There’s something a little different about running your home town.
Not easier — Bridport has enough hills to quietly end any romantic notions on that front — but different. Familiar. The kind of run where you’re properly in it rather than navigating. Streets you know, landmarks you grew up with, a finish line you could find in the dark. The Bridport 10K is that kind of race. And for Thinking Out Loud, on a bright Sunday morning in September, it turned out to be rather more than a race bib and a finish time.
“Inertia Events’ James Stone briefs the field at the bus station car park. The map: essential. The wall: making a decent fist of it as a briefing board.”
We arrived at the bus station car park — headphones in pockets, as befits the occasion — to find a proper field assembled. The Bridport 10K and Half Marathon together pull a solid crowd, and the car park had that particular pre-race energy: people doing that slightly too-casual stretching, watch-checking, quietly sizing up other people’s shoes.
James Stone’s briefing was crisp, clear, and nearly curtailed entirely when the X53 Coaster — Bridport’s double-decker link to Dorchester — decided the assembled runners were, in fact, in the way. We noted, with some relief, that being taken out by a bus before even reaching the start line would have been a story we couldn’t quite spin in our favour. The bus got through. Briefing resumed. Crisis averted.
The Bridport 10K field, ready. Bridport Hills holding court in the background.
“The face of two men who have done absolutely enough training. START banner: doing the heavy lifting.”
A small note before we get to the running. We’d both rather hoped the new TOL kit would have been here by race day. New running tops, proper Thinking Out Loud branding — it would have been a clean moment. Two runners in fresh TOL colours, home-town streets, a proper field. People have already started asking about the club just from seeing us out together, so the tops weren’t strictly needed. But they would have been nice. Tuesday, apparently, is the new target. The tops will get their own moment. Watch this space.
The 10K field split from the half marathoners at the start and banked away into Bridport’s streets. John — and for anyone who knew him in his running days, this is a man who has moved properly fast around a track — settled in early. We were both, if we’re honest, a little ring-rusty. Second official TOL event. Out of practice. Headphones, as noted, in pockets.
John on the residential section, looking entirely more comfortable than the situation warranted.
The Inertia route through Bridport is well considered. It weaves the town’s geography intelligently — river bank walk, St Mary’s playing fields, residential streets with decent support from marshals and spectators at all the key junctions. Not a route you’d be lost on, which matters when you’re a few miles in and the local knowledge starts to feel less reliable than it did at the start.
Part of the route wound past a familiar front door. As we ran by, someone with excellent timing and a camera grabbed a photograph of two runners who believed, at that precise moment, that they looked considerably more composed than they actually did.
That someone was Andy Potter — TLRB runner, and a man who evidently can’t resist a race-day shot when one comes to his doorstep. The results, as you’ll see below, are entirely accurate.
Early-race on the residential stretch. John: concentrating extremely hard. James: noticing the camera immediately. Photo: Andy Potter Photography.
James Sayers, waving. John, running an actual race. Photo: Andy Potter Photography.
Then, a few miles in, a climb.
Dodhams Lane.
For those who didn’t grow up here, it’s a landmark — an old lane that once ran up toward school, one of those Bridport geography details that’s been part of the town longer than most people can account for. For John and James, running it now is something slightly different. The kissing gate. The route to school. Years of accumulated history that we were absolutely not going to dwell on because we were in a race. We thought about it anyway. You can’t not.
We climbed it, took a proper lungful of Dorset air at the top, and pushed down the other side.
The route then weaved through some urban estates, and ended up back running alongside the river back in towards town, then continued to asker meadows, past morrisons, back through town and then towards St Marys playing field.
Dorset: quietly unimpressed by your race pace since forever.
The back way through. The buddleia had strong opinions about lane discipline.
The first 5K came through in 25 minutes and 30 seconds. Which, as we both registered somewhere around mile three and a half, was possibly a touch optimistic in terms of sustainable pace. James especially started to feel it — a fact he is recording here for the sake of honesty rather than pretending it didn’t happen. We settled. Found a rhythm. Got our heads down and ticked the miles off properly.
St Mary’s playing fields brought the youth football — full Sunday-morning swing, which added a certain frantic energy to the proceedings. We passed through. The football carried on. Two worlds, very briefly adjacent.
St Mary’s playing fields. Youth football: unaware of, and unbothered by, our race.
After St Mary’s: one final small hill — short enough to be manageable, annoying enough to be noticed — and a brief diversion around a housing estate to give us the honest full 10 kilometres. Then Plottingham Playing Fields, the crowd, the Inertia finish gantry, and the particular satisfaction of stopping.
The WELCOME banner at Plottingham Playing Fields. Genuinely welcome at this point.
Plottingham Playing Fields, finish hub. The community feel of the Bridport 10K in one frame.
Done. Bridport 10K, 13 September 2026.
53 minutes and 20 seconds. The Strava confirms it. We thought that was pretty good.
The full debrief.
We agreed we’d earned a pint. We were right.
Bib #387. Staropramen. Thatchers. The podium nobody photographs but everyone deserves.
Here’s the bit that’s worth saying plainly.
The 13th of September was exactly one month since James was in hospital for his fourth relapse. The one before that took him off his feet for the better part of three months. A 53-minute 10K — on home streets, with a friend who is also just back to running after a few years — isn’t just a number in a Strava report. It’s a different kind of marker entirely.
We didn’t need the kit. We didn’t need the time to mean anything beyond what it already meant. But it meant something. To both of us.
Thinking Out Loud was built on that premise. That getting out the door is the point. That showing up — a bit ring-rusty, headphones in pockets, hoping the X53 doesn’t take you out before the start gun — is enough. That progress isn’t always the chart you expect. Sometimes it’s a Sunday morning in Bridport, in streets you know, with someone you trust.
That’ll do.
Huge thanks to James Stone and everyone at Inertia Events for a beautifully run event. The Bridport 10K is quietly one of the better local races going — well organised, good route, right atmosphere, proper community feel. We’ll be back.
And the tops arrive Tuesday.
Bib Number 373 & 387 – The start of something!
Thinking Out Loud is a running and walking group with the over 50s spirit, but genuinly open to all with a mental health focus, based in Bridport, Dorset. We go at our own pace. We go at it together. We never take it too seriously — except when there’s a 10K involved, in which case we take it exactly as seriously as the situation requires.
First ones free, come along and see if we are your kind of people, and we will stop for a coffee or a beer at the end to continue the chat. We are trying to get some of us together for Wednesday 23rd. 6-7pm roughly. Message us on socials or in any of the Contact us sections on this web-site.