Alton Towers 5k, 13 Nov 2021

I signed up to the Alton Towers 5k as I assumed the only ups and downs I would be doing would be on the rides after… I couldn’t have been more wrong!

The plan for the day was get round the run as quickly as possible then spend the next 6 hours enjoying rides, which had no queues for any of them as the park was open to runners only!!

The start line was crammed with thousands of runners which made getting a clear start hard. The 5km race went off 10min after the 10km meaning after about 1500m the leaders of the 5km race were catching the back of the 10km race. The rest of the race from here was spent avoiding the runners from the tail end of the 10k as the paths we were running on were a bit too narrow for 3000 runners!

The run itself was so cool as we got to run around all the rides and entertainment displays such as running through CBeebies land where giant Teletubbies were cheering you on, and through the castle where there was live music from characters there.

The finish line came around quickly as the run was spent enjoying the cool scenery and all the different people. The finish was a downhill sprint which was lined with hundreds of supporters all cheering very loudly making for a great finish to a great run!

I finished 33/1003 overall and 7/579 out of the women.

Aoibh Clarke