10k race. A weather system with a personal vendetta. One man and several plates of food.

The Warm Up. A Masterclass in False Hope.

We arrived at Hyde Hall Farm on Wednesday evening — on Global Running Day, no less — full of optimism, good intentions, and the sort of reckless trust you only place in a weather app that has already betrayed you twice that day. In total, 440 runners turned up to celebrate it, which is objectively inspiring and logistically outrageous.

The sky looked suspicious. We treated this the way runners treat every obvious warning sign: by absolutely ignoring it.

We started warming up. The sky, apparently taking that personally, started warming up as well.

Then — with the timing of a panto villain who had been waiting backstage for exactly this moment — the heavens absolutely opened.

Not a drizzle. Not a shower. Not the sort of rain you can pretend is “refreshing”. This was a full-scale, all-in, biblically confident dumping of water from the sky, complete with thunder, and the general atmosphere of a weather system that had specifically heard there was a running event and thought, absolutely not, not on my watch.

The Barn. Or: Runners Do Sardines.

Now, when it starts pouring at Hyde Hall Farm, your options are fairly limited. You can either stand outside and let nature pelt you directly in the face, or you can seek shelter and cling to civilisation.

Naturally, we chose a corrugated barn. Not so much “shelter” as “large metal box with strong farm energy”.

Every single one of us piled into this barn with the unified urgency of people who had no plan B and were pretending that was a choice. It was cosy in the way public transport is cosy when everyone is damp. Intimate. Steamy. Deeply British. Nobody wanted to be there, and yet there we all were, committed to it together.

And if you’ve never heard rain battering a corrugated roof, imagine standing inside a giant biscuit tin while somebody launches gravel at it with real feeling. Conversation became impossible. People just stared at each other with the hollow expression of commuters during a rail replacement service. Occasionally someone said something. Nobody heard it. Everyone nodded anyway.

Outside: full weather-based hostility. Inside: what felt like all 440 runners in one barn pretending this was all part of the pre-race experience.

It was fine. In the loosest possible sense of the word.

 The Sun. Ten Minutes of Pure Chaos.

Then — with ten minutes to go before the start, because subtlety is not a feature of British weather — the clouds parted.

Out came the sun.

The actual sun. Warm, golden, and completely shameless — like a mate arriving three hours late to help you move house, stepping over the boxes and going, “Oh good, you’ve basically done it.”

The effect on the field was immediate. We all emerged from the barn blinking and stretching like livestock being released after an administrative incident. Spirits lifted. Hope returned.

The Race. Jump or Commit.

And then off we went: damp, slightly traumatised, and fully committed in the way only runners can be when common sense has already left the building.

The course itself wasn’t muddy so much as aggressively aquatic. Hyde Hall Farm had apparently decided mud was too ordinary and gone all in on puddles instead. Not little puddles. Not avoidable puddles. Big, swaggering, full-width puddles lying across the route like they paid entry and had every right to be there.

For the first couple of kilometres, people still believed in themselves. There were little hops. Tiny sidesteps. Delicate acts of denial from runners convinced they might somehow get through this with dry feet and dignity intact.

By kilometre four, that fantasy was dead. By kilometre six, everyone was just running straight through puddles with the resigned freedom of people who had accepted that their shoes now belonged to the water. Wet socks became a lifestyle. The hills, meanwhile, were still there being their usual rude selves — steep, relentless, and somehow even more offensive now the sun had come out and started steaming the whole place like a giant outdoor laundry basket.

Ten kilometres. Every one of them damp. Every one of them character-building. Nobody asked for that character, but we certainly built it.

Adam. A Man. A Lane. A Trauma That Will Not Heal. 🚧

Now. While most of us were managing the hailstorm experience with varying degrees of composure, spare a thought for Adam.

Because as we gathered near the start and began approaching the course, something happened to Adam’s face. A flicker. A tightening around the eyes. The unmistakable thousand-yard stare of a man who had just seen a lane and immediately left his body. Not this lane, specifically. But a lane. A lane with history. A lane with consequences. A lane that reached across time, tapped him on the shoulder and quietly whispered, “round two, mate.”

If you don’t know about Adam and the Long Short Relays, ask him. Actually — don’t ask him. He doesn’t want to talk about it. His eyes say everything.

As we approached the start, Adam remembered the route and THAT lane, and for just a moment became a man who was somewhere else entirely. Somewhere with wrong turns. Somewhere with lanes that promised one thing and delivered something entirely different. Somewhere that still visits him in the night.

Adam ran brilliantly. Composed on the outside. But we all saw that look. The lane saw him, and for one chilling moment, he saw it back. Stay strong, Adam. If you need to debrief, the club is here for you. If you need to avoid narrow country roads for a while, honestly, that also feels sensible. 🖤

Tim. A Love Story Between a Man and His Dinner. 🍽️

Now, we need to talk about Tim, because no proper recap of this evening would be complete without addressing the catering-based events that followed.

Tim ran the full 10k. Every hill. Every puddle. Every hail-adjacent, steam-finished, dignity-eroding metre of it. He survived the barn, the toilet queue, the weather-based assault.

And then Tim turned his attention to the food with a level of concentration rarely seen outside elite sport.

We cannot confirm the exact number of plates involved because at some point it stopped being a meal and became a legend. Reports vary. Some say several. Some say many. One eyewitness just whispered, “astonishing,” and stared into the middle distance.

Tim attacked the post-race spread with the same approach he’d taken to the course: fully committed, no reverse gear, and no interest whatsoever in pacing. In fairness, the carb loading was technically meant to happen before the race, but after 10k through a hailstorm, a barn lockdown, enough puddles to start a fishery, and Adam being psychologically ambushed by a lane, normal rules no longer applied. Frankly, mate, you earned every plate. Possibly a few belonging to innocent bystanders as well.

Tim, the 10k was excellent. But the recovery buffet performance? Genuinely world-class. A man in peak condition, just not necessarily in the event anyone expected.

🏅

The Tesco Situation. Eric, We Have Questions. 🛒

Let us address the elephant — or rather, the large refrigerated lorry — in the room.

It has been noted. By multiple witnesses. On multiple occasions during Wednesday evening’s event. That a significant quantity of the pre and post-race food in the Royston Runners camp appeared to have originated from Tesco.

Now. We’re not here to judge. Tesco does a perfectly good meal deal. Tesco’s snack range is entirely respectable. We have nothing but affection for Tesco as an institution.

But then.

Then.

The Tesco delivery trucks appeared.

Not one. Multiple. Driving behind us. Along our route. As if escorting the black and red army home. As if someone had specifically arranged for Tesco’s finest logistics operation to shadow 440 runners through the Hyde Hall Farm countryside on a wet Wednesday evening.

And we looked at each other. And we looked at the trucks. And we looked at our chairman Eric.

Eric. Who is, as we are all aware, a Tesco man. A man with connections. A man who perhaps made a phone call. A man who may or may not have pulled some strings to ensure that the Royston Crows were not merely sponsored by Tesco in spirit, but accompanied by Tesco in body — large, refrigerated, driving at exactly the pace of the back of the pack.

Eric, we’re not saying you arranged this. We’re just saying the timing was remarkable. And the number of trucks was remarkable. And the fact that you haven’t denied it is also, frankly, remarkable.

Black and red army. Tesco official logistics partner. Apparently.

🛒 Every little helps. Especially on a hilly 10k.

Our Volunteers. The Real Ones. 🙌

Right. Let’s talk about the people who didn’t even get to run and still showed up and stood in a field in all of that.

Ian — Race Director, Absolute Legend, Serene in the Face of Chaos.

Ian didn’t run the 10k — he ran the evening. In the rain, the hail, the chaos, the barn stampede and the pre-race toilet migration, Ian somehow remained calm throughout, like a man who has seen every possible form of running-related nonsense and filed it all under “manageable”. Ian, you absolute hero. Please continue steering this ship of chaos.

Janet, Janet and Tina — Volunteer Leads, Organisational Icons, Better Than Us.

While the rest of us were hiding in a barn and making emergency decisions about puddles, Janet and Tina were out there actually making the evening function. Organising, directing, sorting, marshalling — all with the cool competence of people who were absolutely not going to let a small atmospheric tantrum get in the way of the job.

And to every volunteer who stood in a wet field on a Wednesday evening directing cars, scanning finishers, making sure we didn’t get lost, handing out tokens and every other volunteer so the rest of us could splash round a course and then immediately start talking about snacks afterwards — you absolute legends. The club genuinely does not happen without you.

In Conclusion.

☑️ Hailstorm: endured ☑️ Barn: occupied beyond capacity ☑️ Toilet queue: emotionally survived ☑️ 10k: got round it ☑️ Puddles: resisted briefly, then accepted as fate ☑️ Hills: still rude ☑️ Adam: lane-related flashback managed bravely ☑️ Tim’s post-race refuelling: one for the history books ☑️ Tesco convoy: under investigation ☑️ Volunteers: absolute gold ☑️ Would we do it all again: annoyingly, yes

See you at the next one. Bring trail shoes, dry socks, and the kind of emotional resilience normally reserved for family Christmases. Also a towel. Definitely a towel. And if the route includes a lane, maybe don’t let Adam see it first. 🧦⛈️🏅

Royston Runners — somehow turning minor weather trauma into a lovely evening out since forever.