Romsey 5 has become an annual event in the OSR calendar, it might be a bit early in the year for some of our members, but for others it presents an opportunity to have an early attempt at a PB; especially over the unusual distance of 5 miles.

Tony Mabey and Sam Martin share their experiences of the race below… Thanks to Tim Manners for the photos

The “Runners” view from Tony Mabey

Some events just work and I think Romsey 5 is one of those. It is local, well organised and a nice route within the Broadlands estate. I crossed the starting line running with David Ball, Diane Borras and Julia Painter and quickly made a mental note to be more ambitious when queuing next year. Ian Painter was quite rightly up the front with the elite runners. No one was in the OS team colours, my own excuse is that the shirts are too short for my body shape… The route was pretty congested for the first mile but everyone was polite and the quicker runners were off in a flash. Before long the runners spread out and we had a chatty social underway. The weather was on our side, any rain on route had passed and the paths and tracks were dry. Everyone settled into a steady pace and the miles clicked away. We were lapped by the leaders and although I managed to get my left and right mixed up, the lead bike was polite enough to move me over. Lap two completed and off down the lane to the far turn. I had a bit of energy left so decided to up the tempo before crossing the line and grabbing whatever was free. Nice to see some support on the way round from the Mark and Sue Stileman and we managed to cheer in Egbe and spotted Den and Viv on route. Not a bad turn out for OS Runners. Medal in the bag…

The “Plodders” view from Sam Martin

Peering out of the window on Sunday morning and first bit of the good news was that it wasn’t raining, the second was that this event in the grounds of Broadlands was one we could walk to. Walking down through the town people in running kit appeared, some running or jogging to stretch a little and some conserving their energy and just strolling to the start. By the race start time there were over a thousand runners which led to a congested start to the race, the track is quite narrow at this point. For those of us further down the field it did thin out quite quickly. The course of a number of laps on the paths and tracks of the Broadlands Estate was pretty level, the first 2 laps using the layout of the Romsey Relay Marathon course. Lap 3 headed south towards Lee before we looped around a Bentley Continental, makes a nice change from a traffic cone, and headed back towards Romsey and onto the finish. It was a good turnout from OS Runners, in addition to those that Tony has mentioned I spotted; Egbe Manners, Richard Woodling, Peter Baker, Sean OGrady, Shaun Murray-Brown (who finished in 5^th) & my better half Jeannie Martin. A good event overall and another day of RED January ticked off.