1.1.13: Knacker Cracker 10k

  The sun made a rare appearance as we donned our fancy dress 'Pirate' outfits for the New Year's Day Knacker Cracker. Dubbed the 'toughest race in Britain', we knew what we'd let ourselves in for having run the race last year.

Box Hill, home to the olympic cycling road race, looked sleepy but resplendent as we arrived and parked at the bottom of the hill. I was feeling quite nervous, last year I had a bad asthma attack after the race and wanted to make it home minus the Box Hill wheeze!

 All runners are strongly encouraged to 'dress up' and this year Steve (Captain Jack Sparrow) and I decided to go as pirates. It was particularly special this year to meet up with my Mum and Dad, who braved the cold to cheer us on at the start. Respect to Mum who has just finished six months of Chemotherapy and is enjoying gradually feeling better.

Alma joined us too this year and came as Wonder Woman!

We began by parading round the start area, which actually kept us quite warm and gave us opportunity to practise our Piratey behaviour such as 'brandising our swords' and saying 'arraghhhh' at the race director and spectators! The traditional singing of the National Anthem is always a hearty and amusing start to any race and immediately takes your mind off the looming elevations



The race begins by a steep incline up the hill, then down, then up, then down, then up, then down. It's very difficult to run up a hoofing great hill after standing around in the cold for 30 minutes! Once we got going, it was a pretty slow pace as the track was sticky and very muddy in places. Good job we love mud. At one point my hands were so cold I could barely move my trusty sword from hand to hand, after the first descent, I'd warmed up! There were a couple of people who fell over, one of the tea ladies and a Santa came a cropper on the hills, there was plenty of help on hand to pull them up and make sure they were OK.


Most runners were in fancy dress. The atmosphere was really good, lots of banter and funny comments as we ran along helped the miles to clock up fairly easily. Since we were in Pirate get up, I'd taken to greeting passers by with an arraghhhh, or an avast!

Pirates of the Caribbean fans: you'll be familiar with the line, 'You're the worst pirate I've ever heard of'. On approaching water stations, it was highly amusing (to me anyway)  to ask them if then had any rum, or grog. I think we upset the sleepy marshals at one point where I asked for rum and they said ' no we only have water', we then joked 'this is the worst water station I've ever heard of', the marshals were all in good spirits, if a little sleepy. One cheery young marshal offered me some 'treasure' which was a yummy jelly baby! At the top of the hill we met Alan, from Events to Live, again there was no rum, but he did offer the suggestion of the Bacchus Half marathon if we needed alcohol to fuel our running (see previous blog for advice on intoxicated running)!

 The finish line soon loomed large (hurrah) and a glorious run down the slope signalled the end of the run! It was a brilliant day, sunny but cold and the North Downs Way and Box Hill looked stunning. I'm sure the arrival of the 100 or so fancy dress runners cheered the hearts of the walkers as we passed them!

 I'd highly recommend this race. It's great fun, (even with a hangover you can do it). The atmosphere is fab, it's well organised and the goody bag at the end is unrivalled (in our opinion). This year there was a technical t-shirt, with all runners names on, knacker cracker cap and a smashing medal plus soup and a cheese and pickle sandwich at the finishing line. There are prizes for the winning runners and best fancy dressers. You probably wont get a PB, (even Tobias Mews of Marathon de Sable fame came second last year) but you will start the year with a good dose of the DOMS and caked in mud but us trail runners love a good helping of DOMS.

You can find more about the Knacker Cracker and Trionium's other races here.