A quartet of Sidmouth Running Club (SRC) members, all donning the Mighty Green (MG), took part in the Jolly Running 5k Halloween Race in South Devon, writes Alexa Baker.

The adventurous four, Terry Bewes, Kyle Baker, Nikita Kay and Alexa Baker, had a dubious start to the whole evening before even leaving the driveway in Sidmouth!

It all started when Nikita couldn't find her mandatory head torch! Terry 'patiently' waited until Alexa discovered she had packed it alongside hers. Oops!

However, there was more to come for, little did they know that dark forces were hard at work and determined to put as many spanners in the works as possible! An accident on the A38 caused massive delays to the journey that eventually led to the group taking two hours to get to Cockington Country Park! Indeed, there were concerns that they might not make the start of the race. There followed frantic phone calls to the race director, who, luckily, Kyle knew from a training course, which helped a bit.

A narrow winding road and then a lucky car park find later, things were looking better. Kyle sprinted ahead and sorted out the race numbers with just 10 minutes to spare!

There was no time to apply face paint to Terry and Kyle (I know, we didn't need it anyway… heard it all before!). Fortunately the Mighty Green team had matching glow-in-the-dark T-shirts. They lined up next to an assortment of ghosts, witches and a Darth Vader wielding a light sabre!

Spookily, the rain eased off as the countdown began and with warnings of very slippery, muddy downhill sections, the runners were on their way.

Kyle got off to a good start getting ahead of the first bottleneck and completed the undulating course in 32:29.

Little did Terry and Alexa know that as they completed mile two, Kyle was working his way through the Haribos at the finish.

Nikita had a great run, managing to keep her shoes intact and in place on both feet this time.

She coped admirably with the very muddy conditions and finished in 46:46, just in time to help Kyle finish off the sweets. Terry was doggedly determined to run despite his injury and ran with Alexa.

It was a bit of a nightmare and both had a personal worst keeping of time, taking over an hour to finish! However, they both stayed upright throughout!

The glow-in-the-dark medal on a chunky chain and spooky Buff made it all worthwhile, but as the rain started again, all were thankful that they hadn't signed up for the 10k!

There were 85 finishers in the 5km and 74 in the 10km, which certainly represented a great turnout on such an awful day.