Hellrunner Finale is the Toughest Ever
Rob Howard / 14.11.2012
The 2012 Hell Runner series came to a close with Hell Down South over the weekend of November 17/18th. The race was held at the Longmoor Army Camp, the original Hellrunner venue, making full use of the heath, bog, hills, woods, sand dunes, lakes and the odd tank trap as well!
Around 3000 brave competitors took part in the two races, taking place on Saturday and Sunday morning, on a course which regular competitors say was the toughest yet, with more hills than ever before. Lucky for them the route was accidentally shortened by the first start taking a shorter than expected route – it was the comedy moment of the weekend when the leading quad bike set off along the newly laid our route ... and the racers just ignored it and went the way they’ve always done!
It was also the wettest conditions so far, with deeper bogs and pools, more flooded paths and more mud all around. This didn’t stop Saturday’s winner, Andrew Robinson, setting a superfast time of 1.06.20 for the 10 mile course (well that is the published distance no-one is really sure). He was nearly a minute ahead of his nearest rival on the day, and 3 minutes quicker than Sunday’s winner, Louis Clark. The two ladies winners were Carla Brown (1.27.16) and Emily Boldy (1.22.22).
The race followed the previous weekend’s Hell Up North, held at Delemere Forest, which had over 2000 racers and proved, if anything, to be even tougher, lots of racers were stuck in the mud, and the slowest took almost 5 hours to complete the course!
Next in the calendar is Hell in the Middle, the first race of 2013, which will be held at Trentham Gardens on Feb. 9th. Full details of all the hellrunner racers are on www.hellrunner.co.uk
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