The Butterfly Effect – Shipley – Rasselbock
Sunday 9th August, and a MAC trio decided that the sensible thing to do during yet another hot spell was to head to Shipley park for a race – the Butterfly Effect is a circuit event giving runners a six hour window to run whatever distance they want – I’ll stop copying Andy’s report at this point 😉.
Anyways, back to Shipley, we all know Shipley, there is a weekly parkrun, there is both Summer and Winter Derby Runner League races and a host of many others, sometimes it feels like you can easily get a bit Shiplied out! The Rasselbock loop takes in the greatest hits of all these races mashed together in a tidy 5.3km undulating loop starting from the visitor centre, running out towards the waterless lake, up up and more up towards the old American adventure theme park now housing estate, round the woods past Nottingham lodge, through the woods and finally down the drive going towards Mapperley and round and up Bell Lane and a slight reverse of the beginning of the parkrun route to find yourself back in the events field.
Three MACs out of the 180 runners included super ultra runner Alaina Bond, went the wrong way Sarah Austin and I don’t do marathons Roy Austin. The event theme was the Purple Emperor Butterfly, each Rasselbock event at Shipley is dedicated to a butterfly, hence the name and runners achieve a corresponding medal of said butterfly.
For most of us, it was a turn up and see what we can do kind of race. For me, this was going to be a training run for my upcoming ultra and was keen to keep a sensible pacing for the full 6 hour duration (only just clocked back in before being timed out, didn’t enjoy a sprint finish after 43km 😂).
Sorry, no pictures from us, although we had good intentions and the flag, we couldn’t quite get the three of us together at the same time 🫣
The winner was Billy Thomson with 11 laps (57.81km), First Lady and third OA was Vicky Evans with 10 laps (53.46km). Our MACs finished in the following:
– Roy Austin – 30th – 8 laps (42.77km)
– Alaina Bond – 33rd – 7 laps ( 37.42km)
– Sarah Austin – 115th – 4 laps (21.38km)
Full results can be found here: https://rasselbock.c
o.uk/live-result/
