Mud, glorious mud, for Sidmouth runners

Despite heavy rain, Sidmouth Running Club Lockdown challenges continue.
The OGLE’s are going well with Emma Grainger enjoying the views and Kate Jenkins manoeuvring around the mud. Bex McDonald and her intrepid family took on the orienteering OGLE on East Hill/Core Copse and found an impressive 11 of the control points. They even met the mastermind behind the routes, John Chesters and wife Ruth, planning the next one.
Unfortunately, there seems to have been a few glitches with Strava this week. where part of a run or a whole run has gone unrecorded. Most annoyingly for Graham ‘Rocker’ Sheppard and Kerry Salter, this happened when they ran the seafront lamppost challenge, a monotonous flat six miles. Showing true Mighty Green spirit, Rocker and Kerry are determined to run and record this challenge again.
The dynamic duo, Tim Swarbrick and Derek Blackburn, were the first to complete the off-road challenge, which took in Muttersmoor, Passaford Farm, Colaton Raleigh and Newton Poppleford, achieving a perfect ten out of ten from Chairman Terry Bewes.
Jo Earlam, with her dog Freddie, added extra miles by running the route from Tipton and Sarah Burston enjoyed the run, escaping the joys of home schooling.
The weekend rain made the route extremely wet underfoot and muddier still but did not deter Adrian ‘Gripper’ Horne and his son, Tracy Scannell and Beccy Johnson, Brigid McSmith and Ann Cole with Ivey her dog, who embraced the conditions and followed the route well.
Unlike Helen Akay and Alexa Baker, who had extreme difficulty in navigating themselves out of Muttersmoor and had to resort to phoning Terry. Once they found Passmoor Lane, there was no stopping them and they even had time to marvel at all the swans in Newton Poppleford.
The end of January has seen several members completing the Strava 200k challenge, including Rob Edwards, Derek Blackburn for the first time and Dan Prettejohn, who ran a half marathon at the weekend to take him over the target.
Mighty Greens Helen Palmer and Ross Walton completed the Strava 100k challenge. Congratulations to everyone running through this lockdown, bring on the week four challenges.