Thirteen Middlesbrough 10k, 31st August 2025

After an unusually long gap of over a month, Lynne Cornell was back, racking up another 10k race:

“This was a race Susan and I did last year and the day after an early-bird offer arrived, we thought why not?!

We got there nice and early, parked up and wandered to the start in Centre Square to collect our numbers. This year we had to present the QR code in our confirmation email to collect them although the final instructions didn’t say this! Fortunately Susan had picked this up from an email a few weeks ago.

At 8:30, we were instructed to go to the start pen relevant to the time we predicted and whilst standing there, a young lady came up to me and said I would know her sister as she ran for Claremont too. Turned out it was Lena’s sister. Lovely to chat to her. That was the last I saw of her – she was way ahead of me!!!

The warm up was due to start at 8:45 with race start time at 9:00. At 8:45 I noticed the queue to collect numbers was huge and this could explain why the race didn’t start until 9:10.

It is a really interesting course and parts of it that had looked very sorry for themselves last August as a result of the riots, looked much improved this year. The first part of the course goes past lots of Teesside University Buildings before going into Albert Park, which is very like Saltwell Park. Lovely green space in the town. Then past the Dorman Museum (as in Dorman Long – the company responsible for the harbour bridges in Sydney and Auckland, the Tyne Bridge and Middlesbrough’s Newport Bridge amongst others), back past Centre Square and under the railway bridge towards the River Tees.

Here we were greeted with a magnificent view of the Transporter Bridge before going past the new container port, around the Riverside Stadium, back under the railway bridge and to the finish at Centre Square.

I found it quite warm and very breezy and consequently not my best 10k this year but still loved it. A favourite (!) due to the interesting course. Again I decided not to buy a t-shirt (I have enough!) but a nice medal and goody bag. Looking forward to receiving the early bird offer in the next few days.”