A Celebration of Runners

A fun day today.
We were away with Linda's family - 20 of us 4-80+ yr old, in a lovely house in Derbyshire. Early morning I got some lovely shots as the sun came up of the pond, and house and an old barn down the road. However one image will remain with me.

5 of us, 7-50 year old decided to run the Dovedale Dash being as we were in the neighbourhood, and what an outrageously fun thing it was to do. 4.7miles of mud, rivers, hills, slipping and sliding, men in wigs and rather thoughtful make up, dogs, children, grandpartents and all on a peerless day - and well over 1200 of us.

Sometimes capturing an image isn't about the quality, but capturing the moment. Like the migration of wilderbeast over a river on the Serengati plains, perhaps the oppertunity to capture this on film lasts a few minutes once a year, so with the Dovedale dash - about 1/2 mile into the race, the stepping stones are mostly spurned by the running hoards as they dash across the river Dove. I just had to stop having forded the river and grap my phone and snap the moment.

It got me thinking what a collective term for runners is - probably a field of runners, but this felt somewhat inadequate today, perhaps a a daftness of runners, certainly a mudness of runners, but I settled on a "Celebration" of Runners as on this balmy(or was that barmy) autumn day, there was such joy in it all, for the runners,the spectators and not least for my 7 year old nephew who showed admirable determination - not an easy 4.7miles to run according to this gnarled old runner.