Loftus Poultry Run, 21st December 2025
Nina Jensen finds some unusual races to enter. Here is her latest report:
“The Loftus Poultry Run has featured on my bucket list for a number of years since it was a question in a Christmas Quiz at my first Claremont party. I mean, what kind of race offers meat products as prizes, do they offer a veggie/vegan alternative? The FAQs did not help so my only choice was to enter!
As the race starts at 11 the trip wasn’t as early as start as some others Ive entered recently, so with 3 other friends we headed south to see what this was all about.
After parking the car we followed the sounds of a brass band playing festive tunes to registration. I felt totally underdressed in my festive shorts as I jostled for space alongside elves, reindeer, santas galore, or and lots of chicken themed outfits!
At 11am a soul trumpet tooted and after a brief summary of the course (the only words I heard above the noise were “uphill” and “marshal”) we were off.
The route was a drag uphill, gradual at first then getting steeper before a steep dercent and onto the Cleveland Way. The route then had a very muddy section around a field for about half a mile. I did regret my choice of shoe at that stage as although a more grippy road shoe it was still slippy on the mud and a sharp right hand turn had me skidding towards the marshal! However once I’d slipped and slid around there we were back on tracks and roads. Oh and uphill! For about a mile (just like Denton bank! ) By this time the fog/sea fret had decended so I could barely see the runner up ahead and every so often the front runners would appear out of the mist from the opposite direction of this out and back part of the course. However the bonus was that I also couldn’t see how far away the turning point was so instead contented myself that at some point Id be running back down.
From the turning point it was a really fast decent, with a couple of undulating bits all the way to the finish.
Unfortunately I wasn’t fast enough to see whether any of the winners were offered a meat free alternative However my friend did win a spot prize of a bottle of prosecco.
Would i do this race again? Most definitely however next time Im definitely going dressed up!!
