Hooky 6 Report by John Rowland
A new race for me, and the 2nd of 3 races in 7 days, having had Combe II Motavation the previous
Thursday and planning to do Alchester 5 the following Wednesday.
At least there couldn’t be the same amount of elevation on the Hooky 6 as there was at Combe.
Botley car sharing worked its usual magic and Rhea picked me, Ros and then Alison up for the drive
to Hook Norton – another place I had never been to – although I have got to enjoy the local brew as
its available at a few of my local pubs. As the race was in the CC I assumed there would be a big
turnout, but in the end the 4 of us were joined by Dave, Kate, Graham, Nick and Jacky making a total
of 9 ERRs. Race numbers were retrieved, chip tags attached to shoes, warm up was completed and
the race could begin.
Its two laps, through the village then a rectangular loop through countryside. The weather was just
about perfect, little wind, cool, with a hint that it might start raining, but it stayed dry. Driving into
the village we’d climbed a steep hill that I was relieved to find is not on the course. My goal was to
try to run 7 minute miles for the 6 mile course – which is 4:21kms on my watch. It’s always a
challenge to know what target to set. I was tired from Thursday and feeling a little under the
weather with what could have been a sore throat coming on and had lost a little fitness since my
ridgeway mishaps, but this seemed a reasonable goal. When racing bright blue Eynsham vests are
always visible amidst the crowd and ahead of me I could see Kate striding into the distance. A couple
of months ago I might have tried to keep with her, but not this time.
At the end, I didn’t quite manage to keep the 7min miles, but really enjoyed the run. ERRs scored 4
category prizes, including a 1 st VM60 for me, and for these their sponsor gives beer. So our car back
to Botley was laden with 8 bottles of beer as Ros picked up the 2 nd V55 – Kate (2 nd FV35) and Jacky
(2 nd FV65) were the other winners. Looking at Stava I was surprised that Hooky 6 had 93m of
elevation which was only 5m less than Combe II with its notorious hill. Clearly a lot of little
undulations can add up to a lot of elevation.
Definitely worth doing again … CC next year?
