Doh! Doughnuts!

Ever been sorry you've signed up for a race?

Well this would be the one! Yep it was the Doughnut Dash at Colchester Castle Park on Sunday 14 September in aid of Kidney Research UK. What does that involve? Well, let me see - you have to eat a full-sized, iced and sometimes filled, or sprinkled or sometimes both, doughnut at each of five stops round the five kilometre course. 

When my race number arrived it came with the advice that if I were to be sick could I please not do so on the race track and that there would be bags provided. Also there would be a St John's Ambulance team available. 

After having run this last year I was fully aware of how much of a challenge it would be. Some people looked shocked when they saw the trays of doughnuts as if they had not given it enough thought. My trouble was that I had given it too much thought and was fully prepared with a bottle of water and a strong constitution.

This year there were two races for younger runners and Becci's daughter Violet was all set with her sparkly shoes to show us how it was done. She ran an amazing race eating her (younger sized) doughnuts and earning a well-deserved medal.

You can see her older, cheeky, brother looking bemused in the background but he would soon be discovering just how much doughnut love a runner can summon up in the next half hour.

Before we got started there was a warm up led by the runner who had found herself with race number 118 and was dressed as the television ad character. She just had to really!

Then we were off and, as last year, the first doughnut doesn't seem too bad but we were soon forcing them down. I was impressed by a Dad running with pushchair and tiny baby although I suspected he might have wanted feed the doughnuts to the little one!

Becci, Callum and I were heartily sick of the doughnuts but we soldiered on and managed to keep running and eating.

They don't look like enthusiastic doughnut dashers!

Thankfully, it was soon over and we got our medals which were ... doughnuts.

Still it was all in a good cause. You can see some video and another race report here on Mudstacle.