown down 4 hours before, I could see Stuart gaining distance at a frightening rate (he told me afterwards he was running 6.40 miles for the last 3 miles!) I kept telling myself that we were close enough to the finish, for me not to lose too much time and still score well for the Runfurther over 50’s category – in the end I finished just under 7 minutes behind Stuart and 12 minutes ahead of Jim Rogers who I had last seen at the Wheeldale Tandem in January.
The three of us chatted afterwards and wished Stuart all the best for the World Championship trail race in Ireland in five weeks time.
David,Stuart and Jim - Shires and Spires 2011
