19th June 2026 – RACE REPORT BY NARNI
Friday evening and I found myself on a coach in Halifax with 50 other people; not a sentence I thought I’d be typing. I was off to run ‘The Descent’; a point to point run in West Yorkshire that ran from Baitings Reservoir down to Sowerby Bridge. Given that the route was not a loop, part of your entry fee covered being ferried out to the start point from Sowerby Bridge Cricket ground. I’d arrived in enough time to a) collect my race number, b) have a wee in the dark (toilet light was bust) and c) walk smack into the back of a fellow runner as I was too busy horsing around flexing my biceps to notice where I was going (no, really). This mortifying experience was then further compounded by his other half arriving at the precise moment I was hanging on to the back of this poor fellow and snort laughing. Not a great look. I excused myself QUICKLY.
As our two-coach convoy pulled in to Baitings reservoir everyone hopped out and I’d say 30% of the blokes made a beeline for the bushes. No such luck for the women, as we arranged ourselves around the race director for a race briefing. I’d been under the impression from the website that this was a closed road race, but the race director made it *very* clear that this was not the case, and to pretty please keep to the pavement. I looked down at said pavement: about 1 person wide, deep curb, many weeds and cracks. Great.
Before we knew it someone had fired an actual starting pistol, which took me by surprise; I knew this was West Yorkshire but I wasn’t anticipating actual gunfire. We all jumped and then decided that yes, we really should collectively start. What’s odd was that despite the chip timers we’d been asked to wear around our ankles and the inclusion of a timing mat at the end, there was no such strip at the beginning. 100 of us were spread out along the pavement in single file, so some would certainly be running more than 10km. Oh well, no time to think about that. What spurred me on greatly in the first third of the race was getting as far away from the guy that I’d clattered straight into the back of at race HQ as possible; the less I saw of him, the better. Next came the back of a lady in a Penistone club shirt; definitely had to overtake her, if only for local pride. I settled in nicely behind the tallest guy in the race, an older chap with a really unusual gait but with a knack for avoiding those sneaky divets and holes in the pavement. Head down, I tried to mirror his footsteps.
6km in and it was dawning on me that I really had started too quickly, and the few lumps on this route all of a sudden loomed like Pea Royd (note to self; on reflection they were more like 10 metres of elevation a-piece you absolute pansy). The final km was a loop around the back of the cricket club and a sprint down the cinder path at the side of the pitch. I was dying on my arse so much by this stage that I gave brief countenance as to whether taking a cricket ball to the temple and being forced to medically retire was an option. It was not.
I heaved myself over the finish line in 2nd place, some 30 seconds behind the 1st lady, who was an absolute powerhouse. Given that she had a head of lovely auburn hair I somehow thought it was appropriate to announce “ginger ninja 1-2” to her, which really was a bizarre thing to say by way of congratulation in hindsight. A bottle of questionable but very welcome rose prosecco was thrust into my hands, and I made a very quick escape before Mr crash-bang-wallop and his girlfriend finished. A new PB of 43:50 for me, although I’m not entirely sure about it being a club record because it didn’t seem a very official kind of race!
If you like a humid Summer evening, a deceptively fast race, and making a fool of yourself, The Descent is for you.
