The Hurt 2011- gallery now ready

The gallery for The Hurt 10k is now live and online here:
http://gallery.sussexsportphotography.com/a.tlx?k=43xzgxo 

After a week of sunshine and heavy showers, the forecast was for dry sunny weather, which it was in Sussex. Crossing the border into leafy Surrey and the clouds gathered a bit and generally made it a bit darker, but not quite rain with moody skies.

If you're wondering where the Hurt was - it was in between Guildford and Dorking, in the Hurtwood just south of Peaslake, a little bit north of Horsham and Cranleigh, on the Surrey Hills.

The Hurt - just south between Guildford and Dorking in Hurtwood woods

The Hurt route. left loop first, then the right loop, with photos at the far right flag

Painkillers anyone ? Take one of these (T shirts)

When figuring out where to go to take the pictures I had a good look at the GPS map provided by the organisers on garmin and imported it into Google Earth - which really lets you see the hills (oh dear). Given the weather, the option of staying near the first loop and getting lots of multiple shots of people on the way out, then at 2.5 miles and finally as they returned to the finish was ruled out. It would have been lots of shots in the woods - dark, tricky and generally a bit repetitive.

However closer inspection showed the route went around the Cairn at the 6km mark on the corner of the route - where the Holmbury Hill Iron Age Fort was located. With a nice open sky, plenty of light meant for a great view in the background and a bit of context about how high the runners had managed to climb en-route.

The View from the top, Cairn and moody skies, Dunsfold Airfield (Top Gear) in the background

Close in view of Dunsfold Airfield from the Hurt, also home of Events-to-Live Spitfire 20 Run

So, rather than walk 6km with camera gear it was a very simple drive up to the car park and then thumb a lift off Tom, in his off road warthog (damn should have got a picture). This saved a considerable amount of effort and was suitably fun to have a ride in it, as well as quite impressive how he managed to negotiate parts of the course. As you can see, the view was worth the effort. OK, worth the drive.

The view was most definetly worth the run for the competitors, with about 20 "Wow look at the view" once they had turned to look from the path to the top. About 8 people stopped to take it in, one Mexican competitor (judging from the tshirt with MEXICO across it and his accent) decided to take photos on his phone, so I concluded I'd got the right place on the course.

Unfortunately as predicted, someone wearing headphones didn't hear the marshal, ran off course, didn't hear the corrective shouting, and only with a lot of arm waving and more shouting from both of us finally took the headphones out and got back on route. Unless they has some seriously good music on I can't think it enhanced the experience or made it easier for them, and it certainly didn't make it easier of better for the marshal. It just seems such a pity really, but each to their own, at least there wasn't any road traffic to get in the way of, but there was the silent mountain bikes wizzing about to get tangled up with. So are headphones a safety hazard ? Discuss. At least it was only the one this time...

Meanwhile a whole load of people seemed to have a fantastic time running through the leafy forest and enjoyed the view.

Serious racing - no time to stop

Far too much smiling, more Hurt required

An aat regular enjoying the great course layouts

Airplains - 99% of them get in the blog

Two crazy runners enjoying every bit - I won't tell you what she was talking about, but it's made me laugh all day

So that's about it for today, hope that whatever you are doing it's not too showery. I'm up at 5am to cover the early part of the fantastic alternative london to brighton bike ride - the Capital to Coast with the team doing the latter parts, as well as the awesome Raw Energy Pursuits open sea swim Worthing Triathlon with free race photo downloads for people to remember their awesomeness with.

That lot will have me indexing until wednesday and then its the RPAC Summer 10k, but I hear that's sold out already, so too late for the great races of July...and they have free downloads too. How totally very good.


Until tomorrow,
Anthony


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