Race Report by John Bennett
Over the August Bank Holiday Weekend, we had a family outing to Hampshire for Carfest South. The festival is organised for BBC’s Children In Need and as part of the weekend, there was a 5km sponsored fun run (The Festival Dash!) starting at 10:10 on Saturday 27 August 2016. This was surprising hilly and mostly on footpaths around the edge of the festival site. The focus was on fun with lots of people in fancy dress. Given the terrain I was quite pleased with my 26:37 for (almost) 5km and I managed to have my photo taken with Rainbow’s Zippy who gave me my medal! There was also a 2.5km option, ideal for those with more adventurous fancy dress, such as the two families in a bus! You had to register for the dash (which was full in advance). The event was superbly organised by a local running club, Overton Harriers & AC (http://www.overtonharriers.org.uk).
Whilst Saturday’s 5km dash was well advertised there was an added bonus; the folks at Overton Harriers organised a gentle 10km training run for early on the Sunday which wasn’t advertised by Carfest in advance. Around 20 people met early at 08:00 on the Sunday morning, mostly from running clubs around the country for a hilly 10km which was on very quiet country lanes and footpaths. There was a faster group of 5 or 6 who went a bit further but I joined the main bunch as we trotted along and chatted about our respective running clubs and various park runs! We arrived back at the site around 09:00, via a steep hill from Overton Village to the festival site, set for another day of entertainment. A tip for anyone going next year, take two sets of running kit as nearly everyone on the Sunday was running in the kit they’d had hanging in their tents to ‘air’ following Saturday’s 5km!